It is pleasant to recall that Plymouth was once pristine and unsettled for the most part. In the natural state the early settlers could partake of such beauty, a compensation in part for the toil and effort and hardship put forth by them to provide a livelihood and increase what they called “improved” land. It can be said that those who came to the outlying woodlands of the area to clear it, make homesteads for themselves and live lives as husbandmen and yeomen were not affluent central village inhabitants. They were young, able-bodied types who had a future vision of ultimate security and land owning from the result of their own laborious efforts. Owning land was the prime motive for security from the early beginnings. It is well to remember that these people were only a few generations from the poorer English classes and culture as were most people in the Plymouth settlement. A livelihood from the land by one’s own toil was the principal one open to them. Access to the first homesteads in the South Ponds region from Plymouth was south by the South Pond Road, now called Long Pond Road. Leaving the road at a point where the watercourse crossed the road a further woods road slightly southwest, avoiding inclines for the horses where possible, lead past the Belcher Manter property and on to the Burgess homestead. For a long time it was called the Burgess Road and as it continued southward it was called Baptist Road. It continued on eventually to the Wareham and Rochester area. The Burgess and Baptist Roads are still basically woods roads and are most pleasant for walking. It had been a custom one hundred years ago or more to refer to the region as that of the South Ponds. Beginning on the north the ponds would be Cook’s, Triangle, Little South, Great South, Negro, Hallfield, Hoyt’s, and Gunners Exchange. The original references to Great South Pond include its lower pond as “the southerly arm of Great South Pond,” as one reads the deeds of the time. There was a small stream connecting the two bodies of water when the water level was high enough. The variation can average about eight feet and seems to go in cycles of about twelve years. South Pond is about one hundred feet above sea level. As far as I have been able to determine, the term “Boot Pond” for this southerly arm seems to have been originated later on, perhaps after the 1850’s. The map of Plymouth in 1830 drawn by the surveyor S. Bourne calls the lower arm “South Pond” as well. The use of the word “Boot” is realistic, for when accurately mapped the shape is like a high boot from a side view. Boot Pond is about 2500 feet in length and averaging 1200 feet in width, with the toe to the west in proportion. There is a high pine wooded ridge along the western shore. There is a small higher ground peninsula from the top of the pond on which the Douglas house was built in the 1870’s.