Weathervane Wednesday ~ Another Historic Old Church

Weathervane Wednesday is an on-going series of photographs I post weekly.  I started out by publishing only weather vanes from the Londonderry area, but now I've been finding interesting weather vanes from all over New England.  Sometimes these weather vanes are whimsical, or historical, but all are very unique.  Often, my readers tip me off to some very special and unusual weather vanes.

Today's weather vane is from somewhere in Massachusetts.

Do you know the location of weather vane #253?  Scroll down to see the answer...

Today's weathervane was photographed at 225 Cabot Street in Beverly, Massachusetts.  It is the weather vane atop the steeple of the First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church.  I was photographing tombstones in a nearby cemetery, and I could see the weather vane above the trees and buildings (which was lucky since it was late fall and most of the leaves had fallen, so I had a clear view of the steeple).  

This church building was built in 1772, and was the third building for this congregation and the second at this location on Cabot Street. At the link below you can read a very interesting history of this church.  If you have colonial era ancestors in Beverly, they probably went to this church since it was originally a Puritan church, and then a Congregational parish.  It was founded as the Bass River Parish of Salem in 1667.  It's claim to fame is that it hosted the very first Sunday School in the United States in 1810. 

I don't know when the weather vane was installed, but was probably original to the steeple, whenever that was erected. The vane is a fancy arrow, and it appears to be gilded.

First Parish Church, Beverly, webpage with historical information
http://www.firstparishbeverly.org/2010/12/15/grandmother%E2%80%99s-attic-tales-from-the-first-parish-church-building-2/#more-797


Click here to see the entire series of Weathervane Wednesday posts!

-------------------------------

Published under a Creative Commons License
Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Weathervane Wednesday ~ Weathervane Wednesday ~ Another Historic Old Church", Nutfield Genealogy, posted March 23, 2016, (  http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2016/03/weathervane-wednesday-another-historic.html:  accessed [access date]).