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

CHAPTER XV.
PRECINCTS—MR. EDWARDS' SALARY—GREAT AWAKENING.
Uneasy Mill Rlvei' was trying to overstep
Mill River Overstepping
its Bounds.
jt allotted bounds, near Bartlett's Gate, at
the lower end of Pleasant Street, and
measures were taken in 1749, to prevent anticipated trouble.
In all probability the place where the greatest mischief was
expected, must have been near the turn by which the river
was diverted from its former course, the stream naturally
seeking to return to its old channel. It is quite evident
that the bed of Mill River above or near the old South
Street bridge, was formerly many feet to the south of the
channel in which its current now flows. Less than a generation
ago, a deep guUey, evidently once the bed of the
stream, extended across the home lot of the late Mr. Elijah
Kingsley. In 1766, there existed a strip of land, an island,
on the north side of the river between the gas works and
the bridge, of sufficient size to warrant a vote in townmeeting
permitting Capt. William Lyman to "fence and
feed the beach above Bathsheba Hull's house." She was a
negress, and lived in a little house on the river bank just
above the bridge. Four years later there was danger of
the river's "shifting its course again into the old Mill
Trench northward of the Island where Amos Hull dwelt."
The surveyors were ordered to prevent the anticipated
change by '^hedging or otherwise." This island was
formed by the trench, dug in 1660, to carry off the waste
water from the first grist-mill, erected a short distance up
the river, and through which it would seem part of the
current then flowed. Much of this beach has undoubtedly
been transferred to the other side of the river, and all evidence
of the old trench has long since disappeared.