Genealogical notes of Barnstable families - citizen hylbom blog

508 GENEALOGICAL NOTES OF BARNSTABLE FAMILIES.
wanted, and shippers in those days charged enormous profits.
Thirty per cent, was a moderate rate. Forty, fifty, and even one
hundred per cent, was paid. In Jonathan's time it was not so.
Some manufactures had been established, communication with the
mother country was more freqnent, there were importers who sold
goods at a moderate advance, and the Colonies were well supplied
with articles of convenience and comfort. We cannot respect the
man who, to save a little more money, will go bare-foot in winter
who will run the risk of breaking his neck in clambering up a
notched log, and who lived all his days in a house that neither the
joiner, the plasterer, nor the painter ever entered. There is a golden
mean in the path of life which neither the miser nor the
spendthrift ever see. The former never perceives the deep gulph
that separates prudent management from miserly hoarding and the
latter that which divides an honorable, generous hospitality, from
wasteful extravagance.
Goodman Andrew Hallett, after providing in his will for the
comfortable support of his widow, making liberal bequests to his
daughters, and giving to his son Jonathan his little Calves Pasture,
as a token of his right of primogeniture, gave all the remainder
of his large estate to his two sons, enjoining on them to make
a peaceful division thereof by mutual agreement. They quarrelled
about the boundaries of the little Calves Pasture, the birthright
of Jonathan, and they spent two years and a half in vain attempts
to divide peaceably and by mutual concession and agreement,
when they put themselves under bonds of £800, each to the
other, to abide by the award of Mr. Nathaniel Bacon, of Barnstable,
and Col. William Bassett, of Sandwich. Jonathan had
the western portion of the farm, John the eastern. The present
road to the wharf being the division line on the north side of the
County road, That there was some unpleasant feeling between
them and their families, is indicated by the fact that Jonathan's
descendants called John's, "other side Halletts."
March 5, 1686-7, Jonathan, Hallett, for £20 in current
money, bought of his brother-in-law, John Dexter, of Sandwich,
a negro slave called Harry, aged 29 years. The bill of sale, yet
preserved, is drawn up with much formality—signed, sealed and
witnessed.
In 1710 he continued to rank as the most wealthy man in
Yarmouth, and his brother John next. He was an extensive
landholder in Yarmouth and in Barnstable. March 28, 1698-9, he
bought of Samuel Bradford, of Duxbury, for twenty pounds in
current money, a thousand acre right of land in Windham, Hartford
County, Connecticut, "being the fifth lot at the crotch of the
river," and also a houselot of twelve acres abutting on the river,
with rights of commonage. It is probable he sold his Windham
farm, for none of his family removed to that town.