APPENDIX B. 



Emigration from the Inland Towns in Southern New England. 



1720-1820. 



Shifting of Population Withifi Southern New England — 1720-1775. 



There had been a steady expansion of population in Massachusetts from the 

 oldest settlements on the coast toward new lands to the westward, until by 1720 

 all the best land east of the Connecticut Valley had been occupied. The new 

 home-seekers wanted not only land but good land; hence many parts of Worces- 

 ter County were left unsettled until a later period. ' In Connecticut the oldest 

 settlements along the Connecticut River at Hartford, Windsor and Wethers- 

 field, and the colony at New Haven, had radiated their surplus in all directions. 

 Before 1720, however, most of the emigrants from these original settlements 

 had gone to the east and the north where they met the settlers from Massachu- 

 setts and filled up the townships in Windham, Tolland and New London Counties. 

 About 1720 or 1730 the pressure of population began to be felt in this region, too, 

 and the tide of emigration swung to the west and northwest. Litchfield County 

 in Connecticut then became the destination of the surplus. So we find in the 

 years 1719-1721 families from Lebanon joining with those from Hartford and Wind- 

 sor in settling the new town of Litchfield.- A similar instance of the joining 

 of the streams of emigration from the newer eastern towns with those from the 

 first settlements is found in the settlement of Sharon by families from Colchester 

 and Lebanon together with families from New Haven.' 



The Connecticut emigrants did not, however, remain in Litchfield County 

 until all its lands had been taken up, but following along up the Housatonic Val- 

 ley, they invaded the new lands in Berkshire and Hampshire Counties in western 

 Massachusetts, meeting there the families arriving from eastern Massachusetts, 

 as well as some Dutch emigrants from New York. Se we find in the town of Wales 

 settlers from Salem, Palmer and Grafton in Massachusetts and from Windham, 

 Tolland and Union in Connecticut. In New Marlborough emigrants from North- 

 ampton and Dedham in Massachusetts met with those from Canterbury and 

 Suffield in Connecticut; in Sandisfield the colonists were from Enfield and Wethers- 

 field and from Cape Cod towns.^ In this early colonization Rhode Island seems 



' See Mathews, Lois Kimball. The Expansion of New England. Boston, 

 1909. p. 79. 



2 Ibid. p. 92. 



' Pease and Niles, Gazetteer, p. 261. This settlement was made in 1738-1739. 

 From Durham, in Hartford County, settlers went to Torrington in 1737. See 

 Fowler, W. C, History of Durham. Hartford, 1867, p. 209. This town lost 

 so steadily by emigration that its population increased from 1,076 in 1774 to only 

 1,101 in 1810. 



* Mathews, Op. cit., pp. 79-80. 



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