The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, No. VI. June, 1884 | Page 9

colony of Massachusetts Bay,
The charter was drawn up in England at a period when little was known
in regard to the interior of this country; and the boundary lines,
necessarily, were very indefinite. The Merrimack River was an
important factor in fixing the limits of the grant, as the northern

boundary of Massachusetts was to be a line three miles north of any
and every part of it. At the date of the charter, the general direction of
the river was not known, but it was incorrectly assumed to be easterly
and westerly. As a matter of fact, the course of the Merrimack is
southerly, for a long distance from where it is formed by the union of
the Winnepeseogee and the Pemigewasset Rivers, and then it turns and
runs twenty-five or thirty miles in a northeasterly direction to its mouth;
and this deflexion in the current caused the dispute. The difference
between the actual and the supposed direction was a matter of little
practical importance so long as the neighboring territory remained
unsettled, or so long as the two provinces were essentially under one
government; but as the population increased it became an exciting and
vexatious question. Towns were chartered by Massachusetts in territory
claimed by New Hampshire, and this action led to bitter feeling and
provoking legislation. Massachusetts contended for the land
"nominated in the bond," which would carry the line fifty miles
northward into the very heart of New Hampshire; and on the other hand
that province strenuously opposed this view of the case, and claimed
that the line should run, east and west, three miles north of the mouth of
the river. At one time, a royal commission was appointed to consider
the subject, but their labors produced no satisfactory result. At last the
matter was carried to England for a decision, which was rendered by
the king on March 5, 1739-40. His judgment was final, and in favor of
New Hampshire. It gave that province not only all the territory in
dispute, but a strip of land fourteen miles in width, lying along her
southern border, mostly west of the Merrimack, which she had never
claimed. This strip was the tract of land between the line running east
and west, three miles north of the southernmost trend of the river, and a
similar line three miles north of its mouth. By the decision twenty-eight
townships were taken from Massachusetts and transferred to New
Hampshire. The settlement of this disputed question was undoubtedly a
public benefit, although it caused, at the time, a great deal of hard
feeling. In establishing the new boundary Pawtucket Falls, situated now
in the city of Lowell, and near the most southern portion of the river's
course, was taken as the starting-place; and the line which now
separates the two States was run west, three miles north of this point. It
was surveyed officially in the spring of 1741.

The new boundary passed through the original Groton grant, and cut
off a triangular portion of its territory, now within the limits of Nashua,
and went to the southward of Groton Gore, leaving that tract of land
wholly in New Hampshire.
A few years previously to this time the original grant had undergone
other dismemberment, when a slice of its territory was given to
Westford. It was a long and narrow tract of land, triangular in shape,
with its base resting on Stony Brook Pond, now known as Forge Pond,
and coming to a point near Millstone Hill, where the boundary lines of
Groton, Westford, and Tyngsborough intersect. The Reverend Edwin R.
Hodgman, in his History of Westford, says:--
Probably there was no computation of the area of this triangle at any
time. Only four men are named as the owners of it, but they, it is
supposed, held titles to only a portion, and the remainder was wild, or
"common," land, (Page 25.)
In the Journal of the House of Representatives (page 9), September 10,
1730, there is recorded:--
A petition of _Jonas Prescot, Ebenezer Prescot, Abner Kent_, and
_Ebenezer Townsend_, Inhabitants of the Town of _Groton_, praying,
That they and their Estates, contained in the following Boundaries,
_viz._ beginning at the Northwesterly Corner of Stony Brook Pond,
from thence extending to the Northwesterly Corner of _Westford_,
commonly called _Tyng's_ Corner, and so bound Southerly by said
Pond, may be set off to the Town of _Westford_, for Reasons
mentioned. Read and _Ordered_, That the Petitioners within named,
with their Estates, according to the Bounds before recited, be and
hereby are to all Intents and Purposes set off from the Town of
_Groton_, and annexed to the said Town of Westford.
Sent up for Concurrence.
This order received the concurrence of the council, and was signed by
the governor, on the same