On the sixteenth of October in the year 1740 the touring evangelist preacher Reverend George Whitefield gave one of his rousing sermons from a large rock upon Foster Hill (
in West Brookfield, MA) to at least four to five hundred people. Considering that this pasture was located in the heart of a still thinly settled region, this eighteenth century gathering must indeed have been a notable event.
Whitefield along with the Wesley brothers founded Methodism in England in 1738. He also espoused the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, which was to eventually alienate him from the Wesleyan Methodists. Whitefield was popular in western Massachusetts during the 1740s as was the "Great Awakening" a Calvinist revival promoted in part by the sermons of the noted Northampton Evangelist Jonathan Edwards.
Churches were closed to George Whitefield on his first American tour, so he preached in the open air on October 16, 1740, in what was the center of the Quaboag Plantation. The NEMHS placed a bronze plaque on the rock on September 27th, 1960, during the 300th anniversary celebration of the Quaboag Plantation.