Plymouth (Mass.) -- History
I would like to go back with you farther, to fifteen or twenty thousand years ago. At that time the finale of the ice sheets was at hand. The ice sheets, hundreds of feet thick, started as glaciers in Canada perhaps a million years ago and worked southward two thousand miles a...
I would like to go back with you farther, to fifteen or twenty thousand years ago. At that time the finale of the ice sheets was at hand. The ice sheets, hundreds of feet thick,...
2. CHAPTER II.Miss Catherine Marten of Plimoth Plantation has written a scholarly monograph called _The Wampanoags in the Seventeenth Century_, dated December, 1970, an extensive ethnography...
3. CHAPTER III.At this point perhaps you would be interested in how some families came into possession of additional lands and homesites beyond the central village such as the South Pond area....
4. CHAPTER IV.The first proprietors of the ninety acres “and small piece of meadow on the easterly side of South Pond” where my land is located, were members of the Churchill family. This lan...
5. CHAPTER V.The land adjoining the Churchill property toward the north at South Pond was owned by the famous Cotton family, by a grant from the town of Plymouth in 1713 to Josiah, born 1680...
6. CHAPTER VI.Checking at the Registry of Deeds about Henry Richmond, the next owner after the Churchills, I found that he and his father had many real estate transactions in Middleboro, Mass...
7. CHAPTER VII.The next in the succession of owners was Nathaniel Clark. On April 3, 1783, Henry Richmond sold his homestead and lands to Clark, after ownership for fifteen years and the build...
8. Book 69, Page 26. This was a year after Clark sold the homestead. He9. CHAPTER VIII.Samuel Wright, Jr., and his wife Sarah Richmond, whom he married five years previously, a daughter of a former owner, bought the ninety acres and homestead built by Henry Richmo...
10. CHAPTER IX.We now come to the Burgess family and its occupancy of the house from 1801 to 1959. This family has an extensive and well recorded genealogy and history and I would like to tell...
11. CHAPTER X.John Burgess, 1765-1850, is sometimes referred to as the second John. The first John was a half brother of his father, Nathaniel. Keeping in the stride of his father and grandfa...
12. CHAPTER XI.In the 1790’s the total population of the town of Plymouth had grown to 3500 people. By today’s standards this seems to be slow growth, averaging an increase of about 200 people...
13. CHAPTER XII.Phineas, son of the second John, bought the homestead from his father at age 27 in 1831. He spent his eighty-three years mostly at Boot Pond, except in Middleboro for a period a...
14. CHAPTER XIII.Peleg Burgess, 1840-1931, by purchase from his brother, Phineas Franklin Burgess, became the sole owner of the homestead and kept the property until October 17, 1918, when at th...
15. CHAPTER XIV.My good friend, John Lord, octogenarian and retired Foreign Service officer, spent his boyhood summers on South Pond at the place of his father, Arthur Lord, at the north end of...
16. CHAPTER XV.The area around the house and barn had been cleared for farming and other uses, totaling perhaps twelve acres. The contour of this land is relatively flat, a somewhat rare occur...
17. CHAPTER XVI.Returning to the concept we used in the beginning, the ambiance of this two hundred year old homestead near the Pond, its lawns, trees, shrubs, flowers and forest is an example...
18. Part II, Genealogical Register of Plymouth Families,[2] Page 1--_Indian Place Names of New England_, compiled by John C. Haden, New York, Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, 1962, p. 73, refers to Kamesset Point, Duke...
19. CHAPTER I. THE FACE OF THE LAND AND GROWING THINGS[4] Page 5--_Ibid._, “Wood, in _New England’s Prospect_ under date of 1639 says, ‘the horn bound tree is a tough kind of tree that requires so much pains in riving as is almost...
20. CHAPTER IV. THE CHURCHILL FAMILYII. Eleazer, b. 1652 A. Eleazer (2nd), 1680-1754 1. Eleazer (3rd), b. 1714, m. 1738 2. Josiah, b. 1716 3. Jonathan, b. 1720 a. Eleazer (4th), b. 1744, m. 1776
21. CHAPTER V. COTTON FAMILY LAND[7] Page 28--In an unrelated matter, but of interest, the town records indicate that Josiah Cotton had a black slave in 1732 named Quamony. Theophilus Cotton had a slave in 1751...
22. CHAPTER VI. HENRY RICHMOND AND HIS SON, ELIAB[8] Page 31--Regarding Henry Richmond and his son Eliab’s purchase, the deed shows how the boundaries were to be determined. His son was to have some 580 feet on the shore of th...
23. Book 78, Page 94, the land is sold to William Hall Jackson, “trader,24 acres and 69 acres “in the easterly side of the southerly arm of South Pond, Gunner’s Exchange and Finney’s Meadow” for 24 pounds, two shillings to be paid by June 1, 1794.
24. CHAPTER VIII. SAMUEL WRIGHT AND THE WRIGHT FAMILY[11] In the years 1723 to the 1790’s there are recorded for the Plymouth area some twenty-seven grants of land to the name Samuel Wright, in three generations. The land includes...
25. CHAPTER IX. THE FIRST BURGESSES[14] Page 43--I should add that his son, Thomas (the fifth Thomas) married in 1781 Lydia Tribble. They had twin daughters, Poly and Lydia, born 1784. Lydia married George Delano...
26. CHAPTER X. JOHN BURGESSHis uncle, also John Burgess, has recorded many land transactions in Rochester from 1765-1795. His nephew John Burgess, also of Rochester, at age 30 made his first purchase in t...
27. CHAPTER XI. THE SURROUNDING COMMUNITY, NEARBY AND BEYOND[18] Page 55--An earlier effort in 1701 for assistance to alewives is found in the Town Records, Vol. 2, Page 79. The petitioners mentioned possibly did not live too far away an...
28. CHAPTER XIV. LORD’S POINT[37] Page 129--Miss Joan Wake, Hon. M. A. Oxon., F.S.A.F.R. Hist. S., the Hon. Secretary of the Northamptonshire Record Society, Lamport Hall, Northampton, England, writing in _...