Sophia Newell (or possibly an imposter) in front of the Gad Newell home, on Cemetery Road. Editors note: This is the third and final article in a series relating the founding of the first ministry in Packersfield. The first detailed the many efforts to acquire a minister for a small, remote community. Several ministers came for [...] [...]
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The Reverend Jacob Foster served the town of Packersfield for ten years from 1781 to 1791. During that time twenty-seven families joined the church. We do not have census data that exactly match the years Foster served, but the population of Packersfield in 1783 was recorded as 511 and in 1790 as 721. The census [...] [...] |
The Reverend George Whitefield did not (as far as we know) ever preach in Nelson, but he was a contemporary of Treadway and Foster, of whom no portrait is known to exist . The original charter of Monadnock Number Six stipulated founding a successful town in accordance with the king’s requirements. The charter contained requirements to [...] [...] |
New England’s ancient Town Pounds are seen near the center of most towns even today. Substantial, square and made of large stones, town pounds are New England’s most enduring and emblematic features of our agrarian past. Most towns have one that survives; Nelson has two! They were built to hold the largest and most agile [...] [...] |
The charter granting Monadnock Number Six to its proprietors required that a central place be set off and reserved for public purposes and that a meetinghouse be built. Breed Batchellor laid out ten acres of common land in the center of the town at the location of the village cemetery today. With the population increasing, [...] [...] |
For the first hundred years Nelson seems to have built and repaired its roads using hand and ox-drawn tools also used on farms. Perhaps the earliest equipment specifically designed for highway maintenance was the use of snow rollers for clearing roads in the winter. The town kept its roads open in the winter with men hired [...] [...] |
Editors Note: The images in this article may be clicked, and a larger version will open in a separate browser window. The images displaying hand writing were scanned from our town archives. Nelson’s earliest roads were made and maintained by hand, using men and teams of oxen — the same methods that cleared farms. Road [...] [...] |
The charter granting Monadnock Number Six to those early proprietors required that they provide the basic necessities for the new community’s viability. Of necessity, building roads came first. Breed Batchellor was the town’s first resident, settling as early as 1766. He moved into an early structure built by Josiah Billings just over the east line of [...] [...] |
The foundation of the saw mill on Center Pond Brook Settlement in Monadnock Number Six came quickly once it got started. A list of settlers in the Masonian Papers in 1770 showed 5 settlers. In the three reports on settlement produced in 1773 and 1774 there were fifty-four different family names identified as moving [...] [...] |
Editors Note: This is the latest in a series of articles about the history of Nelson. Click here show the entire article series. Severing the Last Colonial Ties The close of the Revolution saw a much-changed Packersfield. Breed Batchellor, the man who was ultimately the agent of His Majesty’s Royal Governor, had fled the town in [...] [...] |
For newly incorporated Packersfield, the years 1774 and 1775 saw a great deal of growth. A census taken in 1773 reported 117 residents in Packersfield; by 1775 there were 186 people in town, and by 1790 there would be 721! Men using axes and oxen were clearing land. Numerous roads were laid out. The early [...] [...] |
Editor’s Note: This is the third in a series of articles about the early history of Nelson. Click here to go to the previous article. We dont know what our early Nelson forebears looked like, but we can speculate that they might have appeared something like this. At the proprietor’s meeting in March 1773 the town voted [...] [...] |
Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of articles about the early history of Nelson. Click here to go to the first article. The task of settling Monadnock Number Six, a town eight by five miles in the middle of the wilderness, must have been daunting. It would take a strong will to [...] [...] |
Editors Note: This is the first of what will be a great series of articles about Nelson’s history from Rick Church and David Birchenough. Nelson likely looked like this to its first settlers. Diorama at the Harvard School of Forestry in Petersham, Massachusetts. Photo courtesy of Eric Aldrich. Click image for larger rendering. King James I awarded [...] [...] |
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