I06 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE 



itated and finally halted, not because they were weary nor at the 

 command of conscience, nor elsewise by any claim of prior grant 

 or survey, but because they found the soil occupied and actual 

 settlers in possession. This fact alone strongly reinforces our 

 claim that the accepted dates must be revised and put back to 

 a time certainly not later than the year 1700 and undoubtedly 

 much earlier, 



A society was formed in 1719 "for settling the Chestnutt 

 country." The members were familiar with the land they de- 

 sired to erect into a township, for they had hunted and fished in 

 it for years and had eaten of its nuts. The record recites that 

 a previous petition had been preferred in the autumn of 1718, 

 by virtue of which the petitioners claimed some rights, setting 

 forth that they had "been at a vast expense of blood and treas- 

 ure to maintain the same against the enemy." No precise de- 

 scription is given of the enemy, but it was intended that those 

 to whom they ever prayed should believe them to be Indians, 

 though we are inclined to think them certain down-country peo- 

 ple from Haverhill, who then claimed to have an Indian deed to 

 the whole territory. In any event nothing is more certain than 

 the fact that a considerable number of hunters, trappers, fisher- 

 men and scouts, if not actual settlers, had ranged back and forth 

 for years before the society was formed and that the organiza- 

 tion was only a step taken to keep what they already had, and 

 at the very least to prevent others from getting it. 



There was at this time and had been from time immemorial 

 what was known far and wide as the "Pennacook Path," which 

 ran all the way from Exeter through Chester, passing over the 

 east shoulder of Mine Hill and so on by "Jake Chase his house," 

 to the present highway in Auburn ; thence, skirting the Auburn 

 shore to Sucker Village, the trail turned west, making a detour 

 northward around the Merrill brook swamp, and again easterly, 

 leaving the Massabesic to the south, thence to Amoskeag and 

 by way of the Merrimack valley to Concord. We are informed 

 that the nearer easterly section of this path ran through " Sam 



