Items related to Origins in Williamstown
Excerpt from the beginning: "Williamstown lies in the northwest corner of Massachusetts. Its northern line of five miles in length is, for that distance, the southern line of Vermont. The entire northern line of Massachusetts was long in controversy between that state and New Hampshire, and was finally settled on by the Privy Council in England, March 10, 1740, in these words: “That the northern boundary of Massachusetts be a curved line pursuing the course of the Merrimack River at three miles distance, on the north side thereof, beginning at the Atlantic Ocean and ending at a point due north of Pawtucket Palls, and a straight course drawn from thence due invest, until it meets with his Majesty's other governments." This line was actually run the next year by a surveyor named Richard Hazen, a prominent citizen of Haverhill, on the Merrimack, and accordingly is sometimes called "Hazen's line," and has never since been altered. Pawtucket Palls are the rapids on which the city of Lowell was long afterwards built; but by some means the line to be drawn "due west," from a point three miles north of them, was really drawn about 1° 45' north of due west; so that Massachusetts, so far as Williamstown is concerned, gained thereby more than one-third of the area of the town; otherwise the meadows of the Hoosac, the site of the College, the slopes of Prospect, and all the lands north of a line about midway between the two villages, would have been adjudged to New Hampshire, and afterwards have fallen to Vermont. It was indeed a blessed error of the compass that kept this fine strip of country within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts."
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- PublisherCreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
- Publication date2015
- ISBN 10 1508923051
- ISBN 13 9781508923053
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages320
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