USA > Massachusetts > Bristol County > A History of Bristol County, Massachusetts, vol 2 > Part 13
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"Rehoboth North Purchase."-By this title we shall ever know our newly acquired lands in their primitive times of the wide boundaries, the tract limit on its west being the present Blackstone river, on its north the "Bay Line"; on its east the present Mansfield, Norton and Easton; south, the present Attleboro, Seekonk, Pawtucket and East Providence; and the purchase was inclusive of Attleboro, of Cumberland, Rhode Island, and a tract a mile and a half wide, extending east and west, and part of Wrentham and Foxboro. The mile and a half tract was given to Reho- both, but in 1710 was restored to Attleboro.
And in this purchase, too, as we read over the old deed, we note the statement of the reservation made by the Indians-"reserving only a com- petent portion for some of the natives to plant and sojourn upon"-again a refutation of unwarranted statements of some writers to the effect that the first comers took by force all lands from the red man proprietors. For a period of five years, 1661 to 1666, the title of all this property remained in the name of one man, Captain Thomas Willett, though he had purchased at the solicitation of many. On April 10 of 1666, he conveyed the purchase to the representatives of the Plymouth Colony government, who in turn on that day conveyed it to settlers in Rehoboth and neighboring places, who held &£50 estates and more. When in 1672, three years before King Philip's war, a full list of the proprietors was made, that list showed eighty- two owners, and the number of shares as eighty and one-half. These pro- prietors were very methodical and explicit in the keeping of their land accounts, a number of their carefully prepared ledgers with pigskin covers, as well as those of the Taunton North Purchase, being preserved as relics. It was a unique organization, that of those old proprietors; they held the interesting position in those days of a separate body from that of the town corporation, and, as stated, they kept books of their own. They chose their own clerks, standing committees and surveyors, and at times looked after the bounds of the purchase and made strenuous effort to secure them. They laid out many needed highways for the town, and ordered that all timber
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cut on undivided lands should be seized; and they even laid out the town's burial place, "on the hill, before Mr. David Freeman's."
A power within itself was the proprietorship, the last of whose records having to do with the laying out of lands is of March 15, 1839. Their books began in 1672, the Rehoboth town books having contained any previous record relating to overtures for their transactions. They transacted all their own laws relating to the ownership, and gave their own titles to lands. Neither were they an exclusive autocracy other than the primitive situation warranted, as at first their lands were exempted from taxation "to accommodate the poorer sort with lands, and yet so as not to oppress them as much as otherwise." These were their clerks from the beginning : William Carpenter, Jr., chosen May 17, 1682; Daniel Smith, May 31, 1703; Noah Carpenter, April 23, 1724; John Robbins, Jr., May 1, 1752; John Daggett, December 9, 1763; Ebenezer Daggett, July 1, 1793; and Lucas Daggett, last of the clerks of the proprietary, March 15, 1839.
Contrary to the known facts with regard to many of the transactions in land hereabouts, we do not know what sum of money or commodities were paid to the Indian sachem, but the deed assures us that "divers good causes and valuable considerations" were in the exchange. And it is worth repeating that the best, the most practical and enduring currency from the standpoint both of the natives and the newcomers was garden seed, garden tools, cutlery, clothing, and even beads for ornaments. If in our luxurious days we demur at this, let us put ourselves in seventeenth century conditions in that wilderness by means of old records and the various viewpoints of the bookmen.
These "north-purchased" lands may be properly styled as at first a plantation of Rehoboth, and even up to the date of the incorporation in 1694, a portion of Rehoboth's meadow lands. Rehoboth townsmen fathered the motive and the settlement of the section to no minor degree. Yet the chartered limits of Rehoboth were never inclusive of those of the "north purchased" properties, as Hon. John Daggett, thoroughgoing historian, has demonstrated from his close study of the first proceedings of Rehoboth, whose survey is open to all future historians. Though the purchase originated to a very great extent in Rehoboth, and though even a division of a part of those north lands had been made by Rehoboth men June 22, 1658, three years before Willett had bought of Wamsutta, by approval of the Plymouth Court, and for grazing purposes for their cattle, yet the North Rehoboth Purchase was then considered a separate settlement under Rehoboth jurisdiction, until the incorporation of Attleboro; and up to then the inhabitants north were subject to the town government of Rehoboth. Again, while lots were drawn for the meadows north that have just been referred to as having been granted by the court previous to the purchase (May 26, 1668), the first division of general lands was made February 9, 1668, and lots were drawn for this division March 18 that year.
A town meeting was held that day, March 18, when it was voted that there should be fifty acres of land laid out to a share on the north purchased lands ; that the purchasers should draw lots for their choice; that each one should choose his lands successively according to his turn, and give notice to the next in turn, and that if any neglected or refused to make choice and
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lay out his land in his turn for the space of three days after notice given him, he should wait until other's had made choice in regular order. Such was the care accorded the transaction. And it was on this same day. that a committee of eight were chosen "any two of whom might act, to see that these rights should not be laid out as to interfere with highways, previous divisions of meadows, or other lotments," the committee consisting of William Sabin, Nicholas Peck, Samuel Newman, James Reddeway, Thomas Willmott, Samuel Peck, Lieutenant Hunt, Joseph Buckland. The follow- ing-named nine purchasers entered their protest against the manner of laying out of the lands by choosing, namely: Capt. Willett, Mr. Myles, Will. Sabin, Mr. Brown, Dea. Cooper, John Miller, Sr., John Peren, Sr., George Kendricke, Will. Carpenter. And these drew for a division on that day: John Titus, Joseph Buckland, John Ormsby, Lands of Children of Alexander Winchester, deceased, Nathl. Paine, Goody Hide, Rice Leon- ard, John Allin, Jr., Nicholas Peck, Ichabod Miller, Jr., Robert Wheaton, John Doggett, Deacon Cooper, Philip Walker, Tho. Read, Joseph Peck, John Read, Sr., Jonathan Bliss, Roger Amidowne, Stephen Paine, Jr., Thomas and Jacob Ormsby, Richard Bullock, Daniel Smith, John Kingsley, Obadiah Bowing, John Peren, Sr., Robert Jones, Will. Buckland, James Gillson, Israil Peck, Anth. Perry, Eldad Kingsley, Tho. Cooper, Jr., Mr. Myles, Richard Bemies, Jr., John Fitch, Joseph Carpenter, Preserved Abel. John Woodcock, John Allen, Sr., Nich. Ide, Capt. Willet, James Reddeway, Sam. Newman, Stephen Paine, Sr., Jona. Palmer, Robert Miller, Tho. Will- mot, Gilbert Brooks, Wid. Carpenter, Left. Hunt, Jaret Ingraham, Francis Stephens, John Read, Jr., Mr. Newman, Rich. Martin, John Butterworth, George Kendrick, John Lowell, Thomas Grant, Mr. Brown, Nath. Peck, George Robinson, Jonathan Fuller, Jonathan Bosworth, Sam. Peck, Robert Fuller, Nath. Paine, Jr., Richard Whittaker, Sam. Carpenter, Edward Hall, Nicholas Tanner, John Savage, Will Saben, Will Carpenter, Sampson Mason, John Peck, Ben Buckland, Hen. Smith, Sam. Luther.
Frequent complaints were made, however, concerning the divisions of the lands and the boundaries, as well as with regard to the assessments, but eventually the boundaries matter was decided, October 31, 1699, when it was voted that there should be two divisions of lands in the North Pur- chase forthwith laid out to the said proprietors according to their rights in said lands, "namely, twenty-five acres to the first division, and twenty- five acres to the second division; and he that is first in the first division shall be last in the second division, and so on"; and when at their meeting of November 7, 1699, the proprietors drew lots for their new division, they had increased to one hundred and thirty-three in number.
The date of the incorporation of the town of Attleboro is October 19, 1694, when the population of the place was about 180, the families being pretty well scattered throughout the territory. As in the similar case of the naming of Taunton from the mother-town of Taunton, England, whence had come John and Walter Deane, first settlers, in like manner was Attle- boro named-John Sutton and his family, and Thomas Daggett, among the first settlers here, having originated in Attleborough, Norfolk county, England, their voice evidently having been a prevailing one in the naming. Then, two years afterwards, came the town meetings, when popular influ-
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ence began to make itself evident through the popular vote; and this with the co-existent and equal powers of the proprietors' meetings.
The first record that we possess of a town meeting here is that of date May 11, 1696, when John Woodcock and John Rogers were appointed to supervise matters concerning the mile and a half part of the township to the north, and when Israel Woodcock, Thos. Tingley and Samuel Titus were appointed assessors for the ensuing year. It is probable that a town meeting preceded this one, but we have no statement of it from any source. But within the year (November 23, 1696) another town meeting was held, when we first hear of a concerted movement of the townsmen towards erecting a church building, the following-named six men agreeing to pay £4, 20s. as a "free gift towards the building of a meetinghouse"-John Woodcock, John Lane, Israel Woodcock, Thomas Woodcock, George Rob- inson, David Freeman. The town debt at this time was more than five pounds. These were the officers then chosen for the ensuing year: Mr. John Woodcock, Anthony Sprague, Daniel Jenks, Jonathan Fuller, Thomas Tingley, selectmen; Anthony Sprague, town clerk; Israel Woodcock, town constable; Nicholas Ide and Joseph Cowel, surveyors; Henry Sweet, tith- ingman; Thomas Tingley and Samuel Titus, fence viewers; John Wood- cock, Anthony Sprague and Daniel Jenks, assessors; John Lane, grand- juryman; Benjamin Force for the jury of trials in April at the next quarter sessions at Bristol.
In the series of these first town meetings, measures that were of last- ing import to a recently settled community were consummated, such as the following: On March 22, 1696-7, all the inhabitants and town dwellers were given a right to vote at town meeting; July 12, 1697, the town pound was established "upon a piece of undivided land between the properties of Daniel Shepperson and James Jillson near the Bay Road."
On July 1 of the same year, the town passed orders against the har- boring by townsmen of disorderly strangers and foreigners, or armed and uncivil Indians. Attleboro must have been especially afflicted in regard to such trespassers, as we can point to no similar town order in the Old Col- ony. Daniel Shepperson, at the meeting of March 4, 1699 or 1700, not only gave a piece of ground for the pound proposed a few years previously, but his house was appointed to be the "certain known place for town meet- ings." The town green, or training place, is rst mentioned at town meet- ing of March 25, 1701, to be "on the south side of David Freeman's house, between the two ways, namely the Bay Road, and the road that leadeth to Nicholas Ide's house." At this meeting, also a set time was appointed for election day for choosing town officers, namely the last Tuesday in March. A town meeting of direct interest to the present generation was that of February 9, 1702-3, when Ensign Nicholas Ide and Anthony Sprague, with the selectmen, were appointed a committee to seek an agreement con- cerning the lines and bounds between Attleboro, Dorchester and Wrentham. The town's poor are first mentioned in the entry of October 5, 1714, and the first rendered accounts for the care of the poor were dated October 22, 1722.
The town was divided into quarters December 30, 1718, and a little later the highways were laid out. An endeavor was made in 1751 to keep a record of births; and in the following year the town was divided into
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twelve parts; in 1761, £50 was appropriated for schools and £50 for the poor ; September 12, 1768, it was voted to build a house in which to keep the town's stock of ammunition, Jacob Newell, who gave the land for the purpose, being town treasurer. The building was used as a powder house in 1776 and 1812.
Such was the typical tenor of the town meetings at this early period. and of this sort were the processes accompanying the founding of the town- ship. Comparatively speaking, it was not by any means small town busi- ness that called town officers and purchase proprietors to their meetings; for they were then considering in all their proposals and orders, that appear of little weight to us, the one project of furnishing a new and useful town to the increasing communities of the Old Colony.
CHAPTER II. ATTLEBORO'S FIRST PURCHASERS AND SETTLERS
'The first comers to Attleboro lands have their enduring place; and those early sowers are not to be set aside by the present-hour reapers in the fields of local history. They came and conquered a wilderness, and as a result, from that time onwards there always has been a town and a city, and a place for the new-comers and the industrious. Leaders among the town builders in New England, they were the men of the hour for their age, and they are not to be forgotten. Yet we are not to crown them as extraordinary men, except as we think of them courageously facing the wilderness and attempting to restore the barrens. Some of them helped make the laws of the time that seem so stringent to us, but that were neces- sary for their era; and others shared in the evasion of those laws. We shall upon no pretense, for example, condone the acts of individuals with regard to the misfortunes of Indians, yet we shall not fail to recall the fact that the Plymouth Court itself made just laws intended for the safety and good order of the colony, and much of the results of the Attleboro town meet- ings were based upon the example set by that court. Let us not hasten, then, to the story of today, as it is contained within these volumes, until we somewhat acquaint ourselves with those folk who made clear the paths for our coming.
In a preceding chapter we have made introductory reference to the men who first ventured here-colonial men, yet distinct types of colonists. From all that we have been able to read of Thomas Willett, first called Captain when he succeeded Captain Myles Standish as the leader of the militia of Plymouth, we gather that he was an enterprising, progressive business man, a fearless spirit, adapting himself naturally to the frontier life that he had chosen. Two outstanding facts are generally known of him: he was the first purchaser of this tract of land, and he was the first English mayor of New York, twice elected. These two facts are interesting enough to cause us to make further inquiry about him. He was a native of Barley in Hert- fordshire, England, son of Dr. Andrew Willett, rector of that parish. In 1629 he was in Holland and associated with the Leyden congregation; there he knew many of the Pilgrim Fathers, and shared their views. He came
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to Plymouth on the ship "Lion" in 1632, and became a freeman there in January, 1633, and was granted six acres of land. He married Mary Brown, daughter of John and Dorothy Brown, July 6, 1636, and they had thirteen children. A man of mental attainments, he saw and welcomed opportuni- ties for the enlargement and further settlement of the colony, both natives and settlers trusting him thoroughly. How much was he trusted? He was assistant at the General Court fourteen years; was captain of the military force at Plymouth; was delegate to Massachusetts, representing the inter- ests of the Plymouth .Colony ; was made representative at Kennebec of the Plymouth company ; and in a score of other ways, he was of special service to his times.
This was the way of his going to New York and becoming the chief executive of the city. New Amsterdam and the New Netherlands capitu- lated to the English forces September 7, 1664, and New York took their place. The king's commissioners having knowledge of Captain Willett's intimacy with the Dutch language and customs, he was selected by the Plymouth Court to assist in settling affairs of the new régime. His labors in that regard were so meritorious that he at once became popular, and upon the organization of the government under the English rule on June 12, 1665, he was elected mayor. Afterwards he was alderman of the city, and in 1666 he was again elected mayor. Early in 1668, he returned to Swansea ; but again, in 1670-72, he was elected commissioner to the general council of the United Colonies; he was directed by Plymouth Colony to purchase lands from the Indians; and he determined the boundary between the New York and New Haven colonies. He was tactful, and in treaty and parley with the Indians won their confidence. In that, he was leader, too. Not only was he the original purchaser of Rehoboth North, for Reho- both later settlers and others, but he was one of the purchasers of Taunton North; and he and Rev. Mr. Myles, first of the Baptist clergymen in New England, were founders of the town of Swansea.
Because of his services to the colony, Captain Willett was granted a tract of about 600 acres of land on both sides of Seven Mile river, and known to this day as Willett's farm. He died at Swansea August 4, 1674, sixty-three years of age, and his burial-place is at Seekonk. His descendants are numerous and many have been prominent; as, for example, a great- grandson, Samuel, who also was a mayor of New York City. This was the sort of pioneer captain and public-spirited townsman who first brought Attleboro territory into notice.
But though Captain Willett purchased, he never settled in Attleboro. Yet, one of the unusual characters of the early colonial period, namely William Blackstone, did come here and establish his home within the town's original limits. A graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge Uni- versity, England, where he received his Master of Arts degree in 1621, we remember him as having been first also to settle within Boston territory, or at Blackstone's Neck, Shawmut. as it was called. Five years before Governor Winthrop and his group of settlers came, he was there estab- lished, and there he lived part of his solitary though studious and active life. A minister of the Established Church, he left England, as he him- self stated, "not being able to endure the power of the lords bishop." At Shawmut he set up his household goods, and cared for garden and orchard.
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But when Winthrop came, and his removal was desired to a nearby location of fifty acres, he was unwilling to be 'engineered by the "lords brethren"; and so, taking the purchase price for the relinquishment of his title, nearly £30, he removed with a stock of cattle the long way to Rehoboth North Purchase, thirty-five miles south of his original plantation. That was in 1634.
As he had enjoyed his solitude, his orchard and his books at Shawmut, he again resumed that condition and those occupations within old Attle- boro lines, where now is Cumberland, Rhode Island, or, more immediately, Lonsdale. His place of refuge he called Study Hall, and a hill nearby was named by him Study Hill. On July 5, 1659, however, he was married to Sarah Stevenson, widow of John Stevenson of Boston. He had been resident in New England fifty years, forty of those years in this part of the Old Colony, when he died, May 26, 1675, leaving an estate of two hundred acres. Blackstone's lineal descendants have erected a monument to his memory, on the spot where his remains were found, and within the yard of the present Lonsdale Company's Ann and Hope mill. For a moment let us pause and wonder, as the more leisurely clerks of former times would do, concerning the remarkable extremes of that hermit life, and the present locality of the grave of Blackstone-the one passed within an unbounded wilderness; the latter at the very doors of a modern industry. We can never fully understand his choice; and he never could have foreseen nor assented to his burial-place.
Blackstone's library consisted of one hundred and eighty-four books, among them being ten "paper books," all of which were destroyed in the Indian war. Were the ten "paper books" valued manuscript of the hermit- writer? Other historians say they were "probably MSS," but we may not conjecture, interesting as the thought is. He was a faithful orchardist here, as he had been at Shawmut, and anecdotes still continue to be told of his devotion to his "hobby" as we might now call it, of apple-raising and of the excellence of his product. Some of his trees, declares Hon. John Dag- gett, were living one hundred and forty years after they had been set out, and in 1646 there was an apple that had been named for him. Further than that, in 1836, three apple trees were standing upon the meadow, near the site of Study Hall, and two of them were bearing apples; yet Study Hill and Study Hall have both disappeared at this time, and a cotton mill takes their place. Blackstone knew a kindred spirit, Roger Williams, and upon one occasion he preached in Williams' pulpit. Hermit-like though his manner of living was, yet he was one of those who opened the path for the approach of this generation, and his presence here has been recognized by the naming of a river for him-of a town, a factory, a banking institu- tion.
The firstlings of all divisions of time and place continue to hold more than transient attention. Blackstone came first to the original bounds of the township; and soon afterwards, in 1669, arrived John Woodcock from Roxbury, to settle within the present Attleboro limits. Here for many years he dwelt, believing well in the employment of hands and brain, yet one of the most famous and self-confessed of Indian haters that ever trod the highways of Bristol county. His convenient location upon the highway was near the Baptist meeting house, where in later times stood the Hatch tavern, his public house being fortified throughout that period as a garrison
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1
house, and there, so state the Old Colony records, "he was enjoined to keep good order, and that no unruliness or ribaldry be permitted there." A strenuous townsman, outspoken and at times very vengeful, yet he was elected a deputy to the General Court, and he became a large landholder, in the ownership of more than six hundred acres of land.
Like others of his time, though, he sat in the stocks an hour on train- ing day, and he paid a fine of forty shillings for going into the house of an Indian and "taking away an Indian child and some goods" in the place of debt that it was stated the Indian owed him. No western plainsman of a half century ago was the possessor of a more bitter hatred against the red race than was John Woodcock, and it was such stubborn and callous settlers as he who demolished the best intentions of the Plymouth government as regards Indian rights and privileges. He utterly disliked his Indian neigh- bors, and their dislike of him was as fervent. The incident relating to his forcible entry into and taking property from the house of an Indian took place more than twenty years before the King Philip war; but when the Indians slew one of his sons and maltreated the body in 1676, he never at any time lost sight of his purpose of retaliation that gave him no rest until he had run to earth as many as possible of the natives. Says Hon. John Daggett of this tireless Indian hunter: "He was foremost in all enter- prises the object of which was the destruction of the Indian, and it is said that after his death the scars of seven bullet holes were found in his body." The tavern or garrison house, established by him in 1670, was noted in its day, and famous for generations to follow, as it was one of a number of similar garrison houses that extended along the Bay road from Boston to Rhode Island. The military of all the colonial period made the place their headquarters, as they did the garrison houses at Boston, Ded- ham, Rehoboth and elsewhere. There halted Captain Moseley and his one hundred and ten men on their way to Swansea; and there stopped Captains Henchman and Prentice in the King Philip war. There were entertained Judge Sewall on his way from Rehoboth; there, too, Madame Knight lodged . en route from Boston to New York.
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