A Petition of a Committee for the Narragansett Soldiers, showing that there are the number of Eight Hundred and Forty Persons entered as officers and soldiers in the late Narragansett War, Praying that there may be such an addition of Land granted to them, as may allow a Tract of six miles Square to each one hundred and twenty men so admitted.
In the House of Representatives, Read, and Ordered that the Prayer of the Petition be granted, and that Major Chandler, Mr. Edward Shove, Col. Thomas Tileston, Mr. John Hobson and Mr. Samuel Chandler (or any three of them,) be a Committee fully authorized and empowered to survey and lay out five more Tracts of Land for Townships, of the Contents of Six miles Square each, in some of the unappropriated lands of this Province; and that the said land, together with the two towns before granted, be granted and disposed of to the officers and soldiers or their lawful Representatives, as they are or have been allowed by this Court, being eight hundred and forty in number, in the whole, and in full satisfaction of the Grant formerly made them by the General Court, as a reward for their public service. And the Grantees shall be obliged to assemble within as short time as they can conveniently, not exceeding the space of two months, and proceed to the choice of Committees, respectively, to regulate each Propriety or Township which is to be held and enjoyed by one hundred and twenty of the Grantees, each in equal Proportion, who shall pass such orders and rules as will effectually oblige them to settle Sixty families, at least, within each Township, with a learned, orthodox ministry, within the space of seven years of the date of this Grant. Provided, always, that if the said Grantees shall not effectually settle the said number of families in each Township, and also lay out a lot for the first settled minister, one for the ministry, and one for the school, in each of the said townships, they shall have no advantage of, but forfeit their respective grants, anything to the contrary contained notwithstanding. The Charge of the Survey to be paid by the Province.
In Council read and concur'd.
J. BELCHER.
In June of 1733 these grantees met on Boston Common for the purpose of making a division of the lands thus appropriated, but twenty veterans of the Narragansett War being then living. They organized into seven societies, each representing one hundred and twenty persons, and each represented by an executive committee of three. These committees convened in Boston on the 17th of October, 1733, and, by drawing numbers from a hat, apportioned to their societies the following seven townships set apart from the public domain under the grant: No. 1, in Maine, now called Buxton; No. 2, Westminster, Mass.; No. 3, Souhegan-West, now Amherst, N. H.; No. 4, originally at the Falls of the Amoskeag, where Goffstown now is (subsequently exchanged for lands in Hampden county, Mass.); No. 5, Souhegan-East, N. H.; No. 6, Templeton, Mass.; No. 7, Gorham, Me. Thomas Tileston, of Dorchester, drew "Number 5, Souhegan-East;" of the one hundred and twenty grantees whom he represented, fifty-seven belonged to Boston, fifteen to Roxbury, seven to Dorchester, two to Milton, five to Braintree, four to Weymouth, thirteen to Hingham, four to Dedham, two to Hull, one to Medfield, five to Scituate, and one to Newport, R. I. In the fifteen Roxbury grantees was Zechariah Chandler, who was one of the few who personally took up land under the grant and settled upon it one of his own family. As a rule the grantees sold their claims to others. On the town records Zechariah Chandler's name is signed in the right of his wife's father, Thomas Bishop, who served against King Philip. His son, Thomas Chandler, took possession of the land and was among the pioneers of the town. To-day the Chandler family is believed to be the only representative in Bedford of the original grantees. It was in 1737, 1738, and 1739 that systematic settlement practically began in this part of the Merrimack valley.
In 1741 New Hampshire became a separate province, and in 1748 the farmers of Souhegan-East, finding themselves without any township organization and without the power to legally transact corporate business, called upon the government for relief. As a result, it is recorded that on the 11th of April in that year Gov. Benning Wentworth informed the Council of New Hampshire "of the situation of a number of persons inhabiting a place called Souhegan-East, within this Province, that were without any township or District, and had not the privilege of a town in choosing officers for regulating their affairs, such as raising money for the ministry," etc. Thereupon a provisional township organization was authorized, under which the municipality was managed until 1750, when, on the 10th of May, the following petition was sent to the Governor, signed by thirty-eight citizens, among them Thomas Chandler:
To his Excellency, Benning Wentworth, Esq., Governor and Commander-in-Chief of his Majesty's Province of New Hampshire, and to the Honorable, his Majesty's Council, assembled at Portsmouth, May 10, 1750.
The humble Petition of the subscribers, inhabitants of Souhegan-East, so-called, sheweth, That your Petitioners are major part of said Souhegan; that your petitioners, as to our particular persuasion in Christianity, are generally of the Presbyterian denomination; that your petitioners, through a variety of causes, having long been destitute of the gospel, are now desirous of taking proper steps in order to have it settled among us in that way of discipline which we judge to tend most to our edification; that your petitioners, not being incorporated by civil authority, are in no capacity to raise those sums of money, which may be needful in order to our proceeding in the above important affair. May it therefore please your Excellency, and Honors, to take the case of your petitioners under consideration, and to incorporate us into a town or district, or in case any part of our inhabitants should be taken off by any neighboring district, to grant that those of our persuasion, who are desirous of adhering to us, may be excused from supporting any other parish charge, than where they conscientiously adhere, we desiring the same liberty to those within our bounds, if any there be, and your petitioners shall ever pray, &c.
This petition was presented on May 18, 1750, to the Council, which unanimously advised the granting of a charter, and this the Governor did upon the following day. The name of the town was changed by Governor Wentworth from Souhegan-East to Bedford, it is said in honor of the fourth Duke of Bedford, then Secretary of State in the ministry of George II. This was the formal organization of the present town, which has a territorial extent of about twenty thousand acres of land.
Of the early population of this and neighboring towns "The Centennial History of Bedford" (published in 1851) says:
With few exceptions the early inhabitants of the town were from the North of Ireland or from the then infant settlement of Londonderry, N. H., to which they had recently emigrated from Ireland. Their ancestors were of Scotch origin. About the middle of the seventeenth century they went in considerable numbers from Argylshire, in the West of Scotland, to the counties of Londonderry and Antrim, in the North of Ireland, from which in 1718 a great emigration took place to this country. Some arrived at Boston, and some at Casco Bay near Portland, which last were the settlers of Londonderry. Many towns in this vicinity were settled from this colony. Windham, Chester, Litchfield, Manchester, Bedford, Goffstown, New Boston, Antrim, Peterborough and Acworth derived from Londonderry a considerable proportion of their first inhabitants.
Many of their descendants have risen to high respectability, among whom are numbered four Governors of New Hampshire, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, several distinguished officers in the Revolutionary War and in the last war with Great Britain, including Stark, Reid, Miller, and McNeil, a President of Bowdoin College, some Members of Congress, and several distinguished ministers of the gospel.
It was a Scottish stock, with an Irish preceding the American transplanting, that peopled Bedford. There were among its original settlers a few families of English and fewer still of pure Milesian extraction, but the Scotch descent was overwhelmingly predominant, and the austere theology and noble traditions of the Kirk of Scotland formed the leaven of the community. Their religious history dated back to John Knox. Their immediate ancestors were the sturdy Presbyterians with whom James I. colonized depopulated Ulster after he had crushed the Catholic uprisings. Those involuntary colonists made that the most prosperous of the Irish provinces, and at a critical moment for the cause of Protestantism added to the annals of heroic endurance the defense of Londonderry against the army of James II. But to their simple and tenacious faith the tithes and rents of the Anglican Church were scarcely less abhorrent than Catholic persecution, and the example of Puritan emigration ultimately led them by thousands to American shores. Much of this tide of settlement was diverted by the Puritan pre-occupation of New England soil to the Middle and Southern States, but a strong current set up into northern New England and occupied (with much other territory) the valley of the Merrimack. It was to these Scotch-Irish Presbyterians that the greater number of the grantees of Bedford—as a rule the descendants of Massachusetts Puritans—sold their claims, and the community became what their labors and influence made it. The Chandler (representing an original grantee) was one of the few Bedford families which sprang from English stock and possessed Puritan antecedents.