It’s always interesting to see how pastors were renumerated
in previous generations. Before the cash economy there were some
interesting arrangements. Such as this:
“East Hampton was originally settled by
the best sort of men, and had never been divided in religion. There
was only one church in place, over which three successive pastors
had been settled during a period of a century and a half. “The
first was Rev. Mr. James, the terms of whose support were
forty-five pounds annually, lands rate free, grain to be first
ground at the mill every Monday, and one fourth of the whales
stranded on the beach. “That is the only case I ever knew of a
minister’s being paid in whales.”From Lyman Beecher’s Autobiography, p.
67
mgpcpastor's blog 