CHAPTER VI. HENRY RICHMOND AND HIS SON, ELIAB

[8] Page 31--Regarding Henry Richmond and his son Eliab’s purchase, the deed shows how the boundaries were to be determined. His son was to have some 580 feet on the shore of the pond, starting on the southwest corner of the property and then northerly and northeasterly to such a point of the compass as to include the exact quantity of thirty acres, thence easterly to the boundary with Jonathan Holmes and by his land to the first corner.

Eliab and Hannah Richmond held these thirty acres from January 1773 for eleven years until April 1784, and probably lived on and farmed these acres. These years coincide closely with those of the American Revolution. When he sold them to Nathaniel Clark, Book 63, Page 69, for 11 pounds 8 shillings, he took a loss of some two pounds during the eleven years. Nathaniel Clark had bought Henry Richmond’s property a year earlier.

[9] Page 32--Henry Richmond had some interesting property transactions during the fifteen years 1768-1783 he owned the property, I discovered in my perusal of many deeds. Book 74, Page 54, January 14, 1773, records three transactions all on the same day. Perhaps economy was the motive.

In the southeast corner of the land he bought from Jonathan Churchill he had a boundary with Jonathan Holmes. The latter, a year earlier in 1767, had bought land from Josiah Churchill, brother of Jonathan Churchill. Curiously, somehow, Jonathan Holmes had built his house on the Richmond land. So Richmond sold him two and one half acres where the Holmes dwelling was located, “all with a Fence going sixteen rods (264 feet) wide.” The consideration was an exchange of two and one half acres from Jonathan Holmes from another part of his land described in the deed as “a piece of land at South Pond, so called, being the southwest corner of my land and a strip that lyes by the Pond and to extend so far from the Pond as to make the said Richmond Range a straight line down to the Pond and containing about two acres and a half.” Apparently this was an amicable swap-settlement.

On September 14, 1773, the same year, Book 57, Page 180, Henry Richmond sold to Josiah Bradford, mariner, one and one half acres for “Eighteen shillings lawful money.” Josiah Bradford was from Middleboro.

According to Davis’s Genealogy, Josiah Bradford married Hannah Rider in 1746 and had Josiah born 1754. In 1781 Josiah, Jr., married Elizabeth Holmes. I have not been able to find in the Registry of Deeds a record of the final disposition of Bradford’s one and a half acre. The deed describes the land as “the piece of land where said Bradford’s House stands and is all included with Fence and is twenty Rods long and sixteen Rods wide at one end and eight Rods at the other end. Being in the easterly Part of my said Homestead lands.”

Another case of a man building his house on another man’s land?

[10] Page 32--I have found some material about Jonathan Holmes, Henry Richmond’s neighbor to the south. He was the son of Joseph Holmes and Phoebe, daughter of John Churchill, who were married in 1726. As of 1769 he was listed as a fisherman and had lived near Scook’s Pond near Manomet Point. In 1765 he sold some of his land there which was laid out to his father, Book 52, Page 165.

According to Book 54, Page 241, on April 17, 1769, he bought from Mary and William Bartlett, a seafaring man, “for nine pounds, six shillings, 8. d, a lot of woodland containing 40 acres at a place called South Pond and is in number fourth in the Fifth Great Lot, being the Lot which I bought of Josiah Churchill (brother of Jonathan) by deed June 30, 1767.” This would be the area running east from the southeast side of Boot Pond.

Nineteen years later, in 1788, as shown in Book 71, Page 265, he sold to “Mathew Porter of Plympton for 30 pounds whole of my land and buildings at South Pond ... saving the small part I sold Henry Richmond.” Mathew Porter sold the land the next year to Samuel Rickard of Plymouth, yeoman, along with 32 acres in the fifth share in the 6th great lot he had bought from William Thomas and Benjamin Bramhall. Porter goes on to say that the cut wood and grain in the ground “to be free for me until January next, also liberty for one Levi Hoit to remove his said house from said land if he moves it between this and the first day of January next,” Sept. 7, 1789. Hoyt’s Pond is on present day maps.

On September 26, 1791, Samuel and Priscilla Rickard sold for thirty pounds to Luke Hall, laborer, land purchased of Mathew Porter in 1789, containing about 69 acres, plus the other 24 acres. On June 8, 1792, Book 78, Page 94, the land is sold to William Hall Jackson, “trader,” 24 acres and 69 acres “in the easterly side of the southerly arm of South Pond, Gunner’s Exchange and Finney’s Meadow” for 24 pounds, two shillings to be paid by June 1, 1794.