The Neponset Village Meeting House Tapestry from the 1830s is owned by the First Baptist Church in Dorchester.
The current First Baptist Church in Dorchester on the corner of Ashmont and Adams Streets, was originally known as the Neponset Village Meeting House. It was the sixth church established in Dorchester since the town’s founding in 1630 and the first Dorchester church of the Baptist denomination. In early 1835, Miss Nancy Moore, a school teacher at Dorchester’s Second Parish Church in Codman Square, organized a Sunday school at Neponset Village near the ferry crossing the river to Quincy. In July, they held their first distinctively Baptist service at the Neponset Inn/Holbrook Tavern, which stood until 2013 behind the current health center. By June of 1837, the First Baptist Society in Dorchester was recognized by the Baptist Council. A year later, they erected their first meeting house on Chickatawbut Street near Narraganset Street.
Almost from the beginning, they established a Ladies Guild to promote fellowship, religious education, and support their meeting house. The dues were 25 cents for women and 50 cents for men. They took turns meeting in each other’s homes to sing hymns, talk about events of the day, and to work on the tapestry that would decorate their meeting house when finished.
The tapestry is an example of embroidery created by pulling hundreds of fine wool yarn threads through a burlap like linen rug warp to create an image of Jesus teaching the women in a garden. For its time, it was rather progressive as higher education, or the teaching of intellectual subject to women, was controversial.
The Neponset Tapestry is about 40” by 36.” It is woven on a stretcher frame similar to that used on oil paintings. It is a classic example of rural folk art and a tribute to the women of Dorchester as most of the women of the church had a hand in making it. On completion, it hung in the Chickatawbut Street meeting house until the church moved to 401 Ashmont Street, where is has been ever since in a place of honor.
Source: First Baptist Church in Dorchester