FOREST COMMISSIONER S REPORT. 4I 



The first in the year 1643. to Humphrey Chadbourne, of a 

 tract now in the town of South Berwick. In the same year 

 another tract to Broughton. In 1650 another to Thomas Spen- 

 cer. These were all in Kittery, which then included also the 

 towns of South Berwick, and Berwick, though the limits, as 

 they at present exist, do not appear to have been exactly defined. 



Proceeding eastward, the next conveyance by the Indians is 

 of two tracts on Saco river, made in 1660 and 1661, to Walter 

 Phillips. These grants were very indefinite in their limits, and 

 the extent of country intended to be conveyed is not easy, at the 

 present day, to ascertain. They cover the former grant to 

 Vines and Oldham, and probably that to Lewis and Benython, 

 but do not appear to have been used as adversary to those 

 grants. Three other deeds from the Indians, viz., one to Bush 

 and Turbell of 4 miles square, in the present town of Lyman, 

 one to Francis Small, of the lands between the great and little 

 Ossipee rivers, and another to Francis Small and Nicholas 

 Shapleigh, of lands in Shapleigh, appear some of them to set 

 some limits to the indefinite extent of those to Phillips, and, with 

 that, included nearly the whole of the interior of the present 

 county of York, with the exception of some few smaller tracts 

 and parcels, which were afterwards sold by Massachusetts. 

 Eastward of these, was a grant to John Alger, of a tract in 

 Scarborough, the title under which is still good. 



In 1654, a deed was obtained from the Indians to Thomas 

 Purchase, of a tract on Androscoggin river, which has since 

 "been known by the name of the Pejepscot claim. The limits 

 of this tract interfered with other titles, and were strongly con- 

 tested ; and after long and expensive law-suits, were finally 

 determined to extend as high up the river as to Minot, on the 

 west, and Leeds on the east sides. Besides this, the towns on 

 the Kennebeck, and the sea-coast, to Damariscotta, were all 

 covered by different purchases from the Indians, in smaller 

 parcels, between the years 1643 ^"<^1 1666. The boundaries of 

 these purchases, being, in general, loosely defined, and inter- 

 fering with each other, as well as with the grants from the 

 Council of Plymouth, formed fruitful sources of litigation and 

 distress ; and it was not until long after the revolution, that 

 the conflicting claims became, in any degree, defined and limited, 



