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188 the only member of the little settlement who possessed any considerable property, but it is evident that he shared the same discomforts in the beginning. In 1658 there is record of a house which he had owned, being sold to another proprieter, Richard Sutton, and this was probably the log-house built before their coming, and lived in until the larger one had slowly been made ready.

The town had been laid out on the principle followed in all the early settlements, and described in one of the early volumes of the Massachusetts Historical Society Collections. Four, or at the utmost, eight acres, constituted a homestead, but wood-lots and common grazing lands, brought the amount at the disposal of each settler to a sufficient degree for all practical needs. It is often a matter of surprise in studying New England methods to find estates which may have been owned by the same family from the beginning, divided in the most unaccountable fashion, a meadow from three to five miles from the house, and wood-lots and pasture at equally eccentric distances. But this arose from the necessities of the situation. Homes must be as nearly side by side as possible, that Indians and wild beasts might thus be less dangerous and that business be more easily transacted. Thus the arrangement of a town was made always to follow this general plan:

"Suppose ye towne square 6 miles every waye. The houses orderly placed about ye midst especially ye meeting house, the which we will suppose to be ye center of ye wholl circumference. The greatest difficulty is for the employment of ye parts most remote, which (if better direction doe not arise) may be this: