Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 9.djvu/297

 Groton Plantation.

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��incorporated on May 25, 1655, and Dunstable on Oct. 15, 1673, ^"^ no part of it came within the limits of this town. The eastern boundary of Groton originally ran northerly through Massa- poag Pond, and continued into the present Hmits of Nashua, N.H. (pp. 17, 18.)

A brief statement of the boundary question between Massachusetts and New Hampshire is here given.

During many years the dividing line between the two Provinces was the subject of controversy. The cause of dispute dated back to the time when the original grant was made to the Col- ony of Massachusetts Bay. The char- ter 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 some- what 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 as- sumed to be easterly and westerly. As a matter of fact, the course of the Mer- riiT^ck is southerly for a long distance from where it is formed by the union of the Winnepesaukee and the Pemige- wasset Rivers, and then it turns and runs twenty-five or thirty miles in a north-easterly 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 impor- tance, so long as the neighboring ter- ritory 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 ver)^ 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, 1 739-40. 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, Paw- tucket 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 ofificially in the

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