JOSEPH WILLIAMS, Assistant.”
“February 11th, 1705. True copy of the original, placed to record, and examined per me.
“WESTON CLARKE, Recorder.”
Note D. p. 180.
[From Hazard’s State Papers, vol. i.]
Report of Arbitrators at Providence, containing proposals for a form of government:
“Providence, the 27th of the 5th month, }
in the year (so called) 1640. }
“We, Robert Coles, Chad Browne, William Harris, and John Warren, being freely chosen by the consent of our loving friends and neighbors, the inhabitants of this town of Providence, having many differences amongst us, they being freely willing, and also bound themselves to stand to our arbitration, in all differences amongst us, to rest contented in our determination, being so betrusted, we have seriously and carefully endeavored to weigh and consider all these differences, being desirous to bring to unity and peace, although our abilities are far short in the due examination of such weighty things, yet so far as we conceive in laying all things together, we have gone the fairest and the equallest way to produce our peace.
“I. Agreed. We have, with one consent, agreed, that in the parting those particular proprieties which some of our friends and neighbors have in Pawtuxet from the general common of our town of Providence, to run upon a straight line upon a fresh spring, being in the gully at the head of that cove, running by that point of land called Sassafras, unto the town of Mashapaug, to an oak tree standing near unto the corn-field, being at this time the nearest corn-field unto Pawtuxet, the oak tree having four marks with an axe, till some other landmark be set for a certain bound. Also we agree, that if any meadow ground lying and joining to that meadow that borders upon the river of Pawtuxet, come within the aforesaid line, which will not come within a straight line from long cove to the marked tree, then for that meadow to belong to Pawtuxet, and so beyond the town of Mashapaug from the oak tree between the two fresh rivers Pawtuxet and Wanasquatucket, of an even distance.