Tenor was made equal to three pounds of the old, but in business transactions, by common consent, as well as by the law authorizing another issue in 1742, the later bills of the New Tenor came to be passed at the rate of one of the new to four of the old. Still the New Tenor was not proof against depreciation, and both sank rapidly, but in nearly the same proportion, preserving their relative values of one to four.

From 1738 to 1744, the current value of Old Tenor varied but little from 28s to the ounce of silver-a discount of about 76 per cent. From 1745 to 1749 its value varied from 32s to 40s, to the ounce of silver; and after that date it fell to 60s to the ounce, or to about eleven cents on a dollar.

About 1751, Massachusetts began to redeem her paper money, at its depreciated rates, with specie (received from England in payment for her expenses in the expedition against Louisburgh) and the Old Tenor was redeemed at the rate of eleven of paper to one of silver.

CHAPTER X.

EARLY SETTLERS-THEIR FAMILIES AND LOCATIONS.

1726-1743.

In the foregoing chapters we have detailed the proceedings relative to the laying out and settlement of the Upper and Lower Housatonic Townships, and the formation, in 1743, of the North Parish of Sheffield,then commonly called Upper Sheffield,-which afterwards became the town of Great Barrington. At the expense of some repetition, we now return to the consideration of the early settlement of the town, and present to our readers such facts and circumstances pertaining to the pioneers, their families, and the locations of their dwellings, as are gleaned from records or handed down by tradition. It is difficult to determine the precise date, or even the year in which individual settlers came to this place. It is, however, certain that none were here earlier than 1725, and that some came in 1726.

On this point we have the evidence of the settling committee, whose records explicitly state, in May 1727,-that in the Upper Township "some of ye settlers," and in the Lower Township many people" were upon their lands, previous to which date they had been molested by the Dutch,-that is by the Westenhook patentees, who claimed the lands under New York grants. Further, the patentees of Westenhook, in a memorial to the Governor of New York, asking that their rights might be protected, recite the fact that the Massachusetts men were then-April 1726 -beginning to settle here. It may, therefore, be considered an established fact that the settlements in both Great Barrington and Sheffield were begun in 1726.

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To Matthew Noble, of Westfield, as we believe,belongs the credit of having been the first permanent white settler in Berkshire County, as he apparently came to Sheffield in the autumn of 1725, and remained through the following winter.

In the History of Berkshire, the Rev. James Bradford writes: "Mr. Obadiah Noble was the first white man that came to reside in Sheffield. He was from Westfield, and came and spent the first winter here with no other human associates than the Indians. In the spring he went back to Westfield; and in June his daughter, afterwards the wife of Deacon Daniel Kellogg, returned here with him. She was the first white woman that came into the town. She traveled from Westfield, when about sixteen years of age, on horseback, bringing a bed with her, and lodged one night in the wilderness, in what is now the east part of Tyringham," Monterey.

This statement, though in the main correct, is nevertheless, open to criticism. The writer has been informed, as he believes truly, that it was Matthew Noble-not Obadiah-who first came to Sheffield. Matthew was the father of Obadiah, and also of Hannah, ---born October 11, 1707,-who became the wife of Deacon Daniel Kellogg, May 13th, 1731. Obadiah was at that time-1726-under twenty-one years of age, unmarried, and, consequently, not the father of a sixteen years old daughter. And if the pioneer who spent the winter of 1725-6 amongst the Indians, was the father of the young woman mentioned, he certainly was Matthew-not Obadiah-Noble. This Matthew Noble, who was about fifty-seven years of age when he came to Sheffield, had a family of six sons and three daughters, all of whom appear to have removed with him from Westfield. Of his sons, Joseph,-the eldest,settled in Great Barrington; Hezekiah, Matthew, Solomon, Elisha, and Obadiah all located in Sheffield. Of his daughters, Hannah married Deacon Daniel Kellogg of Sheffield; Hester married Moses King of Great Barrington; Rhoda married Ebenezer Smith of Sheffield.

Of the first settlers of Great Baraington a majority were English, several of them from Westfield and that

vicinity, a few were Dutch from the state of New York. We are unable to determine the towns from which some of the families removed to this place. The earliest settlers of the town, south of the bridge, were Coonrod Burghardt, Samuel Dewey, Samuel Dewey, Jun'r, Asahel Dewey, Thomas Dewey, John Granger, Samuel Harmon, Moses Ingersoll, David King, Stephen King, Moses King, Israel Lawton, Joseph Noble, Thomas Pier, John Phelps, Joshua Root, Joseph Sheldon, Samuel Suydam, Lawrence Suydam, Joshua White, Samuel Younglove, Samuel Younglove, Jun'r. Most of these settled here from 1726 to 1730; it is proba ble that none of them came later than 1733. Above the bridge, the forty proprietary rights in the Upper Township were-in 1742-owned by sixteen individuals, several of whom were non-residents.

The early settlers in that part of the town were, Derrick Hogaboom, Hezekiah and Josiah Phelps, Joseph Pixley and his sons Jonah, Joseph, Moses, John, and Jonathan, John Williams, Isaac Van Deusen, Jehoiakim Van Valkenburgh, John Burghardt alias De Bruer, Hendrick Burghardt. A little later came William King, Thomas Horton, Daniel Nash and his son Jonathan, Jonathan Willard and David Ingersoll. These last named appear all to have resided here as early as 1740. To these settlers, or to the owners of proprietary rights, house lots, with meadow and upland, were laid out by the settling committee, along the valley of the river from the north line of Sheffield to the foot of Monument Mountain; and a few locations were made west of the Green River, in the southerly and westerly parts of the town. But with these few exceptions, the settlements were for the most part confined to the valley, and did not penetrate the more remote parts of the town until 1753, or later. viding the lands the compass was but little used; courses by the magnetic needle were not laid down, and in many instances, boundaries and distances were very indefinitely described. It is, therefore, no easy matter, at the present day, to accurately re-locate the house lots and other lands of some of the settlers. Allowances of land were made by the committee, for

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roads, along which the house lots were marked out; but these were not surveyed, nor were their boundaries very distinctly defined. After the formation of the parish, Sheffield established town roads following somewhat nearly the original locations.

The earliest highway through the village, coming from the southward, was substantially the same as now to a point near, or a little north of the Berkshire House; here it turned to the east, and crossing the river at the Indian fordway,-east of the foot of Church street,-continued northerly, on the east side of the river, to the place where the old meeting house was afterwards built; thence it ran east, across the burial ground, to the Bung Hill corner, where it branched towards Three Mile Hill and Stockbridge. For more than ten years after settlements were begun, the river was not bridged, and the fordway, above mentioned, was the only available place of crossing, in the vicinity of the village. No very early mention is made of a road through Water street, but it is probable that a path followed the west bank of the river, connecting, near the bridge, with the road leading towards Van Deusenville, which had been provided by the settling committee.

In the south part of the village, where the brook crosses the street, north of Mount Peter, a highway diverging northwesterly from the Main street, ran west of the dwellings of Doctor Clarkson T. Collins, and Ralph Taylor, in a nearly direct line to the Castle street hill, west of the Asa C. Russell house, and continued northerly towards the pond. Castle street did not then exist, and the road we have described continued in use until 1747.

In the first allotments of lands bordering on the Main street, the land lying between it and the road last described, from the brook to the north line of the premises of Frederick T. Whiting, was not included. This tract, on which now stand the dwellings of the late Doctor Clarkson T. Collins, Ralph Taylor, Frederick Lawrence, the late Mrs. B. F. Durant, Theodore W. French, and Frederick T. Whiting, was afterwards taken up bypitches made by different individuals. In