Learning About the Land

I'm a map person. I love the variety of historical information that can be found on old maps. I brought some map activities to our elementary school a few years ago to help familiarize the students with the shape and characteristics of our town. The undulating southern border is formed by the Millers River, in contrast with the man-made straight lines that divide us from Northfield to the north. There have been a few boundary adjustments since the land was mapped and subdivided. Orange and Warwick are our neighbors to the east. The Warwick line runs through the middle of Laurel Lake.

The map below is a retracing of a plan drawn by Joseph Metcalf in 1788. The present Town of Erving is west of the crease in the linen, and north of the river. The northern part of the Town of Wendell is mapped south of the river. All of the land was purchased by John Erving in 1751/2. The map was later drawn to divide his remaining property among his heirs.

Why did John Erving purchase "Lands North of Millers River containing Eleven Thousand and Sixteen Acres"?(1) Apparently, pure speculation. There is no evidence that he ever saw the property. There was value in the timber, but it had to be transported to market, and the flow of the Millers River would take it even farther from his enterprises in Boston. According to Thomas E. Sawin, as Pam Richardson relates in her 2015 history of Wendell, the land north of the river was "undisturbed forest" until 1800.(2)   Undeveloped land in western Massachusetts was 'money in the bank' for John Erving.

As the document below indicates, bringing in settlers was a condition of his separate purchase of the land south of the river, and John Erving immediately began selling that land. Before Wendell was incorporated in 1781, this land was known as part of Erving's Plantation or Ervinshire. "Road Town" referred to here is now Shutesbury, of which the northern portion became part of Wendell. If you look in "Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War" you will find several whose residence is given as Ervingshire.(3)

In the 1980s, a Northfield historian named Rosa Johnston did significant work with the old deeds, discovering and recording which of John Erving's children or grandchildren had rights to specific lots after his death, as mapped by Metcalf. She traced them forward through several sales for historical context. Precipitated by their inheritance of the land, and likely by improvements to the road system, it was around the turn of the nineteenth century that the heirs began to sell the land and settlement began to occur north of the river. The Fifth Massachusetts Turnpike was incorporated in 1799, improving the east-west travel route that led from Boston to the Connecticut River. When the heirs began to liquidate the "unimproved land," soon after, the purchasers began to settle on the parcels. This area began to develop a community, first on the eastern side where a road led north to Northfield and south to Wendell. A tavern, a school, and mills were built on the river. 

The Shepherd brothers of Northampton, bought up a large number of the lots in 1817. We will get to their story later, along with the Whites, Alexanders, and Holtons who were early settlers.

As I reviewed Rosa Johnston's notes, I wanted to know who John Erving was in 1752. What was happening at that point in history? It didn't take long before I began populating his family tree and realized just how prominent he was in Boston in the mid-eighteenth century. Phil Johnson, another member of the Erving Historic Commission, joined me in the search. We started to feel like we were "drinking from a fire hose" when we began accumulating records. We discovered that boxes of family documents are archived at the Historical Societies in Boston and New York. We found mentions in published books and digitized documents online. Facts collected led to many more questions to answer.

We will share some of the discoveries, and questions, in future posts.

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Notes: (1) "Acts and Resolves" Legislative Records of the Council 1752/3, Chapter 142.

                  (2)   Richardson, Pamela, and Thomas E. Sawin, "Wendell Massachusetts: Its Settlers and Citizenry, 1752-1900" Pub. Amherst, MA: Off the Common Books, 2015, p. 20.

            (3)   View "Soldiers and Sailors" in the Mass. Archives here