A HISTORY OF BARRINGTON NH by Morton Wiggin. 

Transcribed by Karen Penman (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) July 2000

Chapter 3:  Incorporation and Early Settlement 1722-1744

(Pages 19-21 contain the Charter, but no pertinent genealogical information is contained in it)

Pg. 21-

Barrington was quickly surveyed and divided into lots in proportion to the tax levied on each person in Portsmouth for the cost repairs of the H.M.S. "Barrington".  The lots were numbered up to 277, the number of taxpayers.  They drew their numbers on the first range of lots on the east side of the town at the Rochester line and so continued until the ranges of a mile wide were laid off into lots and the land taken up, with the exception of the lots of the Two Mile Streak, which were reserved to Portsmouth expressly to pay the expense of starting the foundry of the Lamphrey Iron Works.

In laying off the lots, when they came to a pond, as Ayers Pond in the first range of lots, they numbered the acres of water and led the lot in course beyond.

Between lot 11 of James Libby and lot 12 of Samuel Allcock there was 280 acres of Round Pond which was not included in the area allotted to each proprietor.  Bow Lake and commons numbered 960 acres and was not included in the lot distribution.  A man by the name of Thomas Parker drew lot 149 containing 648 acres, which happened to fall on the top of a mountain.  Hence the name of Parker Mountain.

John Foss, one of the original settlers sold Bow Lake to John Caverly and the Caverly family sold it to the Cocheco Manufacturing Company of Dover.  It has never been figured out how Foss got it in the first place, since bodies of water were excluded from the grants to proprietors.

The survey created ranges of lots one mile wide, commencing at the Rochester line.  In between the ranges there were five range roads each four rods wide.  There was a half mile left over next to the Nottingham line which was not laid out in lots.  A cross range road was laid out not far from the center of the township.  It was on the north side of the range road, in the fourth range of lots between lot No. 156, Joshua Perce's 720 acres and the Parsonage lot on the northwest and No. 157 John Hoker's 96 acres on the southeast. 

The first meeting of the Barrington Proprietors was held in Portsmouth May 28, 1722, with Richard Wibert as moderator and Clement Hughes as clerk.  They drew lots for selecting the place where they would take up their number of acres.  In Vol. IX of the Provincial Papers, page 41 is found the following:

"A list of the original Proprietors of the Town of Barrington with the Rate which each man Paid & by which the Quantity of Acres each man had is ascertained at the rate of two Pence pr acre & also the number of Each Lot as the Same was drawn by each Propr or his Constituent."