Set-off of Bedford

Type	Set-off
Date	May 14, 1728 to September 23, 1729
Town	Bedford

Bedford was incorporated as a town on September 23, 1729, from the southerly part of Billerica and the northeasterly part of Concord. It was the first of the separations that, in Hazen's words, left the old town "shorn of more than half of her ancient territory." The families in the south part of Billerica, on the old Winthrop, Shawshin and Lane farms along the Shawshin River, lived several miles from the Billerica meeting-house, and together with their neighbors in the northeast corner of Concord they had been obliged to hire a minister of their own for the winter season.

Billerica heard of the movement early. On May 14, 1728, a town meeting voted that it "will act no farther at this time on the petition of the southerly part of the town as to their being set off as a Township." On June 18, 1728, the General Court received the petition of Andrew Watkins, John Wilkins, John Wilson and a considerable number of others, setting forth their great difficulties by reason of their distance from the meeting-houses in Concord and Billerica, and ordered the petitioners to serve the towns of Billerica and Lexington with copies so that they might show cause against it. In July the court, on a further petition, directed the committee already sent to view the lines of the proposed Wamesit parish to go over the proposed bounds of the new town as well, and the committee later reported a line after notifying Billerica and hearing the parties. Concord consented without objection. Billerica, on January 27, 1729, chose a committee of eleven, empowered to agree with "our brethren, the petitioners of the southward part of our Town" on the line between them if they could, and otherwise to petition the General Court. No agreement was reached, and on April 2, 1729, the committee asked the court that the new town "may not be extended according to the lines set forth" and that some of the families might remain in Billerica. That petition was dismissed.

The act erecting the town of Bedford was passed and published on September 23, 1729, at the same session that made Westford a town out of Chelmsford. On the Billerica side its line ran from a white oak marked W F B, east of the highway from Bacon's to Billerica, in a straight line to the northwest corner of the farm of Jonathan Bacon, then to the northwest corner of the farm of Christopher Page, which was kept whole within Bedford, and then straight to the northwest corner of Matthew Whipple's farm on the Concord River, the river forming the westerly bound. Hazen describes the line of separation as beginning at the Two Brothers on the Concord River, following the line of the Winthrop farm or diverging a little to the north of it, and running nearly as at present to Woburn (now Burlington). The act gave the new town three years to build a meeting-house and settle a minister.

Hazen held that Bedford was, as Billerica's own petition of 1729 said, "principally taken out of the town of Billerica." The old Concord line ran parallel to Bedford's Main Street and sixty-four rods south of it, so that about three-fifths of Bedford, nearly or quite four thousand acres, had been Billerica land. No list of the families transferred survives; Brown's History of Bedford counts seventeen signers of the petition to Concord and a similar number on the Billerica side. Of the first members of the Bedford church, Hazen, following Shattuck, credits to Billerica Obed Abbott, Jonathan Bacon, Thomas Dinsmore, Samuel Fitch, Jacob Kendall, Benjamin Kidder, Job Lane, John Lane, Christopher Page, Nathaniel Page and Israel Putnam, and adds Josiah Fassett and John Wilson. Samuel Fitch was the first town clerk, and Israel Putnam the first constable of the town and the first deacon of its church. On September 26, 1729, the General Court empowered Jonathan Bacon, as a principal inhabitant, to call the first town meeting, at which he was chosen moderator.

Because no Province tax had been laid on the new town for that year, the court on September 26, 1729, empowered the assessors of Billerica, Concord and Chelmsford to assess the inhabitants and estates in Bedford and Westford that had belonged to their towns and to commit the lists to the new towns' constables, and in November it gave the same power for that year's county tax. Hazen takes the Province tax assessed in 1729, £125 5s. 8d., of which the part belonging to Bedford was £18 12s. 3d., as an approximate measure of the division of Billerica's property.

The line was changed once, by consent of both towns. By an act passed February 26, 1767, Edward Stearns, whose house was much nearer the Bedford meeting-house than Billerica's, was set off with his farm from Billerica to Bedford on the petition of Stearns and Bedford's agents, Billerica having agreed. The new line began at a maple stump at Page's Corner, ran straight to the southeast corner of the land of Lieutenant Isaac Stearns, followed a ditch to Edward Stearns's northeast corner, then an old ditch and wall to a large rock about two poles southwest of the sawmill, and then followed the brook to the Concord River. Hazen and Brown both date the arrangement 1766. Brown states that this addition brought the landmark rocks called the Two Brothers into Bedford, while Hazen places the beginning of the 1729 line at the Two Brothers.

People

Jonathan Bacon: His farm marked the 1729 line; empowered to call Bedford's first town meeting and chosen moderator
Christopher Page: Farm kept whole within Bedford by the 1729 act; founding church member from Billerica
Samuel Fitch: Billerica man who became Bedford's first town clerk
Israel Putnam: Billerica man who became Bedford's first constable and first deacon
Edward Stearns: Set off with his farm from Billerica to Bedford by the act of February 26, 1767
Isaac Stearns: Lieutenant whose land marked the 1767 Billerica and Bedford line

Set-off of Bedford

Set-off of Bedford

People

References