Page:Anne Bradstreet and her time.djvu/191

Rh CHAPTER IX.

HAT causes may have led to the final change of location we have no means of knowing definitely, save that every Puritan desired to increase the number of churches as much as possible; a tendency inherited to its fullest by their descendants. On the 4th of March, 1634-5, "It is ordered that the land aboute Cochichowicke, shall be reserved for an inland plantacon, & that whosoever will goe to inhabite there, shall have three yeares imunity from all taxes, levyes, publique charges & services whatsoever (millitary dissipline onely excepted), etc."

Here is the first suggestion of what was afterward to become Andover, but no action was taken by Bradstreet until 1638, when in late September, "Mr. Bradstreet, Mr. Dudley, Junior, Captain Dennison, Mr. Woodbridge and eight others, are allowed (upon their petition) to begin a plantation at Merrimack."

This plantation grew slowly. The Bradstreets lingered at Ipswich, and the formal removal, the last of many changes, did not take place until September, 1644. Simon Bradstreet, the second son, afterward minister at New London, Conn., whose manuscript diary is a curious picture of the time, gives one or two details which aid in fixing the date.