Chester is another of the towns of Hampden county, Mass., settled a few years after Blandford, almost entirely by Irish. The present town formed one of the ten original townships sold at auction by order of the general court, Jan. 2, 1762. About that time the first settlers of the place began to arrive who in all probability were like large numbers of Irish coming to this country at that time, Presbyterians, although the names of some of them would indicate that they were Catholics, such as John and David Gilmore, Thomas Kennedy, Daniel Fleming, William Moore, Thomas McIntire, William Kennedy, John McIntire, James Clark, Andrew Fleming. Other prominent settlers were the Gordons, Hollands, Knoxs, Henrys, Hamiltons, Quiglays, Elders and Bells. This town was incorporated Oct. 31, 1765, when it was called Murrayfield. Among the clergymen who officiated at Chester we find the name of Rev. Andrew McCune. The first settlers of Granville, Mass., which was first called Bedford, were almost all from Ireland. Following the first settler, Samuel Bancroft, came Daniel Cooley, Thomas Spellman, John Root, Peter Gibbons and Samuel Church. Dr. Holland in his “History of Western Massachusetts” refers to the longevity of the early settlers of this town as quite remarkable. The ancestor of the Cooleys from Ireland died at the age of 90 years; of the Spellmans, who died in 1767, at 93; of the Gibbonses at 92; of the Churches at 95, and of the Roots at 103. Hamilton, Goff, Cortiss, Gibbons, Clark, Moore, Phelan were also early settlers at Granville. The one hundredth anniversary of the settlement of Rev. Timothy M. Cooley, in 1795, took place in Granville in August, 1895, at which a large number of the descendants of those early Irish settlers were present, when they most fittingly honored the memory of their ancestors. J. G. Holland says that the facts were communicated to him by Rev. Mr. Cooley in 1854, when he was 83 years of age. He was born in Granville and like many of the Cooleys of Hampden county was descended from old Daniel Cooley from Ireland. Among the early inhabitants of Rowe, Mass., which was settled in 1744, we find the names of Michael Wilson, Henry Gleason, William Taylor, Mathew Barr, and Joseph Thomas. They were a portion of the Irish colony to Worcester county, which after a short time scattered to form new settlements. The first permanent settlement of Shelborne was about 1760 by several Irish families who had lived for a time in Londonderry, N. H. Among them are the names of Joseph Thompson, Patrick Lawson, Robert Wilson, John Taylor, James Ryder, Daniel Nims and Samuel Hunter.