N

dy minds, and unbending hearts. In a few years, the whole circuit of Massachusetts Bay, was surrounded by thriving towns. In 1635, great accessions were made. Sir Henry Vane, the younger, arrived with a fleet of twenty sail, well provided with stores and passengers. Three thousand people were this year added to the colony, including eleven ministers, and these from not among the least learned and faithful of the English Clergy. The emigrants had extended their plantations to the west, and this year Concord and Sudbury were made towns. The fertile lands on the Connecticut river had not escaped the notice of our ancestors. Plymouth settlers ten years before had laid claim and taken possession of them by building the first house. The Dutch at New York resisted the claim of the English, but were compelled to relinquish. This year, a permanent settlement was made there by people from Massachusetts. John Winthrop, son to the Governor of that name, returning from England, brought a commission authorizing him to be Governor of the plantations in the Connecticut. He was also provided with a competency of men, ordnance, ammunition, and £2000 sterling to be appropriated to the enterprise. Thus prepared he immediately commenced the planting of Hartford, and other towns on the River.

Nov. 15, 1635, about sixty men, women and children, went by land towards Connecticut, with their cows, horses and swine, and after a tedious and difficult journey arrived there safe.* This probably was the first time that the wilderness of this County was traversed by civilized man. And on this occasion the first incense of gratitude here ascended from Christian lips to the Benevolent author of all this goodness. The Wachusett in Princeton had been discovered by Gov. Winthrop in his excursion up Charles river, Jan. 27, 1632; on this occasion he went eight miles above Watertown, and from a very high rock, he observes he could see all over Nipnett, and a very high hill due west about forty miles distant.f This is the earliest notice taken of any part of our territory by the historians of the first age of New England.

In 1640 the tide of emigration ceased, in consequence of the favorable change of affairs in England. By this time there had arrived 298 ships, which had landed 21,200 passengers, the estimat

+ Savage's Winthrop 69.

Savage's Winthrop 171. Hutchinson I. 91-Holmes' Annals I. 299. Dr. Holmes very justly intimates doubts as to the correctness of this number of the emigrants. It is true that neither Johnson or Mather are very high authorities, but Sir H. Vane's company of 3000 in one year, would lead us to place the whole number much above 4000.

15

ed expense of their transportation with their cattle, goods, &c. was £192,000 sterling, or upwards of $850,000. From this period more people returned to England than came from there. This had a powerful effect in depressing the prices of cattle and other commodities. The price of a milch cow had been from £25 to £30; this year it fell to £5 or £6. It was judged that the colony contained 12,000 head of neat cattle, and 3000 sheep. Before this time the sales of cattle to the new planters had been a great source of wealth to the older settlers. For twenty years next following the increase of population was limited.

In examining into the origin of our Institutions, it will be necessary to take a brief review of the character of the age when our fathers emigrated from Europe. It was at the period immediately subsequent to the great Protestant reformation. An age when men had just began to awake from a long and dreary night of abject servitude. The fetters in which tyranny and superstition had manacled the bodies and minds of men, were loosened. It was an age when the human mind was struggling to be free; when the divine right of Kings, and the infallibility of Popes, were found to be blasphemous assumptions of power, when the right of private judgment and the sufficiency of the Scriptures were urged as the indisputable rights of men. But in this twilight of the understanding, it was not to be expected that the true nature of the rights of man would be understood. It was not to be expected that enthusiasm and zeal would acknowledge their proper boundaries, or be restrained within due limits. In the enjoyment of the blessings of freedom, men were unwilling to recollect that others had rights as well as themselves. Claiming exemption from the mandates of human authority in matters of faith, they were still eager to fasten their creeds upon others. Bigotry and superstition were so ingrafted on the minds of men, that little more was gained in the first century of the reformation, than a change of masters. The Princes of the house of Tudor forbid all homage to the Pope, because they were desirous of engrossing it to themselves; and there can be but little doubt that the abject Stuarts would gladly have extinguished the entire spirit of the reformation, and restored Popery with all its horrors.

Most of the Church dignitaries imbibed the spirit of their Sovereigns; and such were some of the obstacles that the friends of toleration had to encounter. Our ancestors fled from the hierarchy rather than from the liturgy, and with all their experience they

appear to have formed very inadequate ideas of what is now ascertained to be the true nature of religious freedom. The imperfections of the age attached themselves to their characters; and even in the solitudes of the wilderness, the Lord's brethren exacted obedience as obsequious, as before had been shown to the Lord's Bishops. None but Church members, during the first Charter, were entitled to the privileges of freemen; and none could be Church members that did not submit their consciences to the will of the majority. Such were the practices of our fathers. But in their principles and their institutions there was a redeeming spirit, a self renovating power, that purified this part of their constitution, and stripped it of its greatest error. There is little danger that Intolerance will ever become the sin of their descendants; nor that they will assist in again uniting Church and State in unholy wedlock.

The period we have been considering is characterized by the most elegant of our Historians, as an age when it rather might be said that error was falling, than that truth was established; when the rights of Society were unfolding, and kings after having relieved their subjects from the more dreadful tyranny of aristocratic power, were grudgingly conceding as privileges, what men afterwards understood to be their own independent of royal favor; when religion was but just emancipated from the hand of popery, when the great revelation of preserving the spiritual and temporal kingdoms distinct, had not operated upon the reason of the Euro. pean world.*

In the year 1643, the Colony was first divided into four Counties or Shires, to wit: Suffolk, Essex, Middlesex, and Norfolk-the towns included in them were in the following order. This list contains all the towns that were then established. Plantations were formed in scattered situations in various places, but not remote from these towns. The fear of Indian depredations kept the settlers compact. Besides, it was considered irregular to form a lay corporation, without first establishing the ecclesiastical; churches were generally founded prior to the towns.†

*Minot's continuation I. 16.

+ Hutchinson 112. All later Annalists have followed this distinguished historian, in this fact, but he cites no authority. It would seem from the reading of the early Colonial Laws, as if Shires existed prior to this period. See Col. Laws, page 45, 69, &c. It is hoped the learned Annotator of Winthrop's Journal, will reconcile these discrepancies.

In Suffolk.
Boston

Roxbury

Dorchester

In Essex.
Salem

Lynn

In Middlesex.
Charlestown
Cambridge
Watertown
Sudbury
Concord
Woburn

In Norfolk.
Salisbury
Hampton
Haverhill
Exeter

BEFE

Dedham

Braintree
Weymouth
Hull

Wenham
Ipswich
Rowley
Newbury

Gloucester

Medford

Chochickawick Lynn village

Dover
Portsmouth

It will be recollected that the Southern counties at that time formed a Colony distinct from Massachusetts. It was not divided into Counties until 1685. Anterior to that period all their Courts were held at Plymouth; and their proceedings are contained in the records of the Old Colony. Hampshire county was established in 1662. G.

ORIGINAL.

TOPOGRAPHICAL VIEW OF TEMPLETON.

THIS town is bounded on the north by Winchendon, east by Gardner, south by Hubbardston, and west by Phillipston. Its shape is oblong. Its greatest length, from north to south, is about seven miles, and its average breadth will not exceed four miles. The original grant of the township was six miles square; but a small part of Gardner and most of Phillipston have since been taken from it. It contains still between seventeen and eighteen thousand acres.

Rivers and STREAMS.-The waters of the Chickapeet and Miller's rivers have some of their sources in the highlands of Templeton. Otter river, the principal stream, originates in a small pond

*When the Province of New Hampshire was established in 1680, most of the towns in this ancient County of Norfolk, fell within that jurisdiction. The others were annexed to Essex. It will be perceived by a reader versed in the etymology of the names of these Counties, that there is a coincidence between them and their Geographical position. Suffolk included the most southerly towns, Norfolk the northerly, Essex the eastern, while Middlesex occupied an intermediate station. Our Saxon Ancestors attached an appropriate and a relative meaning to each of these names. The Fathers of New England are vindicated from the apparent absurdity in the modern Geography of Massachusetts, which places Norfolk south of Suffolk county. See "Johnson's Wonder working Providence of Sion's Saviour in New England" 2, Hist. Col. XII. 54. "The Government is divided into four counties, which to shew, they would their posterity should mind whence they came, they have named Suffolk, Middlesex, Essex, and Northfolk." See also Hume's History of England, first chapter-and each of these names in Bailey's Dictionary.

+ In Hist. Col. Vol. I. 271, this is written Chickopee, and Vol. IX. 129, Chickapee. Hutchinson in his History of Massachusetts writes it Chickapi, and Dr. Dwight Chequapee. Whitney page 324, calls it Chicabee.

in the south part of the town one of its sources, and, perhaps, the main one, is found in the swamps of Westminster. The Templeton branch flows first in a southeasterly direction into Hubbardston, where it changes its course to the northeast and passes into Gardner. It soon re-appears, and forming for some distance the boundary line between the two towns, finally runs into a corner of Winchendon, where it unites itself with the waters of Miller's or Payquage* river.

TROUT BROOK.-This has its chief source in the northwest part of the town. Flowing first to the southeast, it next turns to the north and joins Otter river, to which it is the most considerable tributary. Compared with the other streams in the town it is less rapid and affords fewer facilities for the employment of water power. The meadows bordering its banks are productive, and its waters abound in fine and beautiful trout. This fish has formerly been taken in great plenty; but as time lengthens and mouths multiply, its numbers rapidly diminish, and must shortly wholly disappear.

BEAVER OR NEW BROOK.-This stream rises in Phillipston, and is for some distance the dividing line between this town and Templeton. It differs little in its volume of water from Trout Brook. For a mile or more before leaving Templeton its current is remarkably rapid and broken. In some places the stream is intersected by ledges, and excellent sites are found for propelling machinery. It passes back into a corner of Phillipston, thence into Royalston, and there is united to Miller's river. In its channel are yet to be seen traps or weirs constructed by the Indians; these consist of a kind of dam or pavement for taking fish. They still continue in a tolerable state of preservation.

FALES'S BROOK.-This is a small stream, and has its source in the south part of the town near Cook's pond, the source of Otter river. Its whole length will fall short of three miles; yet from

* It is important that the correct orthography of Indian names be preserved; and to this end we shall follow the readings of Elliot, Williams, and Gookin, whenever they can be found. The name of this river in Mrs. Rowlandson's narrative is Bayquage, and Whitney gives it quite a variety of endings. The town of Athol according to him was called Pequiog or Payquage, and the river, which is undoubtedly the same, Payquage or Bayquage. Weathersfield in Connecticut (see Holmes' Annals, Vol. I. 282) was called Pauquiaug, and in Trumbull's Connecticut, Vol. I. 59, it is called Pyquag, and it is not improbable that this is the same name, though written differently. In the Indian language of this part of the country, (see Roger Williams' key, Hist. Col. Vol. III. 222) the plural in some words was formed by the addition of og. Payquaog seems therefore to be the proper orthography, and this is conformable to the Nipmuck dialect generally.