After such a vigorous contest a brief breathing spell was necessary; but Sept. 7, 1791, the town voted, forty-one to twenty-three, "to erect a new meeting-house in the centre of the town, or in the nearest convenientest place thereto." This double-barrelled superlativeness shows that the spirit of the people was by no means cast down by the fruitless struggle of five years. At this meeting a committee was appointed to plan a new house. Oct. 10, this committee reported to the town "to build a house sixty by forty-six feet, with a porch at each end twelve by eleven feet, with stairs into the galleries." There were to be forty-six pews on the ground floor, and twenty-five in the galleries, to be sold to the highest bidders, and three years were to be allowed in which to build the house. This report was accepted at a meeting held Nov. 14, 1791. A committee was also chosen to clear a site upon the land purchased of Thomas Boynton and build the house. Dec. 27, 1791, the town with its usual consistency voted "to dismiss the committee chosen to build a new meeting-house from further service." Thus the matter again stood as at the beginning.
For nearly three years thereafter the pot continued to boil, but nothing more was done about church affairs in town meeting, except that on May 17, 1793, the people showed their obstinacy by refusing "to repair the meeting-house windows, and to paint the outside of the meeting-house."
Sept. 3, 1794, operations were again renewed by voting "to erect a meeting-house in the centre of the town, or in the nearest convenientest place thereto, to accommodate the inhabitants thereof for divine worship." Three disinterested individuals, Joseph Stearns and David Kilburn of Lunenburg, and Benjamin Kimball of Harvard, were chosen by ballot as a committee to discover that much-to-be-desired spot, "the nearest convenientest place to the centre." They found the centre to be a little less than a quarter of a mile north-east of the pound, but considered the most eligible location for the house to be about a half a mile south of this point, which would have placed it near the present junction of Main and River Streets. Oct. 21 a meeting was called to hear their report and it was rejected 36 to 29. So the opinions of interested and disinterested persons seem to have been considered of about equal value--as good for nothing.