Excerpt from Historical Sketch of the Congregational Church in Belchertown, Mass: From Its Organization, 114 Years, With Notices of the Pastors and Officers, and List of Communicants Chronologically Arranged, Tracing Genealogies, Intermarriages and Family Relatives, Also, Embracing Numerous Facts and Incidents Relating to the First Set In giving the following pages to the public through the press, a few introductory remarks seem to me appropriate. In the undertaking and progress of collecting materials comprised in this little volume, the thought of giving them to the public in this way never entered my mind. The labor was begun, in a limited way, many years since, and attended to only when other things did not press, as a paramount claim upon my time, and pursued to gratify my own curiosity, having a desire to learn who, in by-gone days, occupied the places we now occupy; whence they were, and what they were in condition, character and pursuits, in life's short pilgrimage. The more I gathered relating to them the greater was my desire to gather more, and extend it to their whole history, political, civil, religious, and social; and this, from all the sources within my reach, records, writings and orally, carefully preserving all that seemed to aid me in attaining my object. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.