More than one hundred years after the organization of the First Church of Newburyport, Rev. George Whitefield, then a young man of twenty-six, preached in the community. “The Great Awakening,” which followed, spread all over New England, and more than thirty thousand were converted. Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, the Tennents, and others led in the work that had such wonderful results.

Five years after Whitefield’s visit to Newburyport the Old South Church was organized, most of those who became members having been converted under Whitefield’s preaching. The new church was actually a Presbyterian church from the beginning, though it did not finally adopt the Presbyterian form of government until 1802.

The members of the new church were called “a misguided band,” and “new schemers.” Their first pastor was called a dissenting minister. Their protest against these aspersions took the form of a petition to “The King’s Most Excellent Majesty,” which was a prayer for that “equal liberty of conscience in worshipping God” that had already been granted to others. The petition recited the desire of the people to be relieved of taxation “for the support of ministers on whose ministry they cannot in conscience attend,” and stated that, because of their refusal to pay what they felt were unjust taxes, “honest and peaceable men have been hauled away to prison to their great hurt and damage.”

When the petition was presented to the king by Mr. Partridge, their agent, he declared that they were not “a wild, friekish people,” and cited as an argument for relief from double taxation that, while they had some wealthy members, there were among them “more poor widows than all the other congregations in town put together.” He said those who protested against double taxation had been “dragged about upon the ground,” dressed up in bear skins and worried, and imprisoned.

The protest did not bring relief at once; it was 1773 before the General Court granted the plea of the members. For more than twenty years more the town tried to collect double taxes, but in 1795 the rights of the members of Old South were conceded.