Proprietors "Documentary History of Suffield, by Sheldon, 1879"

HISTORY OF SUFFIELD.

Each had from three to five different pieces of land in different parts of the Town, as interest or fancy dictated.
   The allotments were usually made in quadrangular form of various widths and lengths. The corners were bounded by a bush, a stump or a tree, all perishable and soon likely to furnish a crop of disputed boundaries. This manner of laying out lands left many nooks and corners of undivided and forgotten land; afterward to be enclosed and appropriated by adjoining proprietors.
   For this and other reasons the original grants* were proverbially certain to contain the amount of land called for by the record.
   Thirty years elapsed before the First Division lands were alloted and occupied.
   Land was abundant, and all had the free use of the Common for wood, timber and pasturage.
   None of the lands of Suffield were laid out with the use of the compass, except the mountain in 1742, and the land west of it (south of the Old Westfield Line) in 1759.
   The surveyor's compass was not in use in the Connecticut Valley¥ until about the year 1700. Land measurers had only a measuring chain, and perhaps a square to form right angles.
   In that year the Conn. General Court ¥¥ appointed "Public surveyours" for each of its four counties. Caleb Stanley, Jr., was appointed for Hartford County. These surveyors provided themselves with the compass, and other suitable instruments for measuring land.

PROPRIETORS.

   The following may be considered a complete list of those persons who had grants of land from the Committee: and with a few exceptions were accounted "Proprietors" in subsequent divisions of Land within the Town.
   Less than one half the number § paid the purchase money; the majority having their land on credit, as an   inducement to settle the balance was used to pay "Town Charges" for the benefit of all.
__________

* 1744. "Voted : That all former surveys of land made in the Town of Suffield, before Captain Winchell was chosen land measurer; that were laid out on good rights, he confirmed to the owners of said lands, although large measure. That being the general practice of former land measurers to make large measure." Proprietors' Book, Vol. 1, p. 43.
¥ Judd's Hadley.
¥¥ Conn. Col. Rec. Vol. IV.
§ See Major Pynchon's account.

Home

Pages