Hello, I've mentioned the "history of Billerica" (MA/US) before, and it mentions that, when the "plantations" were first being founded in the early 1600's, there was only one way to "find" them. The men had to walk the Native American footpaths. These footpaths were quite literally only wide enough for your two feet to walk on. And rivers and lakes were very important for the Native Americans, so the footpaths would go to them. I'm guessing that, when the people arriving in the MA Bay Colony from 1620's 1650's, they only found "deep, dark woods" - once they got away from the shoreline. So, it is hoped they brought axes and saws with them. As that would have been all that was available for building a hut or cabin for them to live in. Billerica was founded in 1655, and it probably had couples moving there in the 1630's. The very first couple (men) first "walked" from Cambridge or Woburn to the small Shawsheen River and set up a cabin there. That was the first river they came to. Later they would take walks and find the Concord River, and that was a better place to settle down. But, men or couples settling in the "North Shore" area of Boston would have found the much larger Merrimack River first. Just a reminder that the "Merrimack" is a very long river and "Natives" could have traveled up and down through NH and then across MA to the ocean. I just tried to find a page which listed the very first townships / settlements in the MA Bay Colony, and found this page about the Colony. Further down the page is the list I was looking for. Note that many of the first settlements were given Native American "words." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Bay_Colony Oh, I just noticed that the list of when the settlements were first settled - and not when they were founded. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth_Colony A picture on that site reminded me that the very first people arriving - stayed near the shore. Oh, just found this page which shows which part of the U.K. the Pilgrams came from: http://www.scarborough.k12.me.us/wis/teachers/dtewhey/webquest/colonial/original_homes_of_pilgrims.htm This page shows what a "home" would have looked like in the 1620's: http://gonewengland.about.com/library/blplimoth2.htm A woman famous in early history was Anne Marbury Hutchinson. A read a brief biography of her, and she had left a "nice little house, with a nice little yard, with a white picket fence, which went around the nice flowers and bushes in her yard," etc. And, when she finally arrived with the rest of her children and saw the "shack" they would live in, she sat down and cried. (I sort of find this story hard to believe. As the very first men to "view" the New England shoreline would have gone back to England and "told" other people what they saw.) Betty (near Lowell, MA, USA) List Administrator FYI: http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~sam/marbury/anne.html (Anne's husband, William, was not related to my ancestor, George HUTCHINSON, back in England.)