As explained by Wm. T. Davis, all common lands beyond the central district were granted to the freemen of the town, two hundred one in number, who were called, after the town of Plympton was set off and incorporated, _Plymouth and Plympton Proprietors_. These proprietors organized with records and a clerk and recorded their grants and sales. “In 1705 they voted to grant each of their number a twenty acre lot and shortly after a sixty acre lot. In addition in the same year all the cedar swamps within the town were divided into thirty nine great lots which were subdivided into shares and distributed by lot.” These transactions can be examined today in the town records. In 1710 it was voted to lay out the remainder of their lands, thirty thousand acres, into ten great lots, southwest and south of the central area. These boundaries are found in the records. There is a survey and map compiled in January, 1882 by C. H. Holmes, surveyor, on file in the Registry of Deeds concerning the shares in the eight great lots laid out beginning in 1712. These lots run north and south. On the west the first extends from West Pond south to the Wareham line. Proceeding eastwardly, the next seven lie southward to the Half-Way Pond River, the beginning part of Agawam River, area. The ninth is in the area of Mast Road, Halfway Pond, Long Pond, and the Herring Path. The tenth lies east and west of the Sandwich Road. The size of the shares in the lots varied widely in acreage, being influenced by such factors as uplands, swamps, meadows, wood lots, accessibility and desirability in general. Desirable shares may be of thirty acres. Less desirable or remotely accessible shares might have a hundred acres or more. Great South Pond was mostly in the fifth great lot. On the north, the first share was on its western shore. The second share is directly south of the first and includes land on the west and east shores of the present Boot Pond, extended south to approximately half of the Pond. The Burgess homestead is in this second share. Other Burgess lands were in the third and fourth shares of the fifth great lot and also in the sixth great lot to the east. The thirty thousand acres involved in the distribution south to the approximate present southern boundaries of the town of Plymouth contain many large and lovely ponds, some of which were once collectively called the South Ponds. They are spring fed, with white sandy shores with a slight change in depth as the water table fluctuates. In the area are many streams and the Agawam River. Probably a large portion of the original distribution is now in the Myles Standish State Forest which goes to the Wareham line, with the waters of Buzzards Bay not far beyond.