The Frontier in American HistoryTurner, Frederick Jackson
History
The Frontier in American History
Turner, Frederick Jackson
Frontier and pioneer life -- United States; Frontier thesis; United States -- History; United States -- Territorial expansion
In this period, scattered and sometimes unwelcome Scotch-Irish
settlements were established, such as that at Londonderry, New
Hampshire, and in the Berkshires, as well as in the region won in King
Philip's War from the Nipmucks, whither there came also Huguenots.[72:1]
In King George's War, the Connecticut River settlers found their
frontier protection in such rude stockades as those at the sites of
Keene, of Charlestown, New Hampshire (Number Four), Fort Shirley at the
head of Deerfield River (Heath), and Fort Pelham (Rowe); while Fort
Massachusetts (Adams) guarded the Hoosac gateway to the Hoosatonic
Valley. These frontier garrisons and the self-defense of the
backwoodsmen of New England are well portrayed in the pages of
Parkman.[72:2] At the close of the war, settlement again expanded into
the Berkshires, where Lennox, West Hoosac (Williamstown), and Pittsfield
were established in the middle of the century. Checked by the fighting
in the last French and Indian War, the frontier went forward after the
Peace of Paris (1763) at an exceptional rate, especially into Vermont
and interior New Hampshire. An anonymous writer gives a contemporary
view of the situation on the eve of the Revolution:[72:3]
The richest parts remaining to be granted are on the northern
branches of the Connecticut river, towards Crown Point where
are great districts of fertile soil still unsettled. The North
part of New Hampshire, the province of Maine, and the
territory of Sagadahock have but few settlements in them
compared with the tracts yet unsettled. . . .
I should further observe that these tracts have since the
peace [_i. e._, 1763], been settling pretty fast: farms on the
river Connecticut are every day extending beyond the old fort
Dummer, for near thirty miles; and will in a few years reach
to Kohasser which is nearly two hundred miles; not that such
an extent will be one-tenth settled, but the new-comers do not
fix near their neighbors, and go on regularly, but take spots
that please them best, though twenty or thirty miles beyond
any others. This to people of a sociable disposition in Europe
would appear very strange, but the Americans do not regard the
near neighborhood of other farmers; twenty or thirty miles by
water they esteem no distance in matters of this sort; besides
in a country that promises well the intermediate space is not
long in filling up. Between Connecticut river and Lake
Champlain upon Otter Creek, and all along Lake Sacrament
[George] and the rivers that fall into it, and the whole
length of Wood Creek, are numerous settlements made since the
peace.[73:1]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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