Rochester Land
Trust
Great Turnout for event honoring George and Katherine
Church!
Rochester’s
Congregational Church Fellowship Hall was bursting with friends, relatives and
townspeople who gathered on Sunday afternoon, December 11th to honor
George and Katherine Church. Joan
Pierce, from Massachusetts Fisheries & Wildlife, welcomed a large crowd and
introduced Susan Adams from the Rochester Land
Trust who thanked folks for showing their appreciation for the Church’s recent
protection of 163 acres along the Mattapoisett
River. Allen Decker from the Coalition for Buzzards
Bay also thanked people for their strong support of land
conservation in the region.
Anna White shared a short history of the Church family
and the land that is now protected. She
told us “The first Richard Church arrived in Plymouth
MA in 1630 and married Elisabeth Warren in
1635. They had six children, including
Nathaniel, father of a second Richard Church, born in 1669. This Richard Church and his wife Hannah were
the parents of the next Richard Church, born in Scituate
in 1697. In 1725, Richard and his wife
Anna, with their young children and several families from Sandwich,
Marshfield and Scituate,
migrated to Rochester. In March of 1726, ‘he purchased for the sum
of 315 Pounds Sterling, a tract of
land in Rochester, lying on the Mattapoisett
River, and containing 350 acres,’
the northern boundary of this tract being, according to the deed, ‘the path
leading from Rochester to Rhode
Island.’ “
Anna went on the relate that Richard Church worked as a
carpenter and owned and operated the first sawmill on that Mattapoisett River,
which he built in 1748 after obtaining the “right to flow the meadow land from
the first of September until the first of April each year” from Amos Mendell. The
mill site is Church’s Falls – well-known to Rochester
residents who have challenged it in the annual Memorial Day Boat Races. Generations of Churches have lived on that
land, farming, cutting firewood and timber, milling, and working in, around and
for Rochester.
Knowing this, it shouldn’t be surprising to learn that
George served as Rochester’s
Surveyor of Wood Bark & Lumber for 35 years. He was also as an Assessor for 23 years and
Cemetery Commissioner from 1958 until earlier this year. Katherine has been a Trustee of the Plumb
Memorial Library since 1964, was Council on Aging Director for 10 years, and an
alternate of the Historic District Commission.
She was also President of the Women’ Club.
In a short speech toward the end of the afternoon, George
explained that he and Katherine had no children and didn’t want to see all the
land go to houses. Several years ago,
they began planning to preserve the legacy of Richard Church who settled here
nearly 300 years ago. Their permanent
protection of this 163 acres is their second step in this process and one for
which we are all grateful.
Call Susan Adams,
President of the Rochester Land Trust, at 508-763-3973 for more information.