Note 9 — Chapter VI

Page 32—Henry Richmond had some interesting property transactions during the fifteen years 1768-1783 he owned the property, I discovered in my perusal of many deeds. Book 74, Page 54, January 14, 1773, records three transactions all on the same day. Perhaps economy was the motive.

In the southeast corner of the land he bought from Jonathan Churchill he had a boundary with Jonathan Holmes. The latter, a year earlier in 1767, had bought land from Josiah Churchill, brother of Jonathan Churchill. Curiously, somehow, Jonathan Holmes had built his house on the Richmond land. So Richmond sold him two and one half acres where the Holmes dwelling was located, “all with a Fence going sixteen rods (264 feet) wide.” The consideration was an exchange of two and one half acres from Jonathan Holmes from another part of his land described in the deed as “a piece of land at South Pond, so called, being the southwest corner of my land and a strip that lyes by the Pond and to extend so far from the Pond as to make the said Richmond Range a straight line down to the Pond and containing about two acres and a half.” Apparently this was an amicable swap-settlement.

On September 14, 1773, the same year, Book 57, Page 180, Henry Richmond sold to Josiah Bradford, mariner, one and one half acres for “Eighteen shillings lawful money.” Josiah Bradford was from Middleboro.

According to Davis’s Genealogy, Josiah Bradford married Hannah Rider in 1746 and had Josiah born 1754. In 1781 Josiah, Jr., married Elizabeth Holmes. I have not been able to find in the Registry of Deeds a record of the final disposition of Bradford’s one and a half acre. The deed describes the land as “the piece of land where said Bradford’s House stands and is all included with Fence and is twenty Rods long and sixteen Rods wide at one end and eight Rods at the other end. Being in the easterly Part of my said Homestead lands.”

Another case of a man building his house on another man’s land?