Manuscripts of Colonial and Revolutionary America

The Swansea Town Records are an accumulation of 49 single-sheet documents issuing from, or directed to, the various instruments of town government in Swansea, Bristol County, Massachusetts, mostly during the 18th century. Colonial Swansea—or Swanzey, as the name was typically spelled—was located along Mount Hope and Narragansett Bays in southeastern Massachusetts. It was incorporated as a town within the Plymouth colony in 1667, initially as a refuge for Baptists. With the rest of Bristol County, it became part of Massachusetts Bay in 1691, when the Plymouth colony was dissolved. The original boundaries of the town encompassed land now in Barrington, Rhode Island (separated in 1717), Warren, Rhode Island (1747), and Somerset, Massachusetts (1790).

More than half the documents in the collection date from the years between 1718/9 and 1757; perhaps a half-dozen can be dated earlier than this. In only a few instances does more than one document relate to the same specific town action or issue. The types of actions to which the individual records pertain are very diverse, and would include land issues; the appointment of town officers; economic regulations and taxes; church affairs; Swansea's relations with neighboring towns; Swansea's relations with the colonial government; and improvements to the town infrastructure. Most of the records pertain to one or more of the following agencies of town government: 1) the Swansea board of selectmen; 2) Swansea town meetings; 3) the Swansea town proprietors; and 4) the town treasury. Selectmen were the town's highest elected officials, and its chief administrators. The most commonly encountered document type within the collection is the town meeting warrant (11), issued by the selectmen to a town constable to "notify and warn" all qualified residents to assemble in meeting for some specified purpose. Another document type issuing from the selectmen is the "warning out of town" (3), a warrant used as a first recourse against undesirables who had entered the community. There are also a number of petitions of varying purpose directed by townspeople to the Swansea selectmen, as well as several petitions from the selectmen to the governor of Massachusetts Bay. In addition to the town meeting warrants mentioned above, town meeting documents in the collection include several memoranda, with proceedings and/or records of voting. The term "proprietors," in the context of the 18th century New England town, indicated those privileged residents (and, increasingly, non-residents) who held joint ownership of the "common and undivided lands" of the town, whether because they were the heirs or assigns of the town's original grantees, or because they had purchased such rights. The proprietors thus had absolute control over the division of town lands; their influence was not political per se but territorial. The half-dozen memoranda and other proprietors' meeting documents in the collection all ultimately pertain, then, to the division of land. As for the town treasurer's records, the most interesting, perhaps, indicates expenses incurred in conducting a town lottery, for the rebuilding and maintenance of a bridge (1749/50).

Other manuscript collections at Notre Dame with items relating to Swansea are the Bristol County, Massachusetts Court Records (MSN/COL 2717) (below) and the Luther Family Papers (MSN/COL 0502).

Provenance note: The collection of Swansea town records was assembled by the University Libraries over the years 2002 to 2005. Items were purchased from Dan Casavant Rare Books of Waterville, Maine; from Paper Trails of Rochdale, Massachusetts; and from Lonn B. Leach of Davie, Florida.

Bibliographic note: For a history of Swansea see Otis Olney Wright, History of Swansea Massachusetts 1667-1917, Swansea MA, 1917.

The Bristol County Court Records are an accumulation of single-sheet file documents issued by (or directed to) the judiciary of Bristol County in southeastern Massachusetts, mostly during the colonial period. Bristol County was established in 1685, and was incorporated into Massachusetts Bay with the dissolution of the Plymouth colony in 1691. During the colonial period, its notable towns included Attleborough, Berkeley, Dartmouth, Dighton, Easton, Freetown, Norton, Raynham, Rehoboth, Swansea, and Taunton. Barrington, Bristol, Little Compton, Tiverton, and Warren lay within Bristol County until 1746, when the colonial boundary was redrawn and the towns were consigned to Rhode Island. The county seats were Bristol and, after 1746, Taunton. Seventy-eight of the 96 records date from the Second Charter period in Massachusetts legal history (1692-1760); 56 predate 1730; five date from the seventeenth century. The earliest document is a 1696/7 writ of attachment issued by Bristol County justice John Saffin; the latest is an 1816 recognizance issued by Zebedee Macomber.

The Bristol County collection includes documents deriving from every tier of the county court system. At the base of this hierarchy were the one-man courts of the county's justices of the peace. These courts had jurisdiction over minor civil suits (in which the amount at issue was less than 40 shillings, and title to land was not in question) as well as over cases involving petty criminal offenses, like profanity, defamation, or minor trespass. Cases heard by individual justices could be appealed to the county's two trial courts, the Inferior Court of Common Pleas and the Court of General Sessions of the Peace. Common Pleas, composed of four justices meeting quarterly at Bristol (or Taunton), possessed original jurisdiction over all civil suits in which damages sought exceeded 40 shillings, except for those involving the crown as plaintiff. General Sessions was also a quarterly court, composed of Bristol County's justices sitting collectively. In its adjudicatory capacity it heard all but the most serious of criminal cases. It also had extensive county administrative functions; it oversaw road and bridge construction, issued licenses (including licenses to sell alcohol and to operate boarding houses, several examples of which are included in the collection), and approved town by-laws. This judicial structure changed relatively little over the course of the eighteenth century. More than 60 per cent of the documents in the collection relate to cases referred to or heard by the Court of General Sessions, including most of the items predating 1725. Around 25 per cent relate to cases before Common Pleas; most of the remainder document cases heard by individual county justices.

The collection includes examples of at least 15 specific document types, representing various stages of judicial procedure. Among those more frequently encountered are: complaints and petitions directed by plaintiffs (and others) to the several courts; summonses, writs of attachment, and arrest warrants (instruments used by the courts to initiate legal proceedings, served by a sheriff or constable); bonds of recognizance (whereby the courts sought compliance by threatening the forfeiture of pledged monies); writs relating to jury duty; jury presentments; and memoranda of judgment and writs of execution. Most of the Court of Common Pleas documents pertain to actions between private individuals for the collection of debts. The General Sessions documents typically indicate either minor criminal offenses against order (sabbath violations, vagrancy, drunkenness, and so on) or sexual misconduct (especially fornication and bastardy). Also represented are cases against public officials, usually selectmen (failure to hire a minister or elect a constable; over- or under-taxation). Only occasionally do two or more documents within the collection pertain to the same specific case. Many of the documents—especially warrants—bear endorsements.

Provenance note: The collection of Bristol County court records was assembled by the University Libraries over the years 2000 to 2005. Most of the individual items were purchased via ebay, from Lonn B. Leach of Davie, Florida.

Bibliographic note: An excellent introduction to the legal history of seventeenth and eighteenth century Massachusetts is the collection of essays published as Law in Colonial Massachusetts 1630-1800, Boston, 1984 (vol. 62 of the Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts). Much of Part II of this work deals with the records themselves.