Excerpt from The Nipmuck Indians The territory originally comprising the old town of Worcester included, besides that of the present City of Worcester, the whole town of Holden which was set off in 1740, and the northeast quarter of Auburn which was set off in 1778, the latter section including the old Common where the Auburn Church and Town Hall now stand. To this original territory the first inhabitants, the Indians, gave the name of Quinsigamond, from the name of the lake bounding it on the east, with its numerous aliases, Quansigamaug, Quonsicamug, Quansigamog, etc., etc., meaning in the Indian dialect, "fishing place for pickerel." This is one of the earliest places in the interior of New England to which the attention of the first settlers from the seaboard or coast was directed, towards the west. Plymouth, the oldest New England town, was settled on the arrival of the Pilgrims in the Mayflower, in the bleak month of December, 1620. Within ten years from that date a large number of new towns, including Weymouth, Braintree, Salem, Charlestown, Lynn, Boston, Roxbury, Watertown, Dorchester, Cambridge, Medford, along the eastern coast, had been settled or incorporated, and then movements began toward the interior. Settlements began at Concord in 1635, Sudbury in 1638, Lancaster in 1643, and Marlboro in 1654. Lancaster, the oldest town in Worcester County, was incorporated in 1654, Mendon in 1667, and Brookfield in 1673, Worcester ranking the fourth in age or time of first settlement of the towns in this county. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.