History of Northampton, Massachusetts, from its settlement in 1654;

524 HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTON. [1727.
The Rates ordered In February, 1727, no report having been
to be Collected. made by the special committee, the Council
ordered "that the Commissioners of Sewers,
or those of them that survive do proceed, and that the
rates be collected." This ended the controversy, and the
river still runs in the channel provided by the commission,
greatl}^ to the benefit of the entire south meadow.
The commissiouers
ask Pay for their
In accordance with the order of the author-
jties, the commissioncrs reported the amount
of labor they had performed, and their accounts
were allowed. Samuel Partridge, John White and
Peter Montague, sought compensation for six days' work
each, and Ebenezer Pomeroy and Ebenezer Wright for
eight days each ; they also desired payment for time and
expense in making their defense. This claim probably
covered only the time occupied in closing up the accounts
and making the assessment.
Land in the old Though the towu refuscd to pay any por-
Bed of the River ^iou of the cxpeusc of this imdertaking, it
Town. was quite ready to take advantage of certain
benefits accruing from changing the
river channel. The fact that the town voted in 1720 to
"Sell the Land where the Mill River formerly Run,"
proves conclusively that the course of the river had been
permanently changed previous to that date. Some of the
land was sold, some granted to abutters, certain portions
were given as compensation for making meadow fences,
and for other duties for which the town paid in land. ^
n n /^ >9 Joseph Hawley, the first of the
/l^/P ^n-dy^K/? 1/* i^^6 who came to Northamp-
^ n ton, and grandfather of Hon.
Joseph Hawley, the renowned
patriot and statesman, died in 1711. He was in his fifty-
1 During the Revolutionary war, a detachment of Hessian soldiers, prisoners captured
from Bourgoyne's army, was quartered here, and there is a tradition that one
of the ofScers, an engineer, suggested the feasibility of turning the course of the
river, and that under his direction, and by the troops under his command, that labor
was performed. Hessian prisoners were billeted here after the Battle of Bennington,
and they may have been employed in cleaning, straightening and enlarging the
channel, but the work of turning the stream had been accomplished between fifty
and sixty years before that date.