USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > History of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of its prominent men, Volume I pt 1 > Part 7
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There was a reason for not forming this new frontier, entirely distinct from dread of the Indians or lack of surplus population in the regions from which settlers might have been expected to come, and which operated more forcibly than both combined to deter Massachusetts sit. tlers from seeking a home in the extreme western section of the province. This was the closely balanced boundary dispute with New York. Massa- chusetts claimed that her boundary, as defined by the charter by William and Mary, in 1791, was an extension, due north, of the western line of Connecticut, which would have carried her territory a little west of what it now is. The wording of the charter is, "westward as far as our colo nies of Rhode Island, Connecticut, and the Narragansett counties." This language is certainly less precise than a good conveyancer would use in drawing a deed, and would very well bear the construction put upon it by New York, that the eastern, and not the western. line of Connecticut was intended. It required evidence to prove the contrary.
In addition to this New York assumed that, even if the Massachusetts charter of 1791 did refer to the western line of Connecticut, it was ante ceded and barred by the grant of Charles H. in 1974, to his brother. the Duke of York, "of all lands from the west side of the Connecticut River
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GENERAL HISTORY.
to the east side of Delaware Bay." Abstruse legal questions arose upon this point and others, which were never determined, the whole matter le. ing finally settled by agreement between the contending parties. In 125. no such settlement seemed probable, but rather that the points in issue must be adjudicated by the Royal Privy Council of England. a tribunal in which Massachusetts had no reason to place confidence, even if her case had been much stronger.
Whoever received lands in the disputed territory from Massachusetts either by grant for public services, or by purchase, or for any other reason, was liable to be dispossessed and such improvements as he had made forfeited, if it should be adjudged to New York. But even it. as afterward happened in a similar dispute with New Hampshire, New York had ratified the titles of actual settlers in order to angment her tax paying population, still there were reasons why Massachusetts men would have shunned this region. Every Massachusetts land owner, great or small, boasted himself a freeholder. All other grants and needs from the province were made in fee simple, subject only to such taxes as the representatives of the people, in General Court assembled, might vote. The land owners of Massachusetts-and almost every Massachusetts citizen of repute was, or expected to be, a land holder-prized this as a badge of dignity and freedom. In New York, on the contrary, lands were held by a feudal tenure, first under the Duke of York, afterward King James Second, of infamous memory, and after the Revolution of 169% maler "the Crown." They were subject to an annual quit ront, which was something more than a peppercorn. In 1750, when there were fel set. tlers in the disputed district, and with a fierce French and Indian wur raging and threatening its borders, Governor Hardy, of New York, viewing it with greedy eyes, estimated the quit rent which the king ought to re- ceive from it at $2,000. In 1764. Lieutenant Governor Golden, not quite so rapacious, put it at $1,200. When the islands in Buzzard's Bay were attached to New York their poor fishermen were required to pay barrels of their choicest fish as a tribute to this same Lord paramount.
No Massachusetts man ever could consent to become a settler where there was a probability of his becoming subject to a rule like this. They did settle in Berkshire long before the controversy was determined and at a point almost up to the western verge of the limit claimed by Massachu- setts, but it was with a full determination to maintain her jurisdiction. and full confidence that she would not desert them in so doing. This settlement was not made simply for the advancement of the private inter- ests of those who joined in it, or from a desire on the part of the pro- vince merely to extend the area of its cultivated lands. It was, tora certain extent, and indeed primarily, inspired by what may be called reasons of state.
Between the years 1717 and 1722 it became clear that the Une horseen Connectiont and New York. agreed upon as tous principles to 195. must soon be surveyed and fixed. The agreement was upon a line about
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HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE COUNTY.
twenty miles east of the Hudson River : but, along the shores of Luig Island Sound, Connectient had pushed her settlements, in what is now Fairfield county, some miles west of this line. New York consented erey to this, taking as an equivalent a narrow strip of land extending all along the western boundary of Conectient, north of that portion of Fairfield county which juts into her territory ; in which exchange Connecticut made a sharp bargain. It was clear that in obtaining a boundary so far west of that originally conceded to her, Connections had been powerfully aided by her policy of pushing her settlements boldly me to the Grobest limits which she claimed. Even the representatives of the New York government admitted this to be a fact. Massachusetts could not hesitate to pursue a line of policy which had proved itself so efficient. The Cob nectient valley was at that time distinguished for the number of its paidie men possessed of remarkable practical ability, untiring energies, am! solid strength, as well as dignity of character, and having withal a mups velous familiarity with everything which concerned the safety and wel fare of Western Massachusetts, to whose interests they were wholly voted. Their associates in public life in Boston gave them the soullighet of " The river gods of the Connecticut." Some, and probably all of these men favored the sending of an early migration to the valley of the House tonic : among them Colonel John Stoddard, of Northampton, the great New Englander. and Captain Ebenezer Pomeroy, of Southampton, an au cestor of the Pomeroy family of Pittsfield. Nine years of peace had raised up in the Connecticut valley many young men eager for a new ad- vance into the wilderness, and who could put confidence in land titles founded upon a basis which had proved sufficient in the southern colony.
At the May session of the General Court of 1722 Joseph Parsons. with one hundred and fifteen others, and Thomas Nash, with sixty other. all describing themselves as inhabitants of Hampshire county, presented petitions for two townships on the Honsatonie River. The court granted these requests to a certain extent by an act signed by Governor Shute. June 20th. This act directed the laying out of two tracts of land, con- tiguous to each other, on the Housatonic River, the southern bonmary of one to lie along the Connecticut line.
John Stoddard and Henry Dwight. of Northampton. Luke Hitchebel :. of Springfield, John Ashley, of Westfield, and Samuel Porter, of Hadley. were appointed a committee to lay out these lands, and they were also empowered to admit settlers, grant lots, and manage all the prudentia! affairs of the settlement. In the spring of summer of 1723. Mr. Porter died and Colonel Stoddard resigned, and in November the court choose Captain Ebenezer Pomeroy to fill the vacancy. The set of the commis- sion and the details of the settlement midler it will be found in the lis tories of Sheffield, Great Barrington, and other towns whose territory fell under their jurisdiction. It is only proposed to speak here of facts which belong to, or illustrate, the general history of the daily. as many of those in this earliest settlement of its territory do. The act of the Gen-
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GENERAL HISTORY.
eral Court made no distinction between the signers of the two petitions. but the commissioners were directed to admit to the two townships 120 settlers or inhabitants, either petitioners or others. giving the preference to such of the petitioners as in their judgment would be most likely to bring forward a settlement. The word " inhabitants" seems to be not loosely as synonymous with "settlers." It could not have been interled to include women or farm hands in the 120. Towns and plantations bad at that time the power to exclude from their precincts all persons whom they deemed liable to become a public charge, and who had not t bezal settlement with them, and the commissioners had the same authority : but the act could not have referred to that. The word " inhabitants tis probably a mere surplusage.
The province asked no payment for the lands granted. to enrich its own treasury, but required that thirty shillings should be paid to the committee for each hundred acres granted. the money so received to be expended in paying the Indians a reasonable sum for their rights in the lands granted, in paying the expenses of the settling commission and of the survey, and in building meeting houses for the two townships. Twenty years later the purchasers of the first forty lots, of one hundred acres each, sold in Pittsfield, paid £30 apiece for them, buying jointly and receiving their lands by lot. The Indian title had been previously extinguished, and the surveys made, but the settlers assumed the obligas tions to build a meeting house and settle a minister. and they acquired no interest in the lands or the townships not bought by them, while the set- tlers of Sheffield, when by complying with the prescribed terms they had become " proprietors, " had an undivided common interest in all the lands not granted in lots or appropriated by law to public purposes. The Sheffield pioneers received their lands by grant from the province as an encouragement to settle at a point supposed to be dangerous, while the Pittsfield settlers, although their location proved much the more danger ous of the two, purchased of proprietors who had themselves paid a considerable price for it, and chiefly for speculative purposes, excellent citizens and public servants as they were.
For a clearer understanding of much which is to follow here, and still more in the histories of the several towns, it is well to state what was the established policy and practice of the General Court with rund to its grants for the settlement of its western border. Townships were not laid out by a general survey in formal rances having an approx imately uniform shape and size and being numbered in regular opps. as was the case when the commonwealth disposed of its wild lands in Mairos On the contrary, grants were made of townships of a certain number of aeres, five square miles, lying in a prescribed form, sometimes in a prescribed location, sometimes to be selected by the granters from the otherwise unappropriated lands of the province. the same to be sur veved at the expense of the grantees. "and a plot the proof" recurrent to the court for confirmation. There was an exception in one case.
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HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE COUNTY.
In 1735 the General Court voted to open four townships on the road between Westfield and Sheffield, contiguous to one another and adjoin- ing either Sheffield or the township which is now the town of Bland- ford in Hampden county. These townships were numbered 1, 2, 3, and 4, and are now the towns of Tyringham, New Marlboro, Sandi-field. and Becket, with Monterey, which was set off from Tyringham. New Marlboro, and Sandisfield in 1817, 1851, and 1875. Until this incorpo- ration as towns they were known by their respective numbers as town- ships. Sometimes, both before and after the adjacent largo townships were granted, the General Court bestowed smaller tracts upon different parties.
.These grants, large and small, were made for a great variety of considerations ; as a reward for public service, to aid the town of Bos ton in the support of its public schools, to encourage the making of potash by certain persons at Braintree, who were having difficulty in an attempt to make potash, cider, glass, and cloth under one head. as an equivalent for lands granted elsewhere and found not to belong to the province, to aid academies, and finally to persons who paid a fixed price for large tracts, or, as in the case of the Housatonic townships. to promote the settlement of the wild lands of the province and main tain its independence over them, the settlers in this case generally paying only the cost of settlement, including the extinguishment of the Indian title by the payment of a reasonable sum.
In all cases when the Indians had even a doubtful equitable claim to the lands taken they were compensated liberally. It was not un- common for those wishing grants from the General Court to purchase the aboriginal rights in them before making their petition. But to whatever class of persons or for whatever reasons townships were granted, certain conditions were almost uniformly attached. In these of six miles square, or of corresponding size in other forms, it was pro. vided that sixty settlers should be introduced, each within a specified time, to bring forward the settlement by each erecting a suitable house and bringing into cultivation a certain quantity of land. They were also required to build a meeting house, and settle a learned orthodox minister. One sixty-third part of the land was given in fee to the first minister, one sixty-third for the support of the ministry in per petnity, and another sixty-third part for the support of schools, In Berkshire the word " ministry " when used in this connection was pro nouneed ministri, the final i being long, as in ivy.
As long as there was dread of Indian outrages of incursions it was provided that the settlement should be made in "a compact, regular. and defensible manner : " but this requirement was complied with En Sheffield by stretching the settling lots for seven miles along the river, and in Pittsfield by having them out in a narrow ship six miles long; which was perhaps the best that could be done in agricultural towns. as the lots, which were practically farms, closely adjoined each other.
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GENERAL. HISTORY.
It will be seen that the favors received by the first settlers in Berk- shire above those which were bestowed upon later comers were not very great. Still there is every reason to believe that their enterprise was prompted in the interest of a shrewd policy adopted by the pros- ince, or if not. certainly by "The river gods of the Connecticut," who better deserve the name of statesmen than many who gain fame under that designation in much broader fields. Still the settlement had hardly begin, and the trustful settlers were in the midst of their most ar- duous labors, when they received a check from the provincial govern ment by an act which, however beneficial it finally proved, impeded the progress of the settlement for a time. For an explanation of this diffi culty a few preliminary facts may be recited :
. In April, 1724. Konkapot, the chief of the Housatonic Indians. with his usual council, or retinne, of " twenty other Indians." met, at Westfield, Colonel John Stoddard and Captains John Ashley, Henry Dwight, and Luke Hubbard of the commissioners appointed by the Gen- eral Court. and in consideration of $460 legal money. three barrels of cider, and thirty quarts of rum conveyed to them by deed "all of Housa. tonack, alias Weston hook." The large proportion of money to liquoris creditable to both Konkapot and the commissioners, but the boundaries which define the lands sold are to be noted. These are as follows: The Connecticut line on the south, the line of New York on the west, the great mountain on the north, and a line four miles east of the Housatonic River on the east. There is some dispute concerning the great mountain, but Mr. Taylor believes it to be probably Rattlesnake Hill. in Stockbridge. The Indians made a reservation for themselves near the present boundary of Sheffield and Great Barrington.
The extent of territory thus purchased was much greater than that asked for by the petitioners of 1722 or granted to them, and they received no benefit from the overplus. It included all the present towns of Shef- field, Great Barrington. Mount Washington, Egremont, a great part of Stockbridge, West Stockbridge, and Lee, and a small part of Alford. It embraced the whole of the present southwest corner of Berkshire and pushed itself sharply into the angle formed by the Connecticut line and the boundary claimed by Massachusetts but disputed by New York Almost the whole of the purchase lay, or was claimed to lie, within the patent of Westenhook which, in 1705, had been granted to Peter Schuyler. Derrick Wessels, and others, Schuyler and Wessels having previously obtained a deed of it from the Indians in liquidation of a debt which they were otherwise unable to pay. This patent of Westenhook also casere the towns of Salisbury and Canaan in Connecticut. Planting himself upon these facts or statements Evart Wendell, in behalf of the proprietors of the patent, presented a memorial to the governor and council of Mas. sachusetts, dated April 20th, 1726. After reciting them and adding that ever since 1705 they had paid the annual quit rent of Si. los. Rd. be. on to say that they had " lately met great trouble and disturbance from
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HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE COUNTY.
the people of Connecticut and Massachusetts, they both pretending that Westenhook will fall into their boundaries whenever the partition line between the province and those colonies shall be perfected and do begin already to settle the same." He then petitions the governor and council not only to stay the present proceedings on the Housatonic, but that. if when the boundary line is fixed in the lands these shall be found to lie long to Massachusetts, still the title vested in the proprietors of Western- hook by the New York grant shall be confirmed to them. Mr. Wendell was at fault in classing Massachusetts with Connectient as a colony Robbed of her charter as a colony by the infamous Anthos, and almost or quite as infamously refused its restoration by William ILL., she Ired long before become a province as much as New York : Connecticut escape ing the same fate only by virtue of the protecting power of Hartford's Charter Oak. Although in the strictly literal sense of the words the provinces were all colonies, in the political system of that time colonies were not all provinces. There was this material difference between the two, that while the colony chose its own governor. the governor of a prov. ince was appointed by the king, and it was in other respects more de- pendent on the pleasure of the Crown. The words were, however, after. ward used as synonymous, especially by loyalists, who wished all col. onies to become provinces. In the Declaration of Independence the word colonies is used in its general literal sense. apparently for a reverse Tell- son : as a protest against the infringement by the provincial system upon the rights of the people of the original colonies, and also as describing all the bodies politic which joined in it, as the word provinces would not have done. Deputy Governor William Dummer was then the acting chief magistrate of Massachusetts, and probably neither he nor his council noticed the lapse, or cared for it if they did. At any rate the deputy governor addressed a letter to the commissioners for settling the Hon-a. tonie townships, in which he informed them that he had received from the governor of New York the copy of an order in council forbidding the inhabitants of that State prosecuting suits respecting those lands, or mak- ing further settlements. "until the line be fixed." He therefore directed the commissioners to take effectual care that the same rule be observed on the part of the inhabitants of Massachusetts.
This order was communicated to the settlers at Sheffield on the 18th of May. The reader must be left to imagine with what emotions such a mandate as this was received, in that opening summer of 1727, by men laboring, as only frontiersmen labor, deep in the forest. to prepare homes for their families; and at the same time, as they believed. doing yeoman service for the province. Men with hearts less brave, and with less faith in God and their country- which country, so far at least as this matter went, was the province of Massachusetts Bay-would have given was at once, abandoned their settlement, and sought homes elsewhere. The pioneers of Berkshire were made of stemmer sont than .The and they held their ground. Possibly the commissioners may Have given a hin Chas
GENERAL HISTORY.
there was a wide difference between the governor and council and the Great and General Court as a whole, and that the litter would do its best to maintain both its own position and that of the settlers, but there is only circumstantial evidence to show this. The commissioners could admit no more settlers nor assign any more land to those who had al- ready purchased lots. But it was at least assured that those in possession of lands could no longer be disturbed by legal processes from New York, and that their title was seenre until the boundary line was fixed. Que chief object of their being in the position they were was to aid Massi- chusetts, not by arms but by the moral effect of their settlement. i fix- ing that line where she claimed that it of right ought to be. If that right should be maintained their title would be unquestionable and it would be a title to a goodly heritage, more secure than any other part of Berk- shire from Indian outrage. of more genial climate, and with a larger piro. portion of fertile soil, besides being upon the highway between the Exit and the West: a goodly heritage indeed. They probably had not heard of the proposition made by Evart Wendell. Esq., to dispossess them even if Massachusetts should prevail, and they would have langhed at it if they had.
A few of the original grantees or purchasers of lots on the lower Housatonic township sold their rights to others who had the spirit to take their places, and the work of "bringing forward the settlement! went on arduously and steadily, but not with the spirit of the success which it would have done had no untoward circumstances happened. god no threatening cloud of dispossession overhung the settlers; or had the provincial authorities given them the support and encouragement which were fairly their due. The settlement languished.
In 1731, the survey of the boundary line between New York and Connectiont, which had commenced simultaneously with the arrival of the first settlers in Sheffield, was completed, and immediately afterward an informal understanding of the boundary line seems to have been reached by the authorities and people of the provinces of New York and Massachusetts. New York abandoned ber claim that the eastern und not the western boundary of Connectient was the landmark by which the western limit of Massachusetts was to be fixed. and seems to have been glad to accept a line not approaching nearer than twenty miles to the Hudson River: for a New York historian of that date writes : " It was left for the year 1731 to be distinguished by the completo settlement of the boundary disputes-an event, considering the low colonizing spirit and extensive claims of the New England people, of no small infor- tance."
It was also an event of no small importance in connection with tips settlement of the extreme western section of Massachusetts, in whowe will lands speculation soon sprang rip, as will be shown by the histories of most of the older towns of Berkshire. But the story of the Weelog book Posene first requires some further consideration in confection with the self ...
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HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE COUNTY.
ment of the boundary question, and also as possibly a factor of curious interest in Revolutionary history.
The patentees of Westenhook were at issue. not only with the prov. ince of Massachusetts and its grantees, but with many parties in New York, claiming under grants from that province or rights acquired by occupation and quit rent subsequent to 1705. The portion of territory claimed by the first patentees and afterward found to fall within the limits of Massachusetts, formed, if the bounds quoted are accepted. a large, but far from the major, part of the broad and rich domain to which they asserted their right. In 1772, Henry Van Schaack was supervisor of the district of Kinderhook, and a man prominent in the affairs of the province, and also of high character. In 1772, he wrote a letter to Gol- ernor Tryon enclosing a map of that part of the county of Albany lying between the north bounds of the manor of Livingston and the south of the upper part of the manor of Rensselaer which included Kinderhook and several other districts. In 1769. Mr. Van Schaack had written that the inhabitants between the south bounds of Rensselaerwyck could make out at least a thousand men able to bear arms. In his letter to Governor Tryon he says, "The enclosed map was made from actual survey, but it is only intended to give a general idea of the country and the limits of such particular tracts as had occasioned much controversy for a number of years previous." He adds that " the limits of the Westenhouk Pat. ent are not laid down. for the obvious reason that no evidence could be procured to establish the boundaries of it. it being the most obscure and unintelligible description perhaps ever known." The claim of the West- enhook patentees covered a large portion of the territory represented on this map, including the district of Kinderhook* and others near it.
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