Marshfield Town Records Introduction

Chapter 9 Marshfield Town Records Introduction

1 Establishment

In October 1665,1 “Josias Chickatabutt alias Wampatuck, Indian sachem” sold all the land already occupied by the town of Marshfield to Josias Winslow, acting for the town’s residents, to whom Winslow resigned up his rights the following June. This legal transaction documented what had effectively been accom- plished since the 1630s.2 Plymouth Colony’s court had already granted land thirty years earlier to Ed- ward Winslow and others in the area that would become Marshfield (at that time known as Greens Harbor). Winslow’s Careswell estate, where he was liv- ing in 1636, was confirmed to him in December, 1637. In March 1640 [1641], the settlement at Greens Harbor was recognized as a township, initially called Rex- hame but within months known as Marshfield. The earliest actions concerning the town are therefore preserved in the records of the Plymouth Court. As early as 1633 the court supervised the cutting of a canal to connect Greens Harbor River with the bay. Together with the laying out of several farms to owners whose names, like that of Winslow, are famous in Plymouth Colony’s history, such as William Bradford, Isaac Allerton, Thomas Prence, and Jona- than Brewster, soon other decisions contributed to the establishment of the social structures of the growing town. Militia exercises were organized by 1637. A lot was laid out for a minister in 1639/40; and a meeting house had been con- structed by 1640. A fish weir was built about the same time. The town’s bounds were established in 1642. In the first pages transcribed [in the book, The Town Records of Marshfield], we find the measures taken to defend the town against threatened attack in 1643. The town was divided into four quarters, with four houses identified as defensible garrisons – the houses of Edward Winslow, William Thomas, Thom- as Bourne, and Robert Barker. Through the years further military arrangements were made, munitions obtained and distributed, and soldiers trained, outfit- ted, and sent out to war. Particularly interesting is that Marshfield’s militia,

1 This is from the introduction to The Town Records of Marshfield during the Time of Plymouth Colony, 1620–1692 (Leiden American Pilgrim Museum, 2015). The book is available print-on-demand from lulu Publishing (a printer). 2 For the establishment of Marshfield in the context of colonial expansion of land acquisition, see Bangs, Indian Deeds.

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Figure 59 Marshfield’s Jones River (photo 2014) getting ready to fight in King Philip’s War, requested of the Plymouth Court, “That there shalbe Twenty Indians Sent for from the Southward to assist the Town in Sending forth against the Indian Enemy.” The war was not conceived on racial lines – all Indians against all European colonists. The settlers under- stood that Indian groups, like Europeans, opposed or supported each other in terms of shifting political alliances.