10 



seems hardly possible that the town could have been less inviting" 

 for agricultural purposes, it is true that many of the first and later 

 settlers took up such scattered tracks of clear land as they could 

 find and derived their means of subsistence chiefly from the cultiva- 

 tion of the soil. 



The Church organized by the first settlers was the nineteenth, in 

 the order of formation, in the Colony of Massachusetts. It was not 

 a happy body of Christians for a number of years. Dissensions pre- 

 vailed during Mr. Blynman's ministry, and probably hastened, if 

 they did not induce, his departure from the town. He removed to 

 New London in 1650, and was soon followed by many of the friends 

 who had accompanied him to Cape Ann. The next settled minister 

 was Rev. John Emerson, who came in 1660, and continued till his 

 ministry was closed by death in 1700. A second church was set off 

 from the first in 1716, a third in 1728, a fourth in 1742, and a fifth 

 in 1754, and corresponding divisions of the territory into parishes 

 were also made. These parochial divisions have now no significance 

 whatever, and the religious societies of the city at the present time 

 are entirely independent of them. 



The town had slow growth during the first half century of its ex- 

 istence. The whole number of men who became new settlers from 

 1651 to 1700 inclusive, was only eight3 7 -seven, of whom about fifty 

 became permanent settlers, and were residents of the town when 

 they died. The names of some of them are numerously represented 

 b} 7 descendants, and it is not likely that Davis, Hodgkins, Lane, 

 Lufkin, Norwood, Parsons, Pool and Rowe will cease to be the 

 names of living persons on Cape Ann for many generations to come. 



In 1700 there were about 700 inhabitants in the town. Nearly all 

 of the tax-payers were commoners, that is, owners of all the territo- 

 toiy of the town not }~et granted awa}\ Except in one instance, to 

 William Stevens, of five hundred acres on the Chebacco side of An- 

 nisquam River, no very large grant had been made. Only one gen- 

 eral grant in contiguous lots, that of 1688, had been made to all the 

 commoners ; but the possession of the soil was constantly becoming 

 a greater object of desire on account of the fine growth of timber 

 with which it was covered, and it was this, without doubt, which 

 led, in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, to the transfer of 

 all the common land into the hands of the individual proprietors. 

 The town hitherto had been of no importance as a maritime place ; 

 and, at the close of its first half century, all the property it held in 

 vessels was comprised in six sloops, a boat, and a shallop. But a 



