First and second meeting houses
Bird’s-eye view, looking north, generated by A.I. from an 1835 topographical map. The cemetery tapers where Winthrop and Court Streets meet. The long sheds are saltworks. [A map of the extremity of Cape Cod (1835). Boston Public Library. Norman B. Leventhal Map Center. Call number G3762.C35 1835.G7.]
Marker at the northernmost end of the Winthrop Street Cemetery: “This stone commemorates Provincetown’s early settlers, the first meeting house, and the founders of the Winthrop Street Cemetery. The meeting house was built near this spot in 1717-1718. Settlers called the area ‘Meeting House Plain.’ The cemetery reflects the colonial American practice of locating graveyards near churches. The first known burial took place on the plain in 1723.” [2009, Dunlap]
Updated on 19 July 2026 | A decade before Provincetown formally came into existence, the General Court in 1717 granted £150 toward the construction of an Orthodox Christian meeting house at the tip of Cape Cod. Inhabitants were made responsible for raising whatever balance remained and for keeping the building in repair. It was to be 32 feet by 28 feet, with a gallery on three sides. We don’t know the exact location of the meeting house, but it was somewhere in this vicinity. James Gifford described the location in History of Barnstable County (1890):
“It was the presence of the meeting house here, on the south border of the meadow, or the large, level valley, once connected with Shankpainter Pond, that gave to this tract the name of Meeting House Plain, which is still applied to it. The proximity of the of the old burying ground on the northeast side of the plain, corresponding with the prevailing practice of early days of locating the burial place near the church, goes to confirm the tradition.”1
After 56 years, the people of Provincetown rebuilt and enlarged the meeting house. As was true in many — if not most — churches, pews were for sale at the second meeting house. The most desirable pews on the main floor went for £30. Pews in the women’s gallery cost £3/10. This meeting house lasted until the early 1790s, when the Old White Oak Meeting House was constructed on what is now Mozart Avenue.
The map pinpoints the location of the marker, not the meeting house.
1 History of Barnstable County, Massachusetts (1890), edited by Simeon Deyo, Page 986.