CHAPTER I. 



The Inland Towns and Their Village Settlements. 



The typical inland township in southern New England in 1810 

 was an area of roughly 40 square miles,^ containing a population 

 of from 1,000 to 3,000 persons. An examination of the Census of 

 1810 shows us 385 of such towns, out of a total of 437. Of the re- 

 maining 52 towns only three^ had as many as 10,000 people, 11 had 

 between 5,000 and 10,000 and 38 varied from 3,000 to 5,000. More 

 significant than these figures as showing the predominant impor- 

 tance of the smallest towns is the fact that 67 per cent, or more than 

 two-thirds of the total population, lived in these; one-quarter in 

 towns of from 3,000 to 10 000 people, and only about one-sixteenth 

 of the total number in the largest towns.^ Within the group of the 

 smallest towns, considerable variations in size were to be found. In 

 newly settled or in unfertile regions, such as Berkshire and Wor- 

 cester counties in Massachusetts, a large proportion of the towns 

 contained from 500 to 1,500 people. On the other hand, in especi- 

 ally fertile districts, as, for instance, in the Connecticut valley,'* 

 or where an old town had retained a large grant of land unsub- 

 divided, as, for instance, Farmington and Saybrook,^ the popula- 

 tion ranged between 2,500 and 3,000 or above. On the whole, how- 

 ever, we shall find that all the towns in this group which we have 

 selected as the typical inland towns show characteristics which set 



' The variations from this norm were considerable, especially in the longer 

 settled regions where the older towns had been often subdivided. Some of the 

 towns, also, had acquired and kept unusually large grants of land. Consequently, 

 towns as small as 20 square miles or as large as 70 are sometimes found. The 

 best source of information as to the area of towns at this time is Pease and Niles, 

 Gazetteer of the States of Connecticut and Rhode Island. Hartford. 1819. 

 We have no similar work at this date for Massachusetts, except for individual 

 towns and counties. E. g. Whitney, Peter. History of the County of Worces- 

 ter. Worcester (Mass.) . 1793. 



2 These were Boston, 33,250; Salem, 12,600; and Providence, 10,000. 



' For fuller statement of these figures see Appendix A. 



* There were 16 towns along the Connecticut River from Saybrook to Spring- 

 field, only two of which had less than 2,500 people. 



^ Both of these towns contained about 70 square miles and profited besides 

 by their location in the Connecticut Valley. 



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