Col. John Stoddard, of Northampton. It is recited in the record of the General Court of 1734, that Col. Stoddard was to be allowed to select one thousand acres of unappropriated lands 1n the county of Hampshire, — Berkshire had not then been erected into a separate county, — in consideration of "his great services and sufferings for the public in divers journeys to Canada, Albany, and the eastern parts, upon public affairs; his serving in war with good success; his transactions with the Canadian and other Western Indians, and his entertaining of them without expense to the Province." Col. Stoddard selected some of the most fertile meadows and uplands in the Province; what is still known as Stoddards Hill was pronounced by an expert from a State commission as the best upland in the State, about forty years ago.
The next year, 1735, the town of Boston represented to the General Court that its citizens paid one fifth of the entire tax of the Province, and that they were under very heavy expense in supporting its poor and sustaining its schools; and they asked for three or four townships of wild Hampshire lands to recoup them. Col. Wendell, the grandfather of Oliver Wendell Holmes, finally bought the rights of Boston in the part of the town not appropriated to Stoddard, so that they two were joint proprietors, but under the condition that "the town of Boston do, within five years from the confirmation of this plot, settle upon it sixty families of his Majesty's good subjects, inhabitants of this Province, in as regular and defensible a manner as the lands will admit of, each of said families to build and finish a dwelling-house upon his home lot of the following dimensions, viz., eighteen feet square, and seven feet stud at the least; that each of the said settlers, within the said term, bring to and fit for improvement, five acres of said home lot, either for ploughing or for mowing, by stocking the same well with English grass, and fence the same well in, and actually live upon the spot; and, also, that they build and finish a suitable and convenient house for the public worship of God; and settle a learned orthodox minister in the said town, and provide for his honorable and comfortable support; and also lay out three house lots in the said town, each of which to draw a sixty-third part of said town in all future divisions, — one to be for the first settled minister, one for the ministry [meaning for the perpetual support of a minister], and one for the schools."
The reason for the stipulation that settlers should be Massachusetts men was to exclude Dutchmen from beyond the disputed boundary of New York, as the protracted quarrel over that matter bad created a great prejudice against them.
It required eight years to arrange all the preliminaries; but in the spring of 1743 a company of young and sturdy yeomen bought forty of the lots and took possession. They spent the summer in the work of girdling the trees, which would consequently die, and in the following spring be ready for burning; but the autumn brought heavy tidings: hostilities between France and England were on