Strafford County New Hampshire

Original Settlers 
(An excerpt from the book 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

Pages 26-27:

At a meeting of the Proprietors held in Portsmouth on Jun 14, 1722, it was voted to give forty two lots of forty acres each, as near the center of the town as the land would permit, to each person who would fulfill the conditions of the town charter….After a number of meetings a group of persons were found who agreed to take up the forty two lots and settle upon them.  A committee was then chosen to proceed to Barrington with the proposed settlers to lay out the lots.

It is apparent that the committee and prospective settlers were little impressed with what they found because the committee reported back to the Proprietors on June 27, 1727, that they had taken persons who agreed to settle in Barrington but “the land proved to be so extraordinarily bad by reason of it’s being extremely rocky and stony that none of those present would accept it and they thought it impractical to settle upon it.”  Therefore it happened that the first settlers of the town were some of the original proprietary lot owners who were curious enough to want to see and develop the holdings which they had drawn.

All Barrington town meetings from 1722 to 1753 were held in Portsmouth because of the small number of settlers who were attracted to the township in the years immediately following its incorporation.

At a Proprietors meeting on August 7, 1732, it was voted to give each settler in Barrington, who had taken or who would take on of the previously offered forty-two forty-acre lots, one forty-second of all surplus and undivided lands in the town.  This extremely liberal offer was sufficient to secure the required number of settlers and the Proprietors came in possession of the town.

Part of the success of the Proprietors in gaining the necessary number of settlers was the vote of the Proprietors meeting of January 9, 1731.  Here it was agreed to give “one hundred acres of land out of the town commons” to each proprietor who “Shall appear in fifteen days and give bond with good security to the value of 100 pounds each, that ech of them shall build a house and perform every other article that the Charter obliges the settler to do.  (Within one Year), provided the number exceed not forty-two, and the sme given in their names to the Clerk.”

On March 31, 1731, the Proprietors voted to build a meeting house as near the center of the town as possible, but in spite of the efforts of William Cate nothing was officially done for eleven years.  In 1741, because a sufficient number of persons had settled in Barrington, the Proprietors asked and received of the General Assembly power to raise and collect rates upon themselves the same as possessed in all towns.

The following is a list of Rates and Poles and Estates of the Township of Barrington, in the Province of New Hampshire, in the year 1742: