first Midway Meeting

["John S. Quarterman" <jsq@quarterman.org>]

Perhaps like most of you, I think of Midway Meeting as something that happens
in the Spring.  And looking through Stacy's Records, apparently that's
traditional; most meetings of the Society occurred in March or April.

However, a rather important one occured in August, shortly after
many of the original members had moved down from South Carolina:

 ``At a Meeting of the Society of Midway and Newport,
 under the Pastoral Care of the Revd. Mr. John Osgood,
 held on the 28th Day of August, 1754,
 at the Log Meeting House, on Midway Neck.''

They determined to build a better meeting house on the same spot.
They decided that those who had picked lands but not yet begun settlements
should have no vote, and that those who had begun but not finished
should get fractional votes, which they spelled our person by person.
Also minors who were actually present in the community got half votes.

They settled salaries for the clerk and the minister,
and chose selectmen.

And they approved the
 Articles and Rules of Incorporation
 Agreed upon by a Society
 Settled upon Midway and Newport in Georgia.

Since this was also the first meeting after the approval of the Articles,
it was in a sense the first meeting of the Society.

The Articles are mostly about ordinary logistics of running an organization.
It has a few unusual features.

It remarks that one of the reaons for incorporation was the group
 ``being mostly a dissenting or congregational church, that doth
 not ordinarily come under all the privileges of the establishment;...''
thought it best to spell out how the group was organized.
They were unlike most people around them, just as they had been
in South Carolina and Massachusetts, so they banded together.

The last article recommends having each of their children as they
grew up sign onto the Articles, as well.  The long list of
signatures indicates that this custom was followed.

And the Articles also specify the date for the annual meeting as
``the second Wednesday of every March.''

John S. Quarterman <jsq@quarterman.org>
[ This is the Quarterman book discussion list, book@quarterman.org
[ To get off or on the list, see http://www.quarterman.org/booklist.html