LoveivclTs Wc x r.
��383
��comers. They clamored- for grants which they, too, could cultivate. F>ery pretext was advanced to secure a claim. No petitioners were better entitled to consideration than the representatives of those who had rendered so large a section habitable.
Massachusetts Bay Colony had long claimed as a northern boundary a line three miles north of the Merrimack and parallel thereto, from its mouth to its source, thence westward to the bounds of New York. Under the pressure brought to bear by interested parties, the General Court of Massachusetts granted, January 17, 1725-6, the township of Penacook, embracing the city of Con- cord, New Hampshire.
In May, 1727, a petition from tlie survivors of Lovewell's command was favorably received by the General Court, and soon afterward Suncook, or Lovewell's township, was granted. Only two of the company are known to have settled in the town — Francis Doyen, who was with Love well on his second expedition, and Noah Johnson. The latter was the last survivor of the company. He was a deacon of the church in Suncook for many years, received a pension from Massachusetts, and died in Plymouth, New Hampshire, in I 798, in the one hundredth year of his age.
Captain John Lovewell was repre- sented in the township of Suncook by his daughter Hannah, who married Joseph Baker, settled on her father's right, raised a large family, and died at a good old age. A great multitude of her descendants are scattered through- out the United States.
��The original grantees of the town- ship, for the most part, assigned their rights to persons who became actual settlers.
In the year 1 740, the King in council decided the present line as the boundary between New Hampshire and Massa- chusetts, thus leaving Suncook, and many other of the townships granted by the latter Province, within the former. For a score of years following, the settlers were harassed by the proprietors of the soil under the Masonian Claim, until, in 1 759, a compromise was effected, and Pembroke was incorporated.
In 1 7 74, a new township in the District of Maine, was granted, by the General Court of Massachusetts, to the " pro- prietors of Suncook," to recompense them for their losses. The township was called Sambrook, and embraced the present towns of Lovell and New Sweden ; it was located in the neighbor- hood of the battle-field, where, a half century before, so many brave lives had been sacrificed.
Note. — The townships of Rumford and Suncook, both granted by Massachusetts authorities, made a common cause in the defence of their rights against the claimants under New Hampshire, known as the Bow proprietors. The latter, who were, in fact, the New Hampshire Provincial authorities, and who not only prosecuted but adjudicated the cases, brought suits for such small extent of territory in each case, that there was no legal appeal to the higher courts in England. The two towns therefore authorized the Reverend Tim- othy Walker, the first settled minister of Rumford, to represent their cause before the King in council. By the employment of able counsel and judicious manage- ment of the case, he was eminently successful, and obtained a decision favorable to the Massachusetts settlers. In the meanwhile, the proprietors of Suncook had compromised with the Bow proprietors, surrendering half of their rights — for them the decision came too late. The Rumford proprietors, however, were benefited, and Concord, under which name Rumford was in- corporated by New Hampshire laws, maintained its old boundaries as originally granted, — which remain prac- tically the same to this day.
�� �
