I 20 fllS TOR Y OF CO HA SSE T. 



Scituate, on the norwest side,* and Conahasset be left un- 

 disjoosed of till we know the resolucion of Mr. James 

 Sherley, Mr. John Beauchamp, Mr. Richard Andrews, and 

 Mr. Tymothy Hatherly. . . ." 



This is the first mention of Cohasset Harbor in an official 

 document, and it announces an indecision regarding those, 

 salt marshes which has been perpetuated through many 

 documents. 



Meanwhile the settlement at Boston had spread towards 

 the south, and there were enterprising pioneers who settled 

 at Bare Cove which became Hingham, only four or five 

 miles to the north of the undivided marshes of Cohasset. 

 It was naturally necessary for these two colonies, with 

 their separate charters, the Massachusetts Bay at Boston, 

 and the New Plymouth at Plymouth Bay, to have some 

 boundary line distinctly drawn between them. Before this 

 could be done, however, the inhabitants of Hingham had 

 urged their boats into Cohasset Harbor to get the salt hay 

 so bountifully spread by nature upon the Plymouth side ! 

 The Pilgrim colony had not granted these marshes- in 

 severalty because they lay at so great a distance from its 

 settlements. The Puritan colony at Boston, on the other 

 hand, could not grant any marshes that were reasonably 

 within the natural bounds of the Plymouth people. 



Individual settlers, however, aggressive and alert for 

 their own advantage, more than this, urged by the need of 

 hay to feed their cattle, might press into the marshes of 

 the peaceful colony on the south. 



In the year 1637, on the seventeenth of May, the affair 

 of a mutual boundary was taken up by the vigorous court 

 of Massachusetts Bay, by the following order : — 



Mr. Timothy Heatherly, and Mr. Tylden with Mr, William 

 Ashpinwall and Joseph Andrews, were appointed to view the 

 bounds betweene us and Plimouth, and make retuine how they find 

 them lye to both Courts. 



* At Scituate Harbor, not North Scituate. » 



