The Rangers Part 3 Source: History of Charlestown, NH - Fort No. 4 by Rev. Henry H. Saunderson 1876 Chapter 5 p.93 During the continuance of the wars no permanent settle- ment had been made north and west of Charlestown beyond the Connecticut River. On the 3d of January 1749, Gov. Wentworth had chartered the township of Bennington, now in the State of Vermont, but which was then supposed to be included in the territory of New Hampshire; and be- tween that time and the 6th of April 1754, had made grants of fourteen other townships, west of the Connecticut River. But hostilities being resumed, no further grants were asked for nor made. A few settlements had been made west of the river and immediately bordering upon it, which had been only temporary, as they had been broken up during the war. Among these were Rockingham and Westminster. The settle- ment which had been first made in 1744 in the present town of Putney, and which had been renewed after the peace of Aix la Chapelle, was also nearly if not quite abandoned. A small settlement moreover opposite Charles- town on unchartered lands in the present township of Springfield, made in 1753, was given up.* The author footnotes here: * I find the following in Hall's History of Eastern Vermont, p. 116. "In the year 1753 before the commencement of the French war and eight years previous to the date of the Charter of the town of Springfield, Daniel Sawtell, Jacob Sawtell Oliver Sawtell, Combs House, Samuel Douglas, Oliver Farnsworth, Joseph Douglas, Noah Potter, Nathaniel Powers, Simeon Powers, and Simeon Powers, Jr. being unable to purchase lands in any of the inhabited towns of his Majesty's provinces, while the lands in said Springfield lay in the open wilderness, waste and untilled, without yielding any revenue to his Majesty, or profits to his subjects for the support of themselves, their wives and their children, enter upon, till and improve part of the lands in said Springfield. During the war they defended their possessions at the peril of their lives and by the loss of the lives some of their friends and neighbors and were as a guard to those places located further down the river which were exposed to the rage of an heathen and savage foe. After the reduction of Canada and the defeat of their enemies they renewed their labors with greater energy, and succeeded in establishing a prosperous and attractive settlement. The first charter of the town was issued under the seal of New Hampshire, on the 20th of August 1761." "At the conclusion of the war, Daniel Sawtell and his associates petitioned Gov. Wentworth for a patent of the lands which they had improved, or for such part thereof as he should think fit." From some unaccountable reason the Governor refused to assent to their request and on the 20th of August 1761 gave a Charter of the whole town- ship to Gideon Lyman and sixty one associates. Not one of the original settlers was named in the instrument, and thus they were placed entirely at the mercy of men who were at liberty to dictate whatever terms they might deem most subservient to their own interests." "Without any regard to the great dangers, and hard labor which the early settlers had undergone in maintaining possession of, and preparing for cultivation, the lands which they had so long considered their own, the New Hampshire grantees sued out writs of ejectment and ob- tained judgements against them." Executions were then issued, their possessions taken, they themselves were threatened with imprisonment, in default of payment of the costs and charges of the suits which had been de- cided against them, and their families were thereby brought to distress and want. Subsequently Nathaniel Powers and twenty nine others, of whom a portion were the original settlers, applied to Lieutenant Governor Cadwallader Colden of New York, asking a recognition of their right; but like the former, it met with a similar reception and New York also finally gave a Charter to Gideon Lyman and his associates." B. H. Hall. On the conquest of Canada, Walpole on the east side of the river had only two families resident in it; those of John Kilburn and Colonel Benjamin Bellows; and during the war the township of Westmoreland had been entirely deserted. But as soon as, by the reduction of Canada, it was conceived that actual hostilities were over, most of the original settlers immediately returned bringing with them large accessions to their numbers; and the forests, amid which the sounds of war only, had so long been heard, began once more to resound with the echoes of civilized life. While the wars continued with the French and Indians numerous bodies of troops passed and repassed through the country now known as the State of Vermont. The soldiers perceived the fertility of the soil and immedi- ately upon the cessation of hostilities a great crowd of adventurers and speculators became eager for the possession of those lands, and numerous applications for charters of them were made to Governor Wentworth. The applications were so numerous and the surveys were extended so rapidly that, during the year 1761, not less than sixty townships were granted on the west, and eight- een on the east side of the Connecticut River. As the Governor reserved five hundred acres in every township for his own especial use, and often in addition, received no inconsiderable gratuities from the grantees, he was not less eager, on account of his personal profits in the matter, to bestow grants than the people were to obtain them. Therefore, scarcely two years more had elapsed, before the number of townships on the west side of the river amounted in all to one hundred and thirty-eight; when it having been decided by the King, "That the western bank of the Connecticut River from where it enters the Province of the Massachusetts Bay, as far north as the forty-fifth degree of latitude to be the boundary line between the two provinces of New Hampshire and New York." No more charters were given of townships in that region. ____________________________________________________ Transcribed by Janice Farnsworth