384 Percy Wells Bidwell 



to have taken little part. It had but a little over 7,000 people in 1708, and al- 

 though much of its soil was unfertile, yet its commercial interests were so pros- 

 perous in this period that it succeeded in retaining nearly all of its natural in- 

 crease. Consequently its population increased very rapidly, amounting to over 

 40,000 in 1755.' 



Beginning oj Movement to Northern New England. 



In 1760 emigration began in earnest to lands outside the borders of the states 

 of southern New England. The fall of Quebec in 1758 brought the war between 

 England and France in this country practically to an end. With the fear of hos- 

 tile attack, especially from the Indians, thus removed, large numbers of settlers 

 began to move into the northern states. In New Hampshire, between 1760 and 

 1775, one hundred new towns were planted by colonists from Massachusetts, 

 Rhode Island and Connecticut. In Maine, ninety-four towns were founded be- 

 tween 1759 and 1776, principally by settlers from Massachusetts. In Vermont 

 in the same period seventy-four new towns were settled.^ Connecticut people 

 went in great numbers to new homes along the upper vaUey of their great river, 

 often giving the new town the name of the old home from which they had come. 

 In Vermont alone there are now forty towns whose names repeat those of 

 Connecticut.* 



Even before the Revolution, the Delaware and Susquehanna companies 

 had been organized in Connecticut and had conveyed hundreds of famihes from 

 that state to new lands in northeastern Pennsylvania. The craze for emigration 

 had led to an ill-fated attempt of some four hundred families from towns on the 

 Connecticut River to colonize lands on the Yazoo River in Mississippi. A tem- 

 porary check to the outward movement is observable during the Revolution. 

 Even before the conclusion of peace, however, a veritable rush of emigration 

 began to new lands in the West, in New York state and in Ohio.'' In Pease and 

 Niles' description of Connecticut we read: "The spirit of emigration which has 

 prevailed so extensively in this State, disclosed itself previously to the Revolu- 

 tionary war; emigration at this period being directed to the present counties 

 of Dutchess and Columbia, in the State of New York, and the counties border- 

 ing upon Connecticut River in the State of New Hampshire. After the war, 

 the spirit of emigration revived, and was principally directed to the western 

 section of New Hampshire, and the territory now comprising the State of Ver- 

 mont; a large proportion of the original inhabitants of these sections of our coun- 

 try being from Connecticut. Within the last thirty years (written in 1819), 



' Censuses were taken in Rhode Island in 1708, 1730, 1748, 1755, 1774, 1776, 

 1782. These were all reprinted in the Report on the Census of Rhode Island, 

 1865. Prepared by Edwin M. Snow, Providence, 1867, p. xxxii. 



^ These facts are from Mathews, E.xpansion of New England, pp. 108-115. 



* See Memorial History of Hartford County, I. 203. 



^ The inland newspapers such as the Massachusetts Spy, the Windham Herald, 

 the Pittsfield Sun, and the Litchfield Monitor contain regularly advertisements 

 of lands for sale in New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Ohio in the years 

 1800-1810. The advertisements of farms for sale in the New England towns 

 in which these papers were printed, show the process of exchange of old for new 

 land which was taking place. 



