Set-off of Carlisle

Type	Border change
Date	April 28, 1780
Town	Carlisle

The district of Carlisle, erected April 28, 1780, from the remote parts of Concord, Acton, Chelmsford and Billerica, took the last of the lands Billerica lost to a new municipality: the farms on the west side of the Concord River along the Chelmsford line. The question recurred at intervals for forty-two years before Billerica, in Hazen's words, gave "her youngest daughter a send-off with hearty good-will."

The first petition reached a Billerica town meeting in March 1738 (1737-8 in the reckoning of the time) from "several persons on the westerly side of Concord River" who desired to be set off "to Joyn with part of the Towns of Concord and Chelmsford, to be erected into a Township." After debate the town voted on May 11 its willingness, whenever the General Court should please to erect them into a township, to set them off by a line beginning on the west side of the Concord River thirty poles below the bridge, at Hill's landing place, running to the southwest corner of Andrew Farmer's pasture on the east side of the Treble Cove path, and thence to the Chelmsford line at the northeast corner of Jonathan Snow's land. Concord, at an adjourned meeting of March 7, 1738, declined to act on the similar request of Zechariah Blood and others.

When the General Court made Carlisle a district on April 19, 1754, it was formed from the northerly part of Concord alone, including the Blood farms, and was bounded on Acton and Billerica; no Billerica land was taken. In 1755 Billerica withdrew the consent it had once given. The district was soon divided over the site of its meeting-house, and in 1756 Ephraim Keyes and fifty-two others from Carlisle, Chelmsford, Billerica and Acton petitioned for a new town of half the land between the Concord and Chelmsford meeting-houses. Billerica answered through Thomas Kidder, chosen by the town, that it had lately built a meeting-house, settled a minister and built a large bridge over the Concord River, that its polls were reduced to 240, that it had already lost about half of Bedford, all of Tewksbury and several hundred acres to Wilmington, and that the proposed line would come within two miles of its meeting-house; William Shed and thirteen other inhabitants of Billerica remonstrated that they wished to remain in the town. A joint committee reported the petition unreasonable, and by an order in Council of October 6, 1756, the district was annexed again to Concord. Hazen dates the dissolution January 1757, when the court authorized the last assessors and constables of the district to settle its accounts.

Hazen describes a further petition, dated June 1, 1757, with fifty-one signatures headed by Timothy Wilkins, asking for a town or district of half the lands between the Concord and Chelmsford meeting-houses, with the meeting-house to stand where the dividing lines crossed. Its Billerica signers were Abraham Duren, the widow Mary Duren, Ebenezer Hardy, Amos Kidder, John Kidder, Ebenezer Kittredge, Joseph, Joshua and Nathan Monroe, George Nickles, and Edward, Job, Leonard and Thomas Spalding. In March 1760 Billerica voted to set off the inhabitants on the west side of the Concord River by a line from a stake and stones near an old cellar on the Chelmsford line, to a white oak near the house of William Bonner, to the southwest corner of William Shed's land, and on past Benjamin Parker's barn to the Concord line; Hazen judged this hardly favorable, since it kept the new town from reaching the Concord River. A petition of June 1, 1772, from Jeremiah Andrews, John Robbins, Samuel Green and fifty-four others of Concord, Billerica, Chelmsford and Acton, describing about seventy-six families who had erected a meeting-house, was dismissed on January 21, 1773.

Billerica gave its final consent on March 1, 1779, when a committee reported the bounds desired: from the Chelmsford line at the end of the wall between the land of Lieutenant Jonathan Spaulding and Lieutenant Asa Spaulding, east forty degrees south half a mile to the Rangeway, southeasterly to the northwest corner of the land of John Nickles Jr., between Nickles's land and Asa Spaulding's to Nickles's southeast corner, south thirty-one degrees west half a mile to a heap of stones in Captain Daniel Stickney's land, southeasterly to the northeast corner of the land of Issachar Andrews, and between Andrews's land and that of Joseph Hill to the Concord River. The town voted that Joseph Munroe, Joshua Munroe, Nathan Munroe, John Henry, John Henry 2nd, Josiah Heald, Aaron Munroe, James Nickles, Joseph Nickles, Jonas Robbins and Asa Spaulding Jr., "with their land, and all included within that line, be set off as a Township." Hazen notes that the list omits Timothy Crosby, Charles Hans, Ebenezer Hardy, Joseph Osgood, Levi Parker and Nathaniel Parker, who also went. The 1776 tax list had already described Charles Hans, Ebenezer Hardy, John Henry Jr. and Benjamin Hill as living "in Carlisle."

A petition dated March 8, 1779, from John Green and others, described about ninety dwellings and 102 families within the proposed bounds, and reported that Billerica had voted to release all its families and lands within them. The act passed April 28, 1780, recited the difficulties of the inhabitants of the remote parts of Concord, Acton, Chelmsford and Billerica, who had for several years paid for preaching among themselves, and erected them into the district of Carlisle, a tract of about 10,124 acres whose bounds began at Issachar Andrews's corner on the Concord River and returned up the river 855 poles to that point. The district had the powers of a town except that of sending its own representative, joining Acton in electing one, and was to pay one-sixth of the upkeep of the North Bridge in Concord. Six men near the line were left to choose within a year whether to be included.

Carlisle was the only district in the Commonwealth when the Constitution of 1780 was adopted, and it remained one until it was incorporated as a town on February 18, 1805. Its later boundary changes, a part annexed to Concord on September 12, 1780, a part to Chelmsford on March 1, 1783, and a part of Chelmsford annexed to Carlisle on February 17, 1865, did not involve Billerica. With Carlisle, Hazen wrote, "ceased the process of dismemberment of Ancient Billerica"; the town's circumference, 35.5 miles in its ancient bounds, had been reduced to about twenty-five.

People

Ebenezer Hardy: Billerica signer of the 1757 petition; went to Carlisle in 1780
George Nickles: Billerica signer of the 1757 petition
Nathan Munroe: Named in Billerica's vote of March 1, 1779 setting him off to Carlisle
James Nickles: Named in Billerica's vote of March 1, 1779 setting him off to Carlisle
Charles Hans: Billerica resident 'in Carlisle' on the 1776 tax list; went to Carlisle in 1780

Set-off of Carlisle

Set-off of Carlisle

People

References