 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
(transcriptions only) |
|
 |
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Introduction to the Swansea Town Records The Swansea Town Records are an accumulation of 49 single-sheet documents issuing from, or directed to, the various instruments of town government in Swansea, Bristol County, Massachusetts, mostly during the 18th century. Colonial Swansea—or Swanzey, as the name was typically spelled—was located along Mount Hope and Narragansett Bays in southeastern Massachusetts. It was incorporated as a town within the Plymouth colony in 1667, initially as a refuge for Baptists. With the rest of Bristol County, it became part of Massachusetts Bay in 1691, when the Plymouth colony was dissolved. The original boundaries of the town encompassed land now in Barrington, Rhode Island (separated in 1717), Warren, Rhode Island (1747), and Somerset, Massachusetts (1790). More than half the documents in the collection date from the years between 1718/9 and 1757; perhaps a half-dozen can be dated earlier than this. In only a few instances does more than one document relate to the same specific town action or issue. The types of actions to which the individual records pertain are very diverse, and would include land issues; the appointment of town officers; economic regulations and taxes; church affairs; Swansea's relations with neighboring towns; Swansea's relations with the colonial government; and improvements to the town infrastructure. Most of the records pertain to one or more of the following agencies of town government: 1) the Swansea board of selectmen; 2) Swansea town meetings; 3) the Swansea town proprietors; and 4) the town treasury. Selectmen were the town's highest elected officials, and its chief administrators. The most commonly encountered document type within the collection is the town meeting warrant (11), issued by the selectmen to a town constable to "notify and warn" all qualified residents to assemble in meeting for some specified purpose. Another document type issuing from the selectmen is the "warning out of town" (3), a warrant used as a first recourse against undesirables who had entered the community. There are also a number of petitions of varying purpose directed by townspeople to the Swansea selectmen, as well as several petitions from the selectmen to the governor of Massachusetts Bay. In addition to the town meeting warrants mentioned above, town meeting documents in the collection include several memoranda, with proceedings and/or records of voting. The term "proprietors," in the context of the 18th century New England town, indicated those privileged residents (and, increasingly, non-residents) who held joint ownership of the "common and undivided lands" of the town, whether because they were the heirs or assigns of the town's original grantees, or because they had purchased such rights. The proprietors thus had absolute control over the division of town lands; their influence was not political per se but territorial. The half-dozen memoranda and other proprietors' meeting documents in the collection all ultimately pertain, then, to the division of land. As for the town treasurer's records, the most interesting, perhaps, indicates expenses incurred in conducting a town lottery, for the rebuilding and maintenance of a bridge (1749/50). Other manuscript collections at Notre Dame with items relating to Swansea are the Bristol County, Massachusetts Court Records (MSN/COL 2717) and the Luther Family Papers (MSN/COL 0502). Provenance note: The collection of Swansea town records was assembled by the University Libraries over the years 2002 to 2005. Items were purchased from Dan Casavant Rare Books of Waterville, Maine; from Paper Trails of Rochdale, Massachusetts; and from Lonn B. Leach of Davie, Florida. Bibliographic note: For a history of Swansea see Otis Olney Wright, History of Swansea Massachusetts 1667-1917, Swansea MA, 1917.
|
|
|||||||
| Related Collections: | Colonial & Revolutionary America | Early National & Antebellum America | American Civil War | Modern America | Sports | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
University of Notre Dame
|
|
Dept. of Special Collections University of Notre Dame 102 Hesburgh Library Notre Dame, IN 46556 |
|
Telephone: 574-631-0290 Fax: 574-631-6308 E-Mail: rarebook @ nd.edu |
|