A half-century of conflict. France and England in North America. Part ...

218 WAR AND POLITICS. [1740-1746.left New Hampshire to defend her own. This theAssembly of that province refused to do, on theground that thefort was fifty miles from any settlementmade by New Hampshire people, and was thereforeuseless to them, though of great value toMassachusetts as a cover toNorthfield and other ofher settlements lower down the Connecticut, toprotect ^ which was no business of New Hampshire.But some years before, in 1740, three brothers,Samuel, David, and Stephen Farnsworth, nativesGroton,Massachusetts, had begun a new settlementon the Connecticut about forty-five miles north ofthe Massachusetts line and on ground which wassoon to be assigned to New Hampshire. They werefollowed by five or six others. They acted on thebelief that their settlement was within the jurisdictionof Massachusetts, and that she could and wouldprotect them. The place was one of extreme exposure,not only from its isolation,offar from help, butbecause it was on the banks of a wild and lonelyriver, the customary highway of war-parties on theirdescent from Canada. Number Four — for so thenew settlement was called, because it was the fourthin a range of townships recently marked out alongthe Connecticut, but, with one or two exceptions,wholly unoccupied as yet — was a rude littleof civilization,outpostburied in forests that spread unbrokento the banks of the St. Lawrence, while its nearest1 Journal of the Assembly of New Hampshire, quoted in Saunder«son, History of Charlestown, N. H., 20.