Frontier in American History — II - The First Official Frontier of the Massachusetts Bay - Part 3

Dunstable's large grant was brought about by a combination of leading men who had received grants after the survey of 1652; among such grants was one to the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company and another to Thomas Brattle of Boston.

Apparently it was settled chiefly by others than the original grantees.

[57:1] Groton voted in 1685 to sue the "non-Residenc" to assist in paying the rate, and in 1679 the General Court had ordered non-residents having land at Groton to pay rates for their lands as residents did.

[57:2] Lancaster (Nashaway) was granted to proprietors including various craftsmen in iron, indicating, perhaps, an expectation of iron works, and few of the original proprietors actually settled in the town.

[57:3] The grant of 1653-4 was made by the Court after reciting: (1) that it had ordered in 1647 that the "ordering and disposeing of the Plantation at Nashaway is wholly in the Courts power";

(2) "Considering that there is allredy at Nashaway about nine Families and that severall both freemen and others intend to goe and setle there, some whereof are named in this Petition," etc. Mendon, begun in 1660 by Braintree people, is a particularly significant example.

In 1681 the inhabitants petitioned that while they are not "of the number of those who dwell in their ceiled houses & yet say the time is not come that the Lord's house should be built," yet they have gone outside of their strength "unless others who are proprietors as well as ourselves, (the price of whose lands is much raysed by our carrying on public work & will be nothing worth if we are forced to quit the place) doo beare an equal share in Town charges with us.

Those who are not yet come up to us are a great and far yet abler part of our Proprietors .

.

."

[57:4] In 1684 the selectmen inform the General Court that one half of the proprietors, two only excepted, are dwelling in other places, "Our proprietors, abroad," say they, "object that they see no reason why they should pay as much for thayer lands as we do for our Land and stock, which we answer that if their be not a noff of reason for it, we are sure there is more than enough of necessity to supply that is wanting in reason."

[58:1] This is the authentic voice of the frontier.

Deerfield furnishes another type, inasmuch as a considerable part of its land was first held by Dedham, to which the grant was made as a recompense for the location of the Natick Indian reservation.

Dedham shares in the town often fell into the hands of speculators, and Sheldon, the careful historian of Deerfield, declares that not a single Dedham man became a permanent resident of the grant.

In 1678 Deerfield petitioned the General Court as follows: You may be pleased to know that the very principle & best of the land; the best for soile; the best for situation; as lying in y{e} centre & midle of the town: & as to quantity, nere half, belongs unto eight or 9 proprietors each and every of which, are never like to come to a settlement amongst us, which we have formerly found grievous & doe Judge for the future will be found intollerable if not altered.

O{r} minister, Mr. Mather .

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.

& we ourselves are much discouraged as judging the Plantation will be spoiled if thes proprietors may not be begged, or will not be bought up on very easy terms outt of their Right .

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.

Butt as long as the maine of the plantation Lies in men's hands that can't improve it themselves, neither are ever like to putt such tenants on to it as shall be likely to advance the good of y{e} place in Civill or sacred Respects; he, ourselves, and all others that think of going to it, are much discouraged.

[59:1] Woodstock, later a Connecticut town, was settled under a grant in the Nipmuc country made to the town of Roxbury.

The settlers, who located their farms near the trading post about which the Indians still collected, were called the "go-ers," while the "stayers" were those who remained in Roxbury, and retained half of the new grant; but it should be added that they paid the go-ers a sum of money to facilitate the settlement.

This absentee proprietorship and the commercial attitude toward the lands of new towns became more evident in succeeding years of the eighteenth century.

Leicester, for example, was confirmed by the General Court in 1713. The twenty shares were divided among twenty-two proprietors, including Jeremiah Dummer, Paul Dudley (Attorney-General), William Dudley (like Paul a son of the Governor, Joseph Dudley), Thomas Hutchinson (father of the later Governor), John Clark (the political leader), and Samuel Sewall (son of the Chief Justice).

These were all men of influence, and none of the proprietors became inhabitants of Leicester.

The proprietors tried to induce the fifty families, whose settlement was one of the conditions on which the grant was made, to occupy the eastern half of the township reserving the rest as their absolute property.

[59:2] The author of a currency tract, in 1716, entitled "Some Considerations upon the Several Sorts of Banks," remarks that formerly, when land was easy to be obtained, good men came over as indentured servants; but now, he says, they are runaways, thieves, and disorderly persons.

The remedy for this, in his opinion, would be to induce servants to come over by offering them homes when the terms of indenture should expire.

[60:1] He therefore advocates that townships should be laid out four or five miles square in which grants of fifty or sixty acres could be made to servants.

[60:2] Concern over the increase of negro slaves in Massachusetts seems to have been the reason for this proposal.

It indicates that the current practice in disposing of the lands did not provide for the poorer people.

But Massachusetts did not follow this suggestion of a homestead policy.

On the contrary, the desire to locate towns to create continuous lines of settlement along the roads between the disconnected frontiers and to protect boundary claims by granting tiers of towns in the disputed tract, as well, no doubt, as pressure from financial interests, led the General Court between 1715 and 1762 to dispose of the remaining public domain of Massachusetts under conditions that made speculation and colonization by capitalists important factors.

[60:3] When in 1762 Massachusetts sold a group of townships in the Berkshires to the highest bidders (by whole townships),[60:4] the transfer from the social-religious to the economic conception was complete, and the frontier was deeply influenced by the change to "land mongering."

In one respect, however, there was an increasing recognition of the religious and social element in settling the frontier, due in part, no doubt, to a desire to provide for the preservation of eastern ideals and influences in the West.

Provisions for reserving lands within the granted townships for the support of an approved minister, and for schools, appear in the seventeenth century and become a common feature of the grants for frontier towns in the eighteenth.

[61:1] This practice with respect to the New England frontier became the foundation for the system of grants of land from the public domain for the support of common schools and state universities by the federal government from its beginning, and has been profoundly influential in later Western States.

Another ground for discontent over land questions was furnished by the system of granting lands within the town by the commoners.

The principle which in many, if not all, cases guided the proprietors in distributing the town lots is familiar and is well stated in the Lancaster town records (1653): And, whereas Lotts are Now Laid out for the most part Equally to Rich and poore, Partly to keepe the Towne from Scatering to farr, and partly out of Charitie and Respect to men of meaner estate, yet that Equallitie (which is the rule of God) may be observed, we Covenant and Agree, That in a second Devition and so through all other Devitions of Land the mater shall be drawne as neere to _equallitie according to mens estates_ as wee are able to doe, That he which hath now more then his estate Deserveth in home Lotts and entervale Lotts shall haue so much Less: and he that hath Less then his estate Deserveth shall haue so much more.

[62:1] This peculiar doctrine of "equality" had early in the history of the colony created discontents.

Winthrop explained the principle which governed himself and his colleagues in the case of the Boston committee of 1634 by saying that their divisions were arranged "partly to prevent the neglect of trades."

This is a pregnant idea; it underlay much of the later opposition of New England as a manufacturing section to the free homestead or cheap land policy, demanded by the West and by the labor party, in the national public domain.

The migration of labor to free lands meant that higher wages must be paid to those who remained.

The use of the town lands by the established classes to promote an approved form of society naturally must have had some effect on migration.

But a more effective source of disputes was with respect to the relation of the town proprietors to the public domain of the town in contrast with the non-proprietors as a class.

The need of keeping the town meeting and the proprietors' meeting separate in the old towns in earlier years was not so great as it was when the new-comers became numerous.

In an increasing degree these new-comers were either not granted lands at all, or were not admitted to the body of proprietors with rights in the possession of the undivided town lands.

Contentions on the part of the town meeting that it had the right of dealing with the town lands occasionally appear, significantly, in the frontier towns of Haverhill, Massachusetts, Simsbury, Connecticut, and in the towns of the Connecticut Valley.

[63:1] Jonathan Edwards, in 1751, declared that there had been in Northampton for forty or fifty years "two parties somewhat like the court and country parties of England.

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.

.

The first party embraced the great proprietors of land, and the parties concerned about land and other matters."

[63:2] The tendency to divide up the common lands among the proprietors in individual possession did not become marked until the eighteenth century; but the exclusion of some from possession of the town lands and the "equality" in allotment favoring men with already large estates must have attracted ambitious men who were not of the favored class to join in the movement to new towns.

Religious dissensions would combine to make frontier society as it formed early in the eighteenth century more and more democratic, dissatisfied with the existing order, and less respectful of authority.

We shall not understand the relative radicalism of parts of the Berkshires, Vermont and interior New Hampshire without enquiry into the degree in which the control over the lands by a proprietary monopoly affected the men who settled on the frontier.

The final aspect of this frontier to be examined, is the attitude of the conservatives of the older sections towards this movement of westward advance.

President Dwight in the era of the War of 1812 was very critical of the "foresters," but saw in such a movement a safety valve to the institutions of New England by allowing the escape of the explosive advocates of "Innovation."

[63:3] Cotton Mather is perhaps not a typical representative of the conservative sentiment at the close of the seventeenth century, but his writings may partly reflect the attitude of Boston Bay toward New England's first Western frontier.

Writing in 1694 of "Wonderful Passages which have Occurred, First in the Protections and then in the Afflictions of New England," he says: One while the Enclosing of _Commons_ hath made Neighbours, that should have been like Sheep, to _Bite and devour one another_.

.

.

.

Again, Do our _Old_ People, any of them _Go Out_ from the Institutions of God, Swarming into New Settlements, where they and their Untaught Families are like to _Perish for Lack of Vision_?

They that have done so, heretofore, have to their Cost found, that they were got unto the _Wrong side of the Hedge_, in their doing so.

Think, here _Should this be done any more?

_ We read of Balaam, in Num.

22, 23. He was to his Damage, _driven to the_ Wall, when he would needs make an unlawful Salley forth after the _Gain_ of this World.

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.

.

Why, when men, for the Sake of Earthly Gain, would be _going out_ into the _Warm_ Sun, they drive _Through the Wall_, and the _Angel of the Lord_ becomes their Enemy.

In his essay on "Frontiers Well-Defended" (1707) Mather assures the pioneers that they "dwell in a Hatsarmaneth," a place of "tawney serpents," are "inhabitants of the Valley of Achor," and are "the Poor of this World."

There may be significance in his assertion: "It is remarkable to see that when the Unchurched Villages, have been so many of them, _utterly broken up_, in the _War_, that has been upon us, those that have had _Churches_ regularly formed in them, have generally been under a more _sensible Protection_ of Heaven."

"Sirs," he says, "a _Church-State_ well form'd may fortify you wonderfully!"

He recommends abstention from profane swearing, furious cursing, Sabbath breaking, unchastity, dishonesty, robbing of God by defrauding the ministers of their dues, drunkenness, and revels and he reminds them that even the Indians have family prayers!

Like his successors who solicited missionary contributions for the salvation of the frontier in the Mississippi Valley during the forties of the nineteenth century, this early spokesman for New England laid stress upon teaching anti-popery, particularly in view of the captivity that might await them.

In summing up, we find many of the traits of later frontiers in this early prototype, the Massachusetts frontier.

It lies at the edge of the Indian country and tends to advance.

It calls out militant qualities and reveals the imprint of wilderness conditions upon the psychology and morals as well as upon the institutions of the people.

It demands common defense and thus becomes a factor for consolidation.

It is built on the basis of a preliminary fur trade, and is settled by the combined and sometimes antagonistic forces of eastern men of property (the absentee proprietors) and the democratic pioneers.

The East attempted to regulate and control it.

Individualistic and democratic tendencies were emphasized both by the wilderness conditions and, probably, by the prior contentions between the proprietors and non-proprietors of the towns from which settlers moved to the frontier.

Removal away from the control of the customary usages of the older communities and from the conservative influence of the body of the clergy, increased the innovating tendency.

Finally the towns were regarded by at least one prominent representative of the established order in the East, as an undesirable place for the re-location of the pillars of society.

The temptation to look upon the frontier as a field for investment was viewed by the clergy as a danger to the "institutions of God."

The frontier was "the Wrong side of the Hedge."

But to this "wrong side of the hedge" New England men continued to migrate.

The frontier towns of 1695 were hardly more than suburbs of Boston.

The frontier of a century later included New England's colonies in Vermont, Western New York, the Wyoming Valley, the Connecticut Reserve, and the Ohio Company's settlement in the Old Northwest Territory.

By the time of the Civil War the frontier towns of New England had occupied the great prairie zone of the Middle West and were even planted in Mormon Utah and in parts of the Pacific Coast.

New England's sons had become the organizers of a Greater New England in the West, captains of industry, political leaders, founders of educational systems, and prophets of religion, in a section that was to influence the ideals and shape the destiny of the nation in ways to which the eyes of men like Cotton Mather were sealed.

[66:1] FOOTNOTES:

[39:1] Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, April, 1914, xvii, 250-271. Reprinted with permission of the Society.

[39:2] Massachusetts Archives, xxxvi, p. 150. [40:1] Massachusetts Colony Records, ii, p. 122. [40:2] _Ibid.

_, vol. iv, pt.

ii, p. 439; Massachusetts Archives, cvii, pp. 160-161. [40:3] See, for example, Massachusetts Colony Records, v, 79; Green, "Groton During the Indian Wars," p. 39; L.

K.

Mathews, "Expansion of New England," p. 58. [40:4] Massachusetts Archives, lxviii, pp. 174-176. [40:5] Osgood, "American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century," i, p. 501, and citations: cf.

Publications of this Society, xii, pp. 38-39. [41:1] Hening, "Statutes at Large," iii, p. 204: cf.

1 Massachusetts Historical Collections, v, p. 129, for influence of the example of the New England town.

On Virginia frontier conditions see Alvord and Bidgood, "First Explorations of the Trans-Allegheny Region," pp. 23-34, 93-95. P.

A.

Bruce, "Institutional History of Virginia," ii, p. 97, discusses frontier defense in the seventeenth century.

[See chapter iii, _post_.

] [42:1] Massachusetts Archives, lxx, 240; Massachusetts Province Laws, i, pp. 194, 293. [42:2] In a petition (read March 3, 1692-3) of settlers "in Sundry Farms granted in those Remote Lands Scituate and Lyeing between Sudbury, Concord, Marlbury, Natick and Sherburne & Westerly is the Wilderness," the petitioners ask easement of taxes and extension into the Natick region in order to have means to provide for the worship of God, and say: "Wee are not Ignorant that by reason of the present Distressed Condition of those that dwell in these Frontier Towns, divers are meditating to remove themselves into such places where they have not hitherto been conserned in the present Warr and desolation thereby made, as also that thereby they may be freed from that great burthen of public taxes necessarily accruing thereby, Some haveing already removed themselves.

Butt knowing for our parts that wee cannot run from the hand of a Jealous God, doe account it our duty to take such Measures as may inable us to the performance of that duty wee owe to God, the King, & our Familyes" (Massachusetts Archives, cxiii, p. 1).

[42:3] In a petition of 1658 Andover speaks of itself as "a remote upland plantation" (Massachusetts Archives, cxii, p. 99).

[42:4] Massachusetts Province Laws, i, p. 402. [43:1] Convenient maps of settlement, 1660-1700, are in E. Channing, "History of the United States," i, pp. 510-511, ii, end; Avery, "History of the United States and its People," ii, p. 398. A useful contemporaneous map for conditions at the close of King Philip's War is Hubbard's map of New England in his "Narrative" published in Boston, 1677. See also L. K.

Mathews, "Expansion of New England," pp. 56-57, 70. [44:1] Weeden, "Economic and Social History of New England," pp. 90, 95, 129-132; F.

J.

Turner, "Indian Trade in Wisconsin," p. 13; McIlwain, "Wraxall's Abridgement," introduction; the town histories abound in evidence of the significance of the early Indian traders' posts, transition to Indian land cessions, and then to town grants.

[44:2] Weeden, _loc.

cit.

_, pp. 64-67; M.

Egleston, "New England Land System," pp. 31-32; Sheldon, "Deerfield," i, pp. 37, 206, 267-268;

Connecticut Colonial Records, vii, p. 111, illustrations of cattle brands in 1727. [44:3] Hutchinson, "History" (1795), ii, p. 129, note, relates such a case of a Groton man; see also Parkman, "Half-Century," vol. i, ch. iv, citing Maurault, "Histoire des Abenakis," p. 377. [45:1] Massachusetts Archives, lxxi, pp. 4, 84, 85, 87, 88. [45:2] Hoosatonic.

[45:3] Connecticut Records, iv, pp. 463, 464. [45:4] Massachusetts Colony Records, v, p. 72; Massachusetts Province Laws, i, pp. 176, 211, 292, 558, 594, 600; Massachusetts Archives, lxxi, pp. 7, 89, 102. Cf.

Publications of this Society, vii, 275-278. [45:5] Sheldon, "Deerfield," i, p. 290. [46:1] Judd, "Hadley," p. 272; 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, ii, p. 235. [46:2] Farmer and Moore, "Collections," iii, p. 64. The frontier woman of the farther west found no more extreme representative than Hannah Dustan of Haverhill, with her trophy of ten scalps, for which she received a bounty of L50 (Parkman, "Frontenac," 1898, p. 407, note).

[46:3] For illustrations of resentment against those who protected the Christian Indians, see F. W.

Gookin, "Daniel Gookin," pp. 145-155. [47:1] For example, Massachusetts Archives, lxx, p. 261; Bailey, "Andover," p. 179; Metcalf, "Annals of Mendon," p. 63; Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xliii, pp. 504-519. Parkman, "Frontenac" (Boston, 1898), p. 390, and "Half-Century of Conflict" (Boston, 1898), i, p. 55, sketches the frontier defense.

[48:1] Massachusetts Archives, cvii, p. 155. [48:2] _Ibid.

_, cvii, p. 230; cf.

230 a. [48:3] Massachusetts Archives, lxviii, p. 156. [48:4] Sheldon, "Deerfield," i, p. 189. [48:5] Massachusetts Archives, lxxi, 46-48, 131, 134, 135 _et passim_.

[50:1] Massachusetts Archives, lxxi, p. 107: cf.

Metcalf, "Mendon," p. 130; Sheldon, "Deerfield," i, p. 288. The frontier of Virginia in 1755 and 1774 showed similar conditions: see, for example, the citations to Washington's Writings in Thwaites, "France in America," pp. 193-195; and frontier letters in Thwaites and Kellogg, "Dunmore's War," pp. 227, 228 _et passim_.

The following petition to Governor Gooch of Virginia, dated July 30, 1742, affords a basis for comparison with a Scotch-Irish frontier: We your pettionours humbly sheweth that we your Honours Loly and Dutifull Subganckes hath ventred our Lives & all that we have In settling ye back parts of Virginia which was a veri Great Hassirt & Dengrous, for it is the Hathins [heathens] Road to ware, which has proved hortfull to severil of ous that were ye first settlers of these back woods & wee your Honibill pettionors some time a goo petitioned your Honnour for to have Commisioned men amungst ous which we your Honnours most Duttifull subjects thought properist men & men that had Hart and Curidg to hed us yn time of [war] & to defend your Contray & your poor Sogbacks Intrist from ye voilince of ye Haithen--But yet agine we Humbly persume to poot your Honnour yn mind of our Great want of them in hopes that your Honner will Grant a Captins' Commission to John McDowell, with follring ofishers, and your Honnours' Complyence in this will be Great settisfiction to your most Duttifull and Humbil pettioners--and we as in Duty bond shall Ever pray .

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.

(Calendar of Virginia State Papers, i, p. 235).

[51:1] But there is a note of deference in Southern frontier petitions to the Continental Congress--to be discounted, however, by the remoteness of that body.

See F. J.

Turner, "Western State-Making in the Revolutionary Era" (_American Historical Review_, i, pp. 70, 251).

The demand for remission of taxes is a common feature of the petitions there quoted.

[51:2] Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xliii, pp. 506 ff.

[51:3] _Ibid.

_, xliii, p. 518. [52:1] Connecticut Colonial Records, iv, p. 67. [52:2] In a petition of February 22, 1693-4, Deerfield calls itself the "most Utmost Frontere Town in the County of West Hampshire" (Massachusetts Archives, cxiii, p. 57 a).

[52:3] Judd, "Hadley," p. 249. [52:4] W.

D.

Schuyler-Lighthall, "Glorious Enterprise," p. 16. [53:1] Sheldon, "Deerfield," i, p. 405. [54:1] "I want to have your warriours come and see me," wrote Allen to the Indians of Canada in 1775, "and help me fight the King's Regular Troops.

You know they stand all close together, rank and file, and my men fight so as Indians do, and I want your warriours to join with me and my warriours, like brothers, and ambush the Regulars: if you will, I will give you money, blankets, tomahawks, knives, paint, and any thing that there is in the army, just like brothers; and I will go with you into the woods to scout; and my men and your men will sleep together, and eat and drink together, and fight Regulars, because they first killed our brothers" (American Archives, 4th Series, ii, p. 714).

[54:2] Compare A. McF.

Davis, "The Shays Rebellion a Political Aftermath" (Proceedings American Antiquarian Society, xxi, pp. 58, 62, 75-79).

[55:1] "Land System of the New England Colonies," p. 30. [55:2] Massachusetts Colony Records, i, p. 167. [56:1] Compare Weeden, "Economic and Social History of New England," i, pp. 270-271; Gookin, "Daniel Gookin," pp. 106-161; and the histories of Worcester for illustrations of how the various factors noted could be combined in a single town.

[56:2] F.

Merrill, "Amesbury," pp. 5, 50. [56:3] B.

L.

Mirick, "Haverhill," pp. 9, 10. [57:1] Green, "Early Records of Groton," pp. 49, 70, 90. [57:2] _Ibid.

_ [57:3] Worcester County History, i, pp. 2, 3. [57:4] J.

G.

Metcalf, "Annals of Mendon," p. 85. [58:1] P.

96. Compare the Kentucky petition of 1780 given in Roosevelt, "Winning of the West," ii, p. 398, and the letter from that frontier cited in Turner, "Western State-Making" (_American Historical Review_, i, p. 262), attacking the Virginia "Nabobs," who hold absentee land titles.

"Let the _great men_," say they, "whom the land belongs to come and defend it."

[59:1] Sheldon, "Deerfield," i, pp. 188-189. [59:2] These facts are stated on the authority of E. Washburn, "Leicester," pp. 5-15: compare Major Stephen Sewall to Jeremiah Dummer, 1717, quoted in Weeden, "Economic and Social History of New England," ii, p. 505, note 4. [60:1] Compare the Virginia system, Bruce, "Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century," ii, pp. 42, 43. [60:2] For this item I am indebted to our associate, Mr. Andrew McF.

Davis: see his "Colonial Currency Reprints," i, pp. 335-349. [60:3] Hutchinson, "History of Massachusetts" (1768), ii, pp. 331, 332, has an instructive comment.

A.

C.

Ford, "Colonial Precedents of Our National Land System," p. 84; L.

K.

Mathews, "Expansion of New England," pp. 82 ff.

[60:4] J.

G.

Holland, "Western Massachusetts," p. 197. [61:1] Jos.

Schafer, "Origin of the System of Land Grants for Education," pp. 25-33. [62:1] H.

D.

Hurd (ed.

), "History of Worcester County," i, p. 6. The italics are mine.

[63:1] Egleston, "Land System of the New England Colonies," pp. 39-41. [63:2] _Ibid.

_, p. 41. [63:3] T.

Dwight, "Travels" (1821), ii, pp. 459-463. [66:1] [See F. J.

Turner, "Greater New England in the Middle of the Nineteenth Century," in American Antiquarian Society "Proceedings," 1920. ] III