Lee church marks 225 years

By Kate AbbottPrint Story | Email Story
In 1777, a group of fishermen from Cape Cod left the Atlantic shore. The Revolutionary War had brought the British Navy into their fishing grounds and forced them out of the water. They came to Lee and, in 1778, they founded a church. They built the first rough meetinghouse in 1780, with no glass windows, no pews and no heating. Nearly two-and-a-half centuries later, the congregation of their church is honoring them. Lee Congregational Church will celebrate its 225 anniversary at the annual Lee Founder’s Day Weekend, Friday, Sept. 26 through Sunday, Sept. 28. On Saturday from noon to 3, Barbara Mahoney, dressed in Revolutionary War costume, will give tours. Mahoney is the chairwoman of the Deaconate, and a historian and former social studies teacher. With her husband, the runs the Parsonage Bed and Breakfast next door. The church will also hold a tag sale and bake sale featuring cookies, muffins and fried dough on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 in the park outside its doors, Mahoney said last week. The congregation will raffle a quilt stitched in memory of Bernice Perry, a church member who lost her fight with cancer before the quilt was finished. The quilters pieced together fabrics that Perry had used to sew clothes for her family. Perry also made the quilted cloths on the church lectern. The raffle will continue through the autumn, Mahoney said, and the drawing will take place in December at the church‚s annual Holiday Bazaar. On Sunday at 2 p.m., church members will conclude the celebration with a concert. Jovia Trio, consisting of a violinist, flutist and pianist from the congregation who perform together professionally, will play, along with the church choir, a trumpeter and a pianist who will perform on the church‚s newly restored Chickering baby grand piano. Mahoney said the piano is worth $40,000 to $50,000. After the concert, the church will invite Founders Day visitors to a “silver tea” in the fellowship hall. Lee Congregational Church keeps in touch with its history, both on paper and in person. Mahoney pointed out a list of all the church’s pastors, going back to the Rev. Elisha Pamele, (1783 to 1784). The congregation has met descendants of several of his successors, she said. A descendant of the Rev. Alvan Hyde (1792 to 1833) stayed at the Parsonage B & B last year. Members of his family have been coming to visit for some time, Mahoney said, and they talked the church out of painting over its unique trompe l’oeil decorations, in the 1960s. A daughter of the Rev. James Brown (1938-1943) also visited the church this year and reported that her father is still living, in a nursing home in New Hampshire, Mahoney said. She said she also has become friends with descendants of the Rev. Lyman Rowland (1877-1904), and they had given her historic pictures of the church. The present church building is the third church where Lee’s Congregational worshipers have gathered. The town has marked the site of the original meetinghouse with a Lee Marble stone pillar, Mahoney said. In 1800, the congregation built a larger church with a bell, and later an organ, for $3,500. It stood where the present church still stands. In January 1857, in below freezing weather, the second church burned down, catching fire from a spark that blew onto the steeple. When firefighters realized they couldn’t save the church, they took all of the furniture out of the parsonage and soaked the building to keep the fire from spreading. The redoubtable congregation built the current Lee Congregational Church in the same year. It became a favorite item of gossip in the Puritan community when members lined the pews with colorful cushions. Cushions stuffed with the original horsehair are still there but have new covers, Mahoney said. More scandalous yet, for those days, the church allowed itinerant French and German artists to paint trompe l'oeil (“fool the eye”) pillars and carvings around the sanctuary. They flanked the lectern with apparent marble columns, embossed the ceiling with painted marble rosettes and hand-painted wood graining on the pews, the wainscoting and the balustrades in the gallery. According to Mahoney, Lee’s may be the only Congregational church to have such paintings. Other churches had them done, but many have since burned down or painted over the decorations, she said. The Lee church also boasts the tallest wooden frame steeple in the United States. A 2,000-pound bell hangs below it in the bell tower, and the Seth Thomas clock system tolls every hour. The clock is still wound weekly by hand, Mahoney said. The old gas lights still hang, now electrified, from the center aisle and the old iron heating grill remains. The congregation originally heated the building by coal, Mahoney said. In the 1970s, a crew of Lee High School students helped the congregation erase the coal dust coating the church walls, by hand. The congregation will begin a fund drive this year to repair the church roof, repaint the building and make the church handicapped accessible, Mahoney said. The church runs a Christian Education program and serves as a meeting place for local activities. It hosts Loaves and Fishes suppers every Wednesday evening and runs a coffee house with live music the last Friday of every month. It is a Covenant church with Habitat for Humanity and supports Construct of South Berkshire. The church sponsored the development of Hyde Place senior housing on Main Street. The current pastor, the Rev. Bert Marshall, came to the church in 1997. He is on sabbatical this fall. Mahoney said the Lee Congregational Church continues to live by the goal of its founders, which is written on a plaque beside the church’s front doors: “It is the aim of this church to present a religion as considerate of persons as the teaching of Jesus, as devoted to justice as the Old Testament prophets, as responsive to truth as science, as beautiful as art, as intimate as the home and as indispensable as the air we breathe.”
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Lanesborough Fifth-Graders Win Snowplow Name Contest

LANESBOROUGH, Mass. — One of the snowplows for Highway District 1 has a new name: "The Blizzard Boss."
 
The name comes from teacher Gina Wagner's fifth-grade class at Lanesborough Elementary School. 
 
The state Department of Transportation announced the winners of the fourth annual "Name A Snowplow" contest on Monday. 
 
The department received entries from public elementary and middle school classrooms across the commonwealth to name the 12 MassDOT snowplows that will be in service during the 2025/2026 winter season. 
 
The purpose of the contest is to celebrate the snow and ice season and to recognize the hard work and dedication shown by public works employees and contractors during winter operations. 
 
"Thank you to all of the students who participated. Your creativity allows us to highlight to all, the importance of the work performed by our workforce," said  interim MassDOT Secretary Phil Eng.  
 
"Our workforce takes pride as they clear snow and ice, keeping our roads safe during adverse weather events for all that need to travel. ?To our contest winners and participants, know that you have added some fun to the serious take of operating plows. ?I'm proud of the skill and dedication from our crews and thank the public of the shared responsibility to slow down, give plows space and put safety first every time there is a winter weather event."
 
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