Mrs. Winthrop's Farm

On May 13, 1640, the General Court of Massachusetts Bay granted 3,000 acres "to Mrs. Winthrop, the wife of Mr. John Winthrop, our late Governor, to be at her disposeing, for her and her souns, where they shall desire it, without prejudice to any former grant." Margaret Winthrop was the third wife of Governor John Winthrop, who had already received his own farm of 1,200 acres on the Concord River beside the Dudley Farm. On December 10, 1641 the Court ordered that her 3,000 acres be "layde out by Mr. Flint and Lieut. Willard, with Mr. Oliver or some other skilful in measuring," so that it might not hinder a plantation, and allowed that any part of it "they may purchase of any Indians that have right to it." The Court also gave her leave "to build a house and a hog or goate pen by the lower part of Concord Ryver." When the Court granted Shawshin to Cambridge in June 1642, it excepted the farms already granted, among them "3000 acres to Winthrop."

The farm lay in the angle between the Merrimack River and the east side of the Concord River, below the Pawtucket falls. It was laid out by the surveyor Jonathan Danforth "in a true circle," and took in a part of what is now Lowell, east of the Concord River around Fort Hill and Belvidere, and the adjoining part of Tewksbury. John Farmer, writing in 1816, placed "Mrs. Winthrop's farm of 3000 acres" at "Wamesit, now Tewksbury," extending "from the Indian plantation, on Merrimac river, about 2 1/2 miles below the mouth of Concord river."

The circle overlapped land the Shawshin settlers had already divided. In November 1659 the town laid out a "great common field" on the east side of the Concord River below the great bridge, reaching down the river toward Pawtucket as far as Bacon Brook, in thirty-nine lots of about twenty-two acres. When the line of Mrs. Winthrop's farm was run it was found to extend south of Bacon Brook and cut off the eight northernmost lots. At a town meeting on January 5, 1663/4 (recorded as "5: 11: '63") the town agreed "that those persons that have had their Lands taken away from the common field, by Mrs. Winthrop's farme Nere Concord River, shall have their lands layd out to them, in Lew of the same, upon the playne beyond the mill Brooke, called content Brooke," on the north side of Heath Swamp meadow, and named George Farley, Jonathan Danforth and Henry Jefts to lay them out. The place, near the head of Heath Brook and beyond Content Brook, was afterwards called Recompense Plain.

Part of the circle was the home of the Pawtucket people at Wamesit, where the Concord falls into the Merrimack. In April 1664 a committee of the General Court, Simon Willard, John Parker and Jonathan Danforth as surveyor, laid out "unto the Indians, who are the inhabitants of Waymesick, five hundred acres of land on the east side of Concord River and joyning to the said river and to Merremack River." It ran up the Concord about a mile and three quarters to Bacon Brook, was bounded by that brook on the south "fower score poole," and ran from the mouth of the Concord down the Merrimack 250 poles to a marked red oak. The return noted that "this five hundred acres is part of that three thousand which was layd out to Mrs. Winthrop formerly," and that the return of the 3,000 acres had already allowed one hundred acres "in refference to land the Indians had improoved within the bounds of it." In place of the four hundred acres taken from the farm, the Court allowed her heirs six hundred acres elsewhere. Daniel Gookin, superintendent of the Christian Indians, counted fifteen families, about seventy-five souls, at the praying town of Wamesit in 1674.

The Winthrops did not let the claim lapse. Margaret Winthrop had died in 1647, and in May 1661 the Court considered "the petition of Mr. Deane Winthrope for laying out the lands graunted his mother" together with Billerica's own petition, which it answered with a grant of 4,000 acres to the town. The six hundred acres in lieu of Wamesit were never located. In 1679 Wait Winthrop, a grandson, petitioned the Court that "about the yeare 1661 or 1662 some persons, zealous To settle the Indyans in some civil and ecclesiastical state," had moved the Court to grant part of the land, "called, as I suppose, Wamesset, for an Indian plantacon," ordering other land to be laid out to the family in lieu of it, but "that noe land hath been laid out since for our family." Now that God had "pleaded our Right by expelling the Indian inhabitants and leaving the land in statu quo prius," and some English were petitioning for it, he asked that it "may not be disposed from us." The Court seems not to have favored the petition.

After the war the Wamesit people sold their land. On December 2, 1687 "Wanalanset, Sachem," and others sold to Jonathan Tyng two parcels, one of them on the east side of the Concord River, "the old Planting ground, which the Indians ... used to employ and improve, by planting, fishing, and Dwelling thereon, for many years past," of 212 acres, bounded by the Merrimack "four score pole," running south "to take in the greatest part of the old Fort Hill," bounded south "by the fence of the old Indian field, and West by Concord river" (Middlesex Deeds, Book 16, page 647). Tyng then petitioned the Governor for a confirming grant under "such moderate quit-rents and acknowledgment" as he should think fit, and Hazen writes that Tyng "secured the title" and sold it to Borland.

Billerica claimed an interest of its own. On May 6, 1694 the town appointed John Wilson Sr. and Joseph Tompson "to search the Country Records to find both the grant and the returne of Mr. Winthrop's farm, that lyeth on the mouth of Concord River," and directed the selectmen, with Captain Danforth, "to prosecute the Town's interest in wemessek land to efect, and the town doth engadge to stand by them in the same." Soon after, the town sent Thomas Richardson, Edward Farmer and Joseph Walker Sr. to pull up the stakes and deface the marks of land that "sum persons have eregularly marked out" in the town commons.

Meanwhile the Winthrop heirs sold the farm itself to settlers. Samuel Hunt, a Concord man who was living near the Merrimack by 1689, bought "one-fifth part of the Winthrop farm of 3000 acres" for fifty pounds on February 18, 1691/2. His house near Wamesit was a garrison in the Indian wars, and Hunt's Falls in Lowell and the nearby Hunt's ferry kept his name. The Tewksbury Historical Society records that Wait Winthrop inherited 1,000 acres of the grant. By the 1720s the tract was spoken of as the Wamesit Purchase.

The people on the old Winthrop and Wamesit lands, far from the Billerica meeting house, were the first to ask to be set off. In 1725 Jonathan Bowers, Samuel Hunt and others petitioned for a new town or district embracing the Wamesit lands and the Winthrop farm, described in the Tewksbury Historical Society's account as "the whole Wamesit Purchase of 2,500 acres," and on June 13, 1726 the General Court annexed the petitioners to Chelmsford. Hunt was active again in the movement that made the northerly and northeasterly part of Billerica the town of Tewksbury, incorporated December 23, 1734. The part next to the Merrimack at Hunt's Falls remained in Tewksbury until 1834, when it was set off to Lowell, so that the circle Danforth ran is now divided between Lowell, east of the Concord River, and Tewksbury.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 5: grant of May 13, 1640 to Mrs. Winthrop; order of Dec. 10, 1641; laid out by Jonathan Danforth "in a true circle"
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 7: leave to build a house and hog pen by the lower Concord River; the 1642 Cambridge grant excepts "3000 acres to Winthrop"
3. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 37: the 1659 common field; Mrs. Winthrop's line cut off eight lots south of Bacon Brook; Recompense Plain
4. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 47: General Court of May 22, 1661 on the petitions of Billerica and of Deane Winthrop for the lands granted his mother
5. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 67-68: town vote of 5: 11: 1663 on lands taken from the common field by Mrs. Winthrop's farm
6. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 103-104: Danforth's survey of April 1664 of the 500-acre Wamesit plantation out of Mrs. Winthrop's 3,000 acres
7. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 124: Wanalanset to Jonathan Tyng, Dec. 2, 1687, 212 acres at Fort Hill; Tyng's petition for a grant
8. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 125: Wait Winthrop's petition of 1679 to recover his grandmother's grant
9. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 199: town vote of May 6, 1694 to search for the grant and return of Mr. Winthrop's farm and prosecute the town's interest in Wamesit land
10. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 217: the 1725 petition for a district of the Wamesit lands; petitioners annexed to Chelmsford June 13, 1726
11. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 221: Tewksbury incorporated December 23, 1734
12. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register pp. 75-76, HUNT 1: Samuel Hunt bought one-fifth of the Winthrop farm of 3000 acres for 50 pounds, Feb. 18, 1691-2; his garrison; Hunt's Falls
13. Farmer, Historical Memoir of Billerica (1816): Mrs. Winthrop's farm of 3000 acres at Wamesit, now Tewksbury, from the Indian plantation down the Merrimack
14. Farmer, Historical Memoir of Billerica (1816): the Wamesit praying town bordering Mrs. Winthrop's farm; Fort Hill; fifteen families in 1674
15. Tewksbury Historical Society, Founding of Tewksbury: the 1640 Winthrop grant at Wamesit; Waitstill Winthrop's 1,000 acres; Hunt's Falls section to Lowell in 1834
16. Tewksbury Historical Society, chronological history: the 1725 effort for a town of Wamesit and the Wamesit Purchase

Deed References Expand all

Recorded is Book/Page at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds unless noted.