THE LAND 5 



Lovell & Cap te White after the Inden Enemy and Into their 

 Countrey." They asked "In consideration thereof to be fa' 

 voured with the Grant of a township." 2 



Already there were glowing reports from the frontier. It 

 was the Connecticut Valley in those days. Enthusiastic travel' 

 ers told stories of deep, rich soil and wide fields. It was not by 

 chance that the towns of this valley were called Springfield, 

 Greenfield, Deerfield, Northfield, Westfield, and so on for a 

 great many more "fields." 



The Indian fighters got their land in 1733, the land that one 

 of them had seen from the tree top when they had been on the 

 march. Very few of the petitioners actually came to settle this 

 new land. They were established, prosperous farmers to the 

 eastward. Instead of coming themselves, they sent their sons 

 and nephews, who were glad for a chance to go West. 



By the fall of 1733 the first settlers had begun to fell the 

 forests. A few logs were enough for the houses. The rest they 

 piled on heaps and burned. They didn't know it, but they were 

 destroying in those huge bonfires one of the most valuable 

 crops that land was ever to produce. 



In 1754 the little settlement became the town of Petersham. 

 Within the next half century Petersham was a well settled 

 community. There were 1,794 inhabitants in the village and 

 surrounding country. Most of the land had been cleared. The 

 unbroken virgin forest had been reduced to some scattered 

 tracts of uncut timber. Farming was the major occupation of 

 the people. 



When the Revolutionary War broke out, the people of 

 Petersham were about evenly divided, half Tories and half 

 Rebels. Usually the townsmen and the richer farmers remained 

 loyal to the crown. The less prosperous farmers supported the 



2 Address Delivered in Petersham, Massachusetts, July 4, 1854, in Commemora' 

 tion of the One Hundredth Anniversary, by Edmund B. Willson. Crosby, Nichols 

 and Company, Boston, 1855. 



