History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts - citizen hylbom blog

above-mentioned families, among whom were those
of AValter and Jolin Powers, David Russell, and
John Merriam, of Concord, living on Nashoba
Farm, and six families of Chelmsford annexed to
Littleton. They were for several years freed from
their ministers' rates in the towns to which they
belonged, and finally, in 1725, the General Court
granted the petition for annexation, as far as it
related to the Concord families ; and a large tract
of land, — that earliest settled by white mea,
extending from Nagog Pond nearly to the Old
Common, was added to the town, enlarging the
bounds in that direction to their present position.
—
There was probably more of a village in that
neighborhood then than now; the first burying-
ground, some years since ploughed up, was there,
on the Eeed farm ; and a little farther east, in the
woods, may be seen a well-preserved dam and mill-
site beside the brook.
Within the first score of years after the incor-
poration there were laid out a great many roads,
the most of them mere paths, marked by blazed
trees, following very tortuous and entirely different
routes from the present ; the road from Chelmsford
to Groton, for instance, was through the Old Common,
across Turkey Swamp and Beaver Brook to
Mr. Charles P. Hartwell's, then through the New
Estate, turning eastward to the Mill Pond, and
then westward through Pingreyville. The first
road to Newtown started from the Old Common,
a short distance east of the late Captain Luther
White's. The object in laying them out seems to
have been to pass every one of the few scattered
houses, rather than to go direct.
Sparsely settled as the town was, a great excitement
was aroused in the year 1720, by an accusation
of witchcraft brought by three little girls, —
daughters of Thomas Blanchard, living on or near
Mr. Elbridge Marshall's farm, — against Mrs.
Abigail Dudley, an estimable woman, the wife of
Samuel Dudley, the first town-clerk. The death
of Mrs. Dudley in August, resulting from an acci-
dent, put an end to the excitement and to the
strange and unaccountable actions of the children,
who confessed in later years that they told and
acted a most diabolical lie. This was the last
attempt in the country to revive the horrors of
Salem.
The proprietors of Littleton held meetings sepa-
rate from the citizens and kept separate records
until the year 1755. The last lot of common land,
LITTLETON. 47
ern part of the town, was divided in 1730, when
the name New Estate was probably first applied.
About the j'ear 1733 the town of Stow brought
a claim against the proprietors of Littleton for a
large tract of land now part of Boxborough, and
relinquished it only upon the adverse decision of
a lawsuit lasting many years.
After an interim of nearly two years from the
time of Rev. Mr. Shattuck's dismission the Eev.
Daniel Rogers, " son of ye worshipfuU Mr. Danl.
Rogers, Esq.," was ordained minister of the town
March 15, 1731-32. He graduated at Harvard
College in 1725, and before coming to Littleton
preached at Byfield.
With a ciumge of ministers the town began to
talk of building a new meeting-house, and it was
decided that the location be changed to the Ridge
Hill, as the centre of the town was called ; accord-
ingly in 1740 the town built their second meeting-
house, forty by fifty feet in dimension with twenty-
three feet posts, on the site of the present First
Church (Unitarian)
some one thousand acres, lying mostly in the north- sole purpose, apparently, of getting the fine re-
.
It was customary for the men and women to sit
separately in meeting, and to choose a committee
once a year to assign the seats to the men accord-
ing to what each paid, considering also " age and
dignity." General dissatisfaction and an order for
a new seating was often the result of the commit-
tee's first effort. At Alarch meeting, 1742-43, the
town voted "To cut up six feet of the two hind
seats on the women's side next the alley to erect a
pew at the town's cost for (Rev.) Mr. Shattuck
and his wife so long as either of them live in
town."
January 4, 1738-39, the General Court granted
the petition of Peleg Lawrence and others of Groton
to be set off with their estates to Littleton, and the
town bounds were then extended in that direction
from the original Nashobah north line to the pres-
ent bounds between Groton and Littleton.
The desire for political honors does not seem to
have possessed the people of this town to any great
extent in the olden time, for it was onl«y when some
measure directly affecting the town, like a change
of bounds, was to come before the court that it
was thought worth while to send a representativej
to which the town was entitled once in a certain
number of years, and pay his expenses.
The town was repeatedly fined for not being
represented, in consequence of which a represen-
tative would be chosen the follo\ring year for the