"
Nonconformity, then, was the "very motive and cause" which settled
Dorchester, the oldest town but one in Puritan New England, and planted
there a sturdy yeomanry to whom freedom of conscience was more than home
and dearer than life. Nor was this "vast extent of wilderness" to which
they succeeded by right of purchase from the heirs of Chickatabat any
such narrow area as that of the same name, recently annexed to the city
of Boston. It extended from what is now the northern limit of South
Boston to within a hundred and sixty rods of the Rhode Island line, thus
giving the township a length of about thirty-five miles "as y'e road
goethe." The late Ellis Ames, of Canton, a competent authority, says the
town "was formerly bounded by Boston, Roxbury, Dedham, Wrentham,
Taunton, Bridgewater and Braintree," so that its history is the history
of a large part of the towns in Norfolk county and a portion of Bristol.
The manner in which the original territory has been gradually reduced is
thus told by Mr. Ames: "Milton was set off in 1662; part of Wrentham, in
1724: Stoughton, in 1726; Sharon, in 1765; Foxborough, in 1778; Canton,
in 1797; strips were also set off to Dedham, probably, in 1739; and
before the whole was annexed, portions of the northern part of the town
were set off to Boston, at two several times: in 1804 and in 1855.
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