History of Marshfield v. 1, p. 93

[Thanks to Sarah Sully for transcribing this chapter]

CHAPTER XX.

Churches.

At Marshfield, several substantial Welshmen settled by invitation of Governor Edward Winslow, and with them came Richard Blinman, who was pastor here in 1641-2 (but a year after the town was incorporated and the first church built). He was a scholar, "and may have been in advance of the times, for he was in disfavor." He and his countrymen soon went to Cape Ann.

Pastors.    "It would seem," says Baylies, "that Mr. Blinman, although in the phraseology of the day, 'a godly and able man,' was not well received by the austere Puritans of Marshfield, who compared him to a 'piece of new cloth in an old garment.'   He was a learned man, and wrote a treatise in defense of infant baptism."
   Next came Edward Bulkly (graduated at Harvard College in 1642).   He was the able and learned son of the first pastor of Concord.   *"The third minister here was Saml Arnold in 1657, then followed in 1696 Edward Thompson, in 1707 James Gardner.   In 1706 the third meeting-house was built on the site of the old.   [These meeting-houses were the first in Marshfield, and were erected upon the same site, in the vicinity of the old Winslow burying ground.]   Mr. Gardner continued as the minister at this church until his death in 1739.
   In 1738 the second Congregational society was incorporated in the north part of the town; and a meeting-house built, on or near the site at Marshfield Hills where the Unitarian church now stands in 1901, which the people in the
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   *Wm. T. Davis in "History of Plymouth County."

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