ORIGINAL FORESTS AND THEIR EARLY DEVELOPMENT 187 



that the townsmen who would work erecting the mill "as cheap 

 as a stranger " should have preference. 



Commerce and shipbuilding had an early beginning in New 

 England. An early record states that in 1623 a ship of a hun- 

 dred and forty tons, called the Anne, was freighted at Plymouth 

 and returned to England with a cargo consisting of clapboards 

 with a few beaver skins and other furs. 



These clapboards were oak staves for wine casks and had a 

 good sale in London. The settlers of the West Indies also de- 

 pended upon New England for their supphes of barrels and 

 boxes in which to export their molasses and sugar. As early as 

 1629 there were six shipwrights at work in Boston, and on July 4, 

 1 63 1, Governor John Winthrop launched at Mystic, now Somer- 

 ville, a vessel of sixty tons, called the Blessing of the Bay. It was 

 the first vessel built in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and 

 demonstrated the excellence of New England timber for this 

 purpose. Medford, Marblehead, and Salem soon began to 

 build ships. Gradually all the seacoast settlements took up 

 this industry, from Maine to Connecticut. The industry, be- 

 sides requiring a large amount of first-class white oak lumber, 

 also depended upon a ready supply of the so-called "naval 

 stores " such as pitch, tar, and turpentine. These materials have 

 long since been considered special products of the south, but for 

 a century after the first settlement of Windsor, Connecticut, and 

 the neighboring region the manufacture of these products from 

 the pitch pine was an extensive industry.^ In fact, the first 

 Indian deed in this territory had its origin in this business, for it 

 seems that in 1643, John Grifhn and Michael Humphrey com- 

 menced the manufacture of pitch and tar and the collecting of 

 turpentine. Manahanoose, an Indian chief, was so unfortunate 

 a few years later as to kindle a fire which in its progress consumed 

 a large quantity of pitch and tar belonging to Mr. Grifhn. To 

 make amends for this the chief deeded to the injured party all 

 his lands at Masscoe. The General Court early recognized the 



^ "The Forests of Connecticut," by A. F. Hawes, Connecticut Magazine, Vol. 

 X, No. 2. 



