sentences:  When the fifth building was lost to fire in February 1896, church members decided by a vote held only 11 days after the fire that “a meeting-house be built substantially upon the lines as to the exterior as it was before.” On the dedication day of the sixth building in May 1897, the building committee’s chairman shared with the audience that “The vote determining the character of the building was, we believe, expressive of the desires, not only of our own people, but also of a great number of others, who from direct or collateral descent trace back their ancestry to the old meeting-house or one of its predecessors…It was therefore thought wise, while making a more symmetrical and harmonious whole, to preserve the better features of the old colonial type of meeting-house, thus keeping unbroken the train of ideas which came with the good ship ‘Mary & John’ [in 1630].” 
  
  Indeed, many descendants of the original Puritans still resided in Dorchester and were members of First Parish.These living representatives undoubtedly influenced the decision to replicate a traditional building exterior.However, the members did not allow themselves to be trapped by cloying nostalgia too much; they soon voted to demolish the smaller vestry that survived the fire in order to create a larger Parish hall.