While this petition was pending. The Massachusetts General Court decided that it should expand the territory of the Province. The Court issued a decree stating that the Land between the Merrimack and Connecticut Rivers, from the northwest corner of Rumford on the Merrimack to the Great Falls (eventually Bellows Falls) on the Connecticut, would be divided into as many six mile square townships as would fit. Oh, and just to see what will happen, mark off one or two townships on the west side of the Connecticut River as well, somewhere around the Great Falls.
Colonial New England governments were well established. These governments liked things to be orderly. They wanted these towns to be laid out in an equitable, defensible pattern. In the South, land was randomly marked off one parcel at a time, in highly varying shapes and sizes. How much land a person bought depended on how much money the prospective owner had and how much favor he had with the King of England and the colonial government.
The Massachusetts General Court decided that these six mile square townships would be divided into 60 equal sized plots and then 60 proprietors would be chosen to oversee these plots. These proprietors wouldn’t necessarily settle on these plots, although they could if they wanted to. They would either settle on these plots or sell them to whoever wanted to settle there. The proprietors would be responsible for getting the land surveyed and to provide government to the newly created towns. The proprietors were charged with making sure all the rules were obeyed. The new settlers had to build dwellings within a certain amount of time, clear a minimum amount of land, build a meeting house - (a church) a road, a grist mill and a sawmill. These townships weren’t named, but were numbered. No.1 eventually became Chesterfield, No. 2 became Westmoreland, Number 3 became Walpole and Number 4 became Charlestown. Charlestown was the furthest north. The towns they laid out on the West side of the river were neither named nor numbered, but they were mapped. The General Court felt pretty secure in its right to create townships east of the Connecticut River, but they seemed very tentative about the townships west of the Connecticut. They were going to stick their toes in the water over there,
In September of 1736, in Concord, Massachusetts, there was a sales meeting open to anyone who was interested in being a proprietor of one of the four new towns. Thomas Wells of Deerfield, Massachusetts was in charge of the administration of the proprietorships to Number 4. This is the same Thomas Wells who signed one of the Indian deeds. Sixty men signed right up. Sadly for them, in March of 1740 they got some disappointing news. The King had decided the boundaries of the provinces, and Massachusetts lost out. The four new townships fell under the new boundaries of New Hampshire. In September, the proprietors petitioned the King to annex their towns back to Massachusetts, but the King declined. By 1742, all but a handful of the original proprietors had disposed of their grants. Lieutenant Ephraim Wetherbe, Captain Phineas Stephens, and David, Stephen, and Samuel Farnsworth kept their grants and moved forward with establishing their township. Isaac Parker, Obadiah Sartwell, John Hastings, and Moses Willard joined them. This hardy group traveled up the Connecticut River to establish their town at No. 4.
The six mile square plot was already surveyed but the 60 homesteads weren’t. The first task at hand for the new settlers was to survey the township and lay out the homesteads. David Farnsworth was the surveyor. Surveyors of this era used a surveyor’s compass and a Gunter’s Chain. They used a surveyor’s compass to measure horizontal angles. They would find the corner of a plot, then measure it out using the Gunter’s Chain. The Gunter’s Chain was made of a hundred metal links marked off into groups of 10 by brass rings. Each link measured 7.92 inches. A full length of Gunter’s Chain measured 66 feet. One acre measured 10 square chains. Surveyors started at a corner of a lot, put down the Gunter’s chain, and anchored it with a pin, which looked a somewhat like a metal tent stake. Then they used their compass to make sure their line was straight, and pulled the chain down a straight line. When they got to the end of the chain, they anchored it with a pin and went back and got the other end of the chain. The front then became the back, hey took another reading with the compass, and continued measuring in a straight line for another length of the chain. They stopped when the number of chain lengths added up to the desired length of a boundary line.
This is an 18th century surveyors' compass that recently sold at auction for $28,000
A Gunter's chain, showing the links and the bronze markers
This process was difficult and time consuming enough when used to delineate the sixty homesteads that would make up the new township. The thing is, this is the exact same process some other surveyor used to survey the boundaries of the whole township, and even to establish the boundaries of the provinces! Surveyors traveled through dense forest, where no Englishman had ever been before, spending weeks out in the forest pulling these chains through the underbrush and taking compass readings.
Most of the economy of the colonial people ran on a barter system. The surveyors were the first people to lay an eye on the new lands. They knew where the choice plots were, and they often used their pay to buy up the choicest pieces of land for themselves. Sometimes they would take their pay in land and then resell it to families of settlers. This was a way for young men to earn their fortunes. You had to be young, strong, healthy, and smart to do this work. George Washington was a surveyor when he was young, and amassed a fortune from land speculation.
After the homestead plots were surveyed and mapped out, families could come, settle and build themselves a town.
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