Springfield 1636-1886, History of Town and City, by Mason A. Green ...

196 SPRINGFIELD, 1636-1SS6.
provisioual committee resumed its functions over Enfield. In 1692
this connnittee, or ratlier John Pynehon and Jouatlian Burt, its only
surviving members, surrendered the books and records to Enfield,
with their best wishes for the success of the new town.
In October, 1684, John Pynehon had granted to Isaac Meacham
the privilege of building a fulling-mill at the mouth of Freshwater
brook, a part of the consideration being the " yearly wel fulling &
thickening of five and twentie yards of Cloth."
The survey of the boundary line between the two colonies, made in
1642, and known as the Woodward and Saffery line, placed Enfield in
Massachusetts. In 1648 Massachusetts ordered that all the land east
of the river at a point twenty poles below the warehouse belonged to
Springfield. It Avas many years before the dispute as to jurisdiction
was settled. In 1713 it was agreed that each colony should retain
jurisdiction over the towns they had settled, and that the boundary
should run due west from the Connecticut river, from the Wood-
ward and Saffery line, and that reparation should be made b}^ con-
veying by deed unimproved lands, in cases where one colony gained
from the other. It was found that Massachusetts had appropriated
over 100,000 acres of Connecticut lands by this survey. The survey
was wrong, but ^Massachusetts paid upon that basis for many years.
The towns of Woodstock, Somers, Suttield, and Enfield continued to
protest against being under the Massachusetts jurisdiction, and even
appealed to the king ;
they finally gained their point.
H. S. Sheldon, of Suffield, speaking of the break in the boundary,
as appears now upon the map, says : —
Simsbury and Westfield retained their ancient boundaries, being first incor-
porated, leaving west of the mountain a strip of land about one mile in width be-
tween tlie two, for Sufiield. Our proprietors mourned the loss of tliat part of
tlieir grant secured by Simsbur}-, as it was supposed to be ricli in mines of
copper and iron. Tliey were consoled by tlie Massachusetts Court, in 1732,
granting tliem a township six miles square (now Blandford) as an equivalent.
They sold it to Christopher J. Lawton, of Suffield, receiving but little therefor.