Note 340 — Chapter XXIV

John Howland, Esq. says: “I think there must have been a bridge at Weybosset before 1712.” Perhaps the bridge ordered to be built over Moshassuck river, in 1662, and to which Mr. Williams’ letter may refer, was intended to be somewhere between the present Great Bridge and Smith’s Bridge, for the purpose of getting access to the natural meadows at the head of the cove. The mention of “hay time,” and the references of Mr. Williams to the “hopes of meadow,” may strengthen this supposition. Mr. Howland says, “I have frequently been told by Nathan Waterman, that teams and men on horseback used to cross the river (before his day) across the clam bed, opposite Angell’s land (at low tide) and land somewhere on the western shore. The Thomas Olney lot was where the Knight Dexter tavern now is, and Angell’s was the next south, including part of the Baptist meeting-house lot, and Steeple street. In front of this, lay the shoal place, called the clam-bed.” May 14, 1660, in a petition of the town to the General Assembly, against an assessment on the town of thirty pounds, to build a prison at Newport, the town said, that they had just spent one hundred and sixty pounds in building a bridge. April 27, 1663, George Sheppard gave all his lands west of seven mile line to the town, for “maintaining a bridge at Weybosset.”