Excerpt from The Record of Births, Marriages and Deaths and Intentions of Marriage, in the Town of Stoughton From 1727 to 1800, and in the Town of Canton From 1797 to 1845: Preceded by the Records of the South Precinct of Dorchester From 1715 to 1727 Many years elapsed before this part of Dorchester became much settled. In 1657 about 6000 acres of this tract were granted by the Proprietors of Dorchester to the Ponkapoag tribe of Indians at the request of the Rev. John Eliot, and later a small number of other tracts were sold and settlements started. The principal of these were as follows: one, just south and west of Blue Hill; one, near the south part of N orwood; one, at the southwest end of Sharon; one, near Brockton; one, at Massapoag Pond; and one, in and near Plainville in Wrentham. In 1696 the Dorchester Proprietors began to divide the unsold lands among themselves, the partition taking many years, being practically completed about 1731. After part of the lands had been divided the proprietors, who had at first kept their records in the-record book of the town of Dorchester, were incorporated as a separate body and kept separate records until all their business was concluded, their records ending about 1770. 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.