USA > New Hampshire > History of New Hampshire, Volume I > Part 25
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Thus the true jurisdictional line remained unsettled till 1889. After four years of preliminary surveys and disagreements commissioners then concluded to accept the line practically as run by Mitchell and Hazzen. Nelson Spofford of Haverhill as agent for Massachusetts and Prof. E. T. Quimby of Hanover resurveyed the line and renewed the monuments. Then were found in the Public Record Office at London copies of the charts made by Mitchell and Hazzen, though all trace of such charts had long before disappeared from the records of New Hampshire and of Massachusetts. Spofford and Quimby made the distance from the boundary mark by the ocean, called Major's Rock, to the place of the Boundary Pine, thirty-five and eight-tenths miles, agreeing on some slight changes where the ancient boundary could not be clearly established. The stone
10 N. H. State Papers, XIX. 473.
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where the Boundary Pine had been was found to be two miles and three hundred and thirteen rods north of the "great pot- hole place," or Great Bunt, as Hazzen called it, at Pawtucket Falls, which is now in the city of Lowell. Massachusetts. The reports of the commissioners of the two States at that time, with accompanying charts and copies of ancient records, form an interesting body of historical literature. The old rivalries of Provinces have made way for the union of States.
Bryant's survey of the northern line of New Hampshire extended only to Province Pond, seventy miles from the mouth of the Pascataqua river. In 1768 he and a Mr. Rindge extended the survey thirty-five miles further to a point fifteen or eighteen miles north of the Androscoggin river. In 1789 New Hampshire appointed two surveyors, Cramm and Eames, who, beginning at the northeast corner of the township of Shelburne, ran the line across lake Umbagog and the Magalloway river to highlands in the present county of Coos, a distance of fifty-four miles. Thus the boundary line between New Hampshire and Maine was one hundred and forty-eight miles, instead of the one hundred and twenty miles first contemplated. The line from the head of Salmon Falls river was a broken one, by reason of increased variation of the needle between the different times of survey. In 1827 the whole line was resurveyed by Eliphalet Hunt, the same who had been the agent of New Hampshire in surveying the southern line in 1825. His point of departure was the "Bryant Rock," at the outlet of East Pond, between the towns of Wakefield and Shapleigh, and his terminal was the birch tree in the highlands, marked by Cramm and Eames in 1789. The distance was one hundred and twelve miles and two hundred and thirty-three rods. He further marked the spot by heaping stones around the tree. In 1858 the northern part of this line was resurveyed by Col. Henry O. Kent, com- missioner for New Hampshire, and John M. Wilson, commis- sioner for Maine. Their course ran from the Crown Monument, set up between the territories of the United States and the province of Canada in 1842 by the Treaty of Washington, to a stone monument at the northwest corner of Fryeburg, Maine. New stone monuments were erected and old ones retouched and trees were spotted. Thus the eastern boundary of New
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Hampshire remains fixed. The western boundary, in 1764, was declared to be the western bank of the Connecticut river, from the Massachusetts line as far north as the forty-fifth degree of latitude. This decision was made by the king in council.11
It would seem as though the western bank of the Connecti- cut river were a boundary well enough defined, but even now, in the year 1916, there are cases in court to determine whether the western bank is at high water mark or low water mark, and whether certain small islands belong to Vermont or to New Hampshire. Houses and mills have been erected where it is questionable whether they should be taxed in one State or in the other. These cases illustrate how hard it is to fix definite meanings in words. Changing circumstances demand new definitions.
11 N. H. State Papers, XIX. 540.
Chapter XV THE MASONIAN PROPRIETORS
Chapter XV
THE MASONIAN PROPRIETORS.
John Tufton Mason Claims Ancient Rights-Sale of lands to Massachusetts -Thomlinson Offers to buy Mason's rights in New Hampshire-Hesi- tation of the House of Representatives-The Entail Docked in New Hampshire-Certain Men of Portsmouth Buy Mason's Rights-Promi- nence of the Wentworth Family-Why the House Did not Buy of Mason or of the Proprietors-How Townships were Granted-The Curve Line -Land-Grabbing Propensity-Purchase of Allen's Heirs and Assigns.
A FTER the king in council had decided where the southern boundary of New Hampshire should be, the people of Massachusetts saw that they would lose large portions of land heretofore conceded as belonging to Salisbury, Amesbury, Haverhill, Methuen and Dracut. In order to quiet private owners and possibly to retain possession of lands unoccupied they instigated John Tufton Mason to revive the claims of the Mason heirs, which had been for a long time unmentioned. The entail had been docked in the county of Kent, England, and Mason's claim to lands in New Hampshire and Massachu- setts had been sold to Samuel Allen. His heirs had sold a portion to Sir Charles Hobby. The courts of New Hampshire made it impossible for the heirs to obtain possession of their own, and so no attempt had been made for a long time. Mean- while John Tufton Mason had become a man of ability and was quick to discern his rights, when they were pointed out to him by the agents of Massachusetts. Together they sought legal evidence of his descent from Captain John Mason, by means of depositions, and when this was established he sold to agents of Massachusetts all the land between the southern boundary and a straight line running due west from the eastern extremity of the boundary line, amounting to twenty-three thou- sand six hundred acres, of which two thousand were within the bounds of Salisbury, two thousand five hundred in Amesbury, ten thousand in Haverhill, five thousand five hundred and fifty in Methuen, and three thousand six hundred and twenty-five
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in Dracut. The price paid was five hundred pounds and the date of the deed was July 8, 1738. Mason quitclaimed to the proprietors of the aforesaid towns all the lands therein lying more than three miles north of the Merrimack river, and it was stipulated that the tenants should not be disturbed. Massa- chusetts instituted no process of docking the entail. Why they did not at the same time buy of John Tufton Mason all his claim upon lands in New Hampshire is unexplained. Immedi- ately he was sent to London, at the expense of Massachusetts, to assist agent Wilks in securing the objects of the deed.
Mr. Thomlinson, agent for New Hampshire, saw his oppor- tunity at once. He proposed to John Tufton Mason to sell his claim on lands, tenements and hereditaments in New Hampshire to the government of that province, or to John Rindge, Theodore Atkinson, Andrew Wiggin, George Jaffrey and Benning Went- worth, within twelve months after New Hampshire shall be de- clared to be a separate and distinct government from the province of the Massachusetts Bay. Mason accepted the proposal and signed articles of agreement to that effect April 6, 1739. The price to be paid was one thousand pounds.1 A condition was that in all future grants of waste lands a share should be allotted to John Tufton Mason equal to that of any other grantee.
This agreement was made by Mr. Thomlinson in behalf of the House of Representatives for the benefit of the entire people of the province. He seems to have made it on his own responsibility, without having time for correspondence and con- sultation. But he knew what he was about. He and John Rindge had already advanced money for the province to the extent of twelve hundred pounds, and this scheme opened up a way whereby they might be reimbursed. They expected and finally received their shares of the lands granted. The agree- ment was sent to Governor Benning Wentworth, who trans- mitted it to the House of Representatives. Delays were occa- sioned by Mason's absence at sea, the war and the changes that occurred in the membership of the house during the next five years.
Meanwhile Mason, at his own expense, had the entail
1 N. H. State Papers, XIX. 193-6.
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docked in a New Hampshire court, by an awkward and anti- quated process of law, known as a fine and recovery, the ablest lawyers declaring that a similar process in England, which Samuel Allen had instituted, was not valid outside of the county of Kent, where the court was held, and Thomlinson had pointed out to them in a letter that the sheriff could not serve a process outside of his own bailiwick. Mason kept urging the House to fulfill the agreement and pay him for the lands. The House insisted that the sale of lands should be made to the general assembly, for the benefit of all the people, to be granted by the assembly as they should think proper. But Mason came to the conclusion that the House did not mean to purchase at all, and why should they? For a hundred years the people of New Hampshire had resisted all efforts of Mason's heirs and assigns to collect rents and take away their lands, and the governor and council, in the name of the king, had been granting township after township of waste lands and nobody appeared to dispute the rights of settlers. Why should they pay a thousand pounds for that which they already had for nothing? And why should they vote to tax the people for the purchase of lands which only the king, through his appointees, could grant? And to whom would the lands be granted? The Governor and council could do as they pleased about it.
The men named in Thomlinson's agreement with Mason and the council in general contended that the lands must be so purchased that the king only, (that is, they themselves) could grant new townships. While the House was delaying and voting about the matter, Mason sold all his claims to a few leading persons of Portsmouth. The deed was dated July 30, 1746. The grantees were Theodore Atkinson, Richard Wibird, John Moffat, Mark Hunking Wentworth, Samuel Moore, Jotham Odiorne, Jr., Joshua Pierce, Nathaniel Meserve, George Jaffrey, Jr., John Wentworth, Jr., Thomas Wallingford and Thomas Packer. The lands were supposed to comprise two hundred thousand acres. The price paid was fifteen hundred pounds. There were to be fifteen shares. Theodore Atkinson had three shares, two of which were for John Tufton Mason, which he sold, one-half share each, to Samuel Solly and Clement March, and one-half share to John Thomlinson. Mark Hunking Went-
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worth had two shares, one of which he sold to John Rindge.
Mr. Albert S. Batchellor, in his preface to the second volume of Masonian Charters, has pointed out the relationships of these men. Mark Hunking Wentworth and John Wentworth were brothers, sons with the Governor, Benning, Wentworth, of that John Wentworth who had been so long lieutenant governor. Theodore Atkinson and George Jaffrey were grandsons of Lieutenant-Governor John Wentworth. Samuel Solly married Jaffrey's sister. Richard Wibird's sister married a brother of the two Wentworths named in the deed. Thomas Packer mar- ried a sister of the two Wentworths; his second wife was mother of John Rindge and sister of Jotham Odiorne Senior; after the death of her first husband she married Nathaniel Meserve. John Rindge was brother of the wife of Mark Hunking Wentworth. Samuel Moore married a sister of Joshua Pierce; after his death his widow, Mary Pierce, and her brother, Daniel Pierce, owned his share. Daniel Pierce married Ann Rindge, sister to John Rindge. Clement March was a relative of the Pierce family. Thus all of the grantees, except Thomas Wallingford and John Moffat, were bound together by family ties. Besides, Mark Hunking Wentworth, Theodore Atkinson, Richard Wibird, Samuel Solly, George Jaffrey, Daniel Pierce, and Jotham Odiorne were members of the Governor's council, and the governor was at that time Benning Wentworth.
Now see what a grip one family had upon the unoccupied lands of New Hampshire. These men never would recognize the right of the heirs of Captain John Mason or of Samuel Allen to one penny's worth of compensation from the settlers of New Hampshire for lands cultivated, but to quiet possession, for the sake of compromise, and lest John Tufton Mason should sell his claim to Massachusetts or some other parties and so make trouble in court, they bought all his pretended rights. The House now was aroused. They asserted that the grantees had deprived them of a great bargain. Some called the grantees enemies of the government and villains; some said that they preferred to have the lands owned by Massachusetts, or by Indians, or French.
The answer of the grantees was, first, that they quitclaimed unto the inhabitants and proprietors of Portsmouth, Dover,
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Exeter. Hampton, Gosport, Kingston, Derry, Chester, Notting- ham, Barrington, Rochester, Canterbury, Bow, Chichester, Epsom and Barnstead, all right to lands, houses, woods, mines, minerals and other appurtenances in said towns. Gilmanton and Kingswood were not included, because those towns were not settled. This was done gratuitously and the owners of lands were quieted. The grantees only reserved to themselves in said towns the lands, houses, and so forth which they already held in common or severally as inhabitants or proprietors.
Secondly, they offered to sell to the province what they had bought of John Tufton Mason for the price they had paid him, with expenses incurred. The House reported that "for quieting the minds of the people, and to prevent future difficulty, it would be best for the province to purchase the claim, for the use and benefit of the inhabitants." The claim of John Tufton Mason was not worth considering, but the claim of fifteen proprietors, most of them being the leading men of the principal town in the province and connected with the most powerful family, was something to be reckoned with. The grantees addressed a com- munication to a committee of the House, saying that not one person believed the assembly ever intended to purchase of Mason; that they, the grantees, might have made large sums by confirming the rights of private persons instead of quitclaim- ing all rights of their own to the aforesaid towns; that many of the grantees would have given as much to Mason for his private quitclaim to their rights in the new towns; that Mason's rights had always hung over them and on every turn they were threat- ened with a proprietor since the government was settled; that Massachusetts had bought certain rights of Mason and that private persons had offered him more for his rights in New Hampshire than they had paid him. Therefore they were justi- fied in making the purchase.
The purchasers would not sell, except on the condition that the lands should be granted by the governor and council, as had always been done before. The representatives of the people must have noticed that the governor and council heretofore had granted in every township large tracts to themselves and their friends. It was feared that they would continue to do the same. Then what benefit would accrue to the people taxed for the pur-
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chase money? The representatives submitted a form of deed, by which the purchasers from Mason should convey all the lands bought to George Jaffrey and Ebenezer Stevens, as feoffees in trust for and in behalf of the inhabitants of the province of New Hampshire. Ebenezer Stevens of Kingston was then speaker of the House of Representatives.
To this plan of the House various objections were offered. That the waste lands should be granted "by the general assembly to the inhabitants of the province, as they shall think proper" was "inconsistent with the Constitution and contrary to his Majesty's Commission to his Excellency the Governor." Never- theless the purchasers were willing to have the House buy the lands of them and afterwards petition his majesty for leave to dispose of said lands to the people in that manner. Observe, it was thought unconstitutional, the last resort of obstructionists of the people's will, for the general assembly to buy and grant the lands, but afterward the fifteen private persons who did buy of Mason granted townships without any reverence for the Con- stitution or permission from the king. The form of the pro- posed deed also was objected to; the phrase, "for the use of the people" was too indefinite and gave no more advantage to the oldest resident than to any newcomer ; and especially no money was raised or proposed to be raised for the price of the lands and expenses.
Therefore the purchasers resolved to dispose of the lands purchased as they thought proper, and when Governor Benning Wentworth, in 1748, had it in mind to grant three townships in the former grant of Kingswood, the purchasers resolved to "form themselves into a Propriety" in order to care for their own interests. They took another deed of John Tufton Mason, September 30, 1749, which included land as far south as the Naumkeag river in Massachusetts, the southerly boundary of Captain John Mason's patent. This was done, notwithstanding that John Tufton Mason had already received from Massa- chusetts five hundred pounds for a portion of land included in this last deed. He was paid twenty shillings for this deed and he retained half a share for himself. About this time Mason was in London, scheming to get Benning Wentworth appointed
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governor of Massachusetts, so as to leave the post of governor of New Hampshire open for himself.2
Had the House consented to buy the lands of Mason, then the people would have paid for them and the govornor and coun- cil, appointed by the king, would have disposed of them as they saw fit, large tracts doubtless to themselves, as Lieut-Gov. John Wentworth and council had done before. Thus the purchasers of Mason would have saved their fifteen hundred pounds that they paid him, avoided all expense, and had large grants for nothing. No wonder that they were willing to transfer their deed to the general assembly. Now, with the lands in their legal possession, they proceeded to grant many townships to peti- tioners, always reserving a share for each one of the proprietors. A list of thirty-one petitions is on record, sent in before 1749, from about all the settlements in New Hampshire. The pro- prietors offered a farm of one hundred acres to any family or single man who would emigrate from Europe and settle on waste land in New Hampshire, and fifty acres to the agents for every such settler they secured.3
In making grants of townships the proprietors took good care of themselves. The grants were often without fees and always without quit-rents. Did they, then, give all their land away? Not quite. They reserved in every township a lot of large size for each proprietor. We find a list of lots owned by George Jaffrey in 1788, in forty-one towns and gores. The list comprises fifteen thousand six hundred and ninety-four acres, and it is reasonable to suppose that all the proprietors fared as well. What was this land worth? Almost nothing when the townships were granted, and that is one reason why lots were given to settlers gratuitously. It was the settlement and de- velopment of the townships that made land therein valuable. The unearned increment is what made the proprietors rich. Every settler added value to their lots, and they were shrewd enough to state in the charters, that the lands reserved by the proprietors should be free from taxes, till sold or occupied. Thus some of them continued to ripen for fifty years and then must have been sold for a good price.
2 N. H. State Papers, XXIX. 252.
3 N. H. State Papers, XXIX. 278.
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In each town a lot was reserved for the first settled minister, another for a parsonage and a third for a school. The grantees were required, within a limited time, to erect a meeting house and mills, make roads and settle a minister. The settlers would not have fared any better, perhaps not so well, had the general assembly purchased Mason's claim. The proprietors had many opposers, who would not admit the validity of Mason's claim and consequently would not recognize the legal rights of the proprietors, but the reins of government were in the hands of the latter and of their friends, who stood nearest to the king. The settlers in the townships that had been previously granted by the government of Massachusetts were quieted, usually with- out any recompense.
There was trouble about fixing the western boundary of the Masonian grants and this is well told in the following citation :
From early measurements it was discovered that only a part of Rindge and a very small part of Jaffrey were included within the patent, and that Dublin, Fitzwilliam, Marlborough, Nelson, Stoddard, and Washington were entirely outside of it. Yet all these towns had been granted by the Masonian Proprietors, and described as "lying within Mason's Grant." Finding they had exceeded the limits of their charter, the Masonian proprietors laid claim to this extraneous territory with a system of expansion which was equal to the emergency, and by which, during many years of controversy, they suc- cessfully maintained the control of the lands and townships in dispute. They contended that the original grant to Mason described an extent "of sixty miles from the sea on each side of New Hampshire, and a line to cross over from the end of one line of sixty miles to the end of the other"; they therefore claimed that this cross line should be a curve, because no other line would preserve the distance of sixty miles from the sea. In other words, they claimed their western boundary should be the arc of a circle with a radius of sixty miles, and whose center was at the sea. How- ever ingenious this argument may appear, it was, without doubt, an after- thought, advanced for the occasion, to temporarily fortify their claim to the controverted townships. They also conveniently fixed upon the southwest corner of Fitzwilliam as the termination of sixty miles from the sea, by which, with an accommodating elasticity of the curved line, they success- fully embraced the eight Monadnock townships and others to the north of them.3
The Revolution, which transformed the province into a state, put an end to the dispute with the Masonian Proprietors. The
4 Hist. of Rindge by Hon. Ezra S. Stearns, pp. 44-45.
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legislature, after a hearing, decided to run a line of sixty miles from the Atlantic on the southern and northwestern boundaries of the state and from the ends of these lines to run a straight line across, thus determining by legal enactment the western bound- ary of the Masonian patent, the only reasonable conclusion. This straight line was ninety-three and a half miles long, from a mile and one-fourth east of the southwest corner of Rindge, and extended north thirty-nine degrees east. Then the Masonian proprietors bought of the state, for forty thousand dollars in public securities of the state and eight hundred dollars in specie, all the disputed land lying between this straight line and their imaginary curved line, which never could be precisely located, for when the surveyors tried to draw a curve from the western extremity, it would never meet the curve drawn from the north- ern extremity. The straight line of the state was run by Joseph Blanchard in 1787, son of that Joseph Blanchard who had been long before the agent of the Masonian proprietors and in whose name grants of townships had been made.
The land-grabbing propensity of the early Masonian pro- prietors seems to have been unbounded. Not even a broken curve, drawn about as they pleased, included enough. One of them wrote to agent Thomlinson in London, in 1750, saying that agreements had been made with all the towns but one, that had been previously granted by the government of Massachu- setts, to hold the balance of such townships after having de- livered up to the proprietors from one-fifth to one-quarter of the land therein, and new townships were granted out of the waste lands with a similar reservation. The proprietors thought they were serving their "King and Country" by so doing and the hope was expressed that their action would be "looked on in that light at home, & considering the Pains we have been at & the Progress made, wou'd it be unlikely that the Crown wou'd make (if petitioned for) us a Grant at the head of this Claim from the West Line to the North, that is, a Curve Line Parallel to our Former, of Twenty miles deep or of Thirty or fourty Miles, so as to meet Connecticut & so to go half Way over to our north Line, as we find there is some fine Land in this last Description." Thus they wished to take in all the southern half of the present State of New Hampshire, that had not been previously granted.
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