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The Adventures of Ann - Stories of Colonial Times by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
page 45 of 57 (78%)
Signed Sealed and Del:d
presence of Seth Towner, Daniel Linfield, Simeon Thayer."

Ann's two uncles by adoption, and Thomas Penniman of Stoughton, were
well pleased to get this permission to erect a stable, or
Horse-House, as they put it then, to shelter their horses during
divine worship. The want of one had long been a sore inconvenience to
them. The few stables already erected around the meeting-house, could
not accommodate half of the horses congregated there on a Puritan
Sabbath, and every barn, for a quarter of a mile about, was put into
requisition on severe days. After the women had dismounted from their
pillions at the meeting-house door, the men-folks patiently rode the
horses to some place of shelter, and then trudged back through the
snow-drifts, wrestling with the icy wind.

So this new "Horse-House" was a great benefit to the Waleses, and to
the Pennimans, who lived three miles from them over the Stoughton
line. They were all constant meeting-folks. Hard indeed was the storm
which could keep a Wales or a Penniman away from meeting.

Mrs. Polly Wales' horses were accommodated in this new stable also.
In the winter time, there were two of them; one which she and Ann
rode, Ann using the pillion, and one for Nabby Porter. Phineas Adams
always walked. Often the sturdy young blacksmith was at the
meeting-house, before the women, and waiting to take their horses.

One Sunday, the winter after the Horse-House was built, Mrs. Polly,
Ann, Phineas, and Nabby went to meeting as usual. It was a very cold,
bleak day; the wind blew in through the slight wooden walls of the
old meeting-house, and the snow lay in little heaps here and there.
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