142 



HISTOKY OF COH ASSET, 



accessible for pasture lands, and during the rest of the 

 year the owners of marsh were accommodated. 



It was natural for property to change hands, and espe- 

 cially so when the owners did not earn it, but only received 

 it as grants freely made to them. Several of our Cohasset 

 grantees within a few years sold or exchanged marshes. 

 Among those who strengthened their foothold here by pur- 

 chasing from others were John Tower, Nicholas Jacob and 

 his son John, Matthew Gushing and his son Daniel. 



Three acres of salt marsh at Bassing Beach sold by 

 Thomas Hewitt, tailor, of Hingham, to John Sutton of 

 Scituate, brought one pound ten shillings ($7.50) in the 

 year 1652. 



When the marshes at the eastern side of our town were 

 subdivided for the haymakers, the timber land on the west 

 border was being coveted by loggers. 



On January i, 1653, the town ordered a division of 

 timber lands bounded by "a straight line from Rocky 

 Meadows to Conyhasset Pond (afterwards called Scituate 

 Pond, now called Lily Pond), and so south to the [colony] 

 line; thence to Prospect Hill from which to the Southeast 

 end of Rocky Meadow within side of the river," 



The use to which some townsmen might have proposed 

 putting this timber may be inferred from the following 

 order passed at the same meeting : — 



"Captain Joshua Hobart and John Foulsham voted the 

 liberty of the two rivers, Rocky Meadow and Bound Brook 

 ... to build . . . sawmill or mills upon. . . ." 



But no evidence appears that these proposed mill owners 

 ever fulfilled their privilege. 



The remainder of the town, the hills and valleys which 

 lay between the marshes on the east and the strip of tim- 

 ber on the west, was not divided until twenty-four years 

 after the marshes were first measured. 



In the interval which preceded the division of Cohasset 

 uplands it became the fashion for the towns of Massa- 



