First Free Will Baptist Church and Vestry First Free Will Baptist Church and Vestry The First Free Will Baptist Church and Vestry (also known Miss Perkins' High School and Holderness Academy) are an historic Free Will Baptist Church complex at 57 Main Street in Ashland, New Hampshire. The complex consists of three buildings: the brick church building, which was built in 1834; the old vestry, a brick building standing near the street which was built c. 1835 as a school and converted to a vestry in 1878; and the new vestry, a wooden structure added in 1899 to join the two brick buildings together. The church, a
Vestry the vestry committees were not established by any law, and had come into being in an unregulated ad-hoc process, it was highly convenient to allow them to develop. This was convenient when they were the obvious body for administering the Edwardian and Elizabethan systems for support of the poor on a parochial basis. This was their first, and for many centuries their principal, statutory power. With this gradual formalisation of civil responsibilities, the ecclesiastical parishes acquired a dual nature and could be classed as both civil and ecclesiastical parishes. In England, until the 19th century, the parish vestry was in