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EXCLUSION OF PAUPERS

By a vote of the town passed January 12, 1671, no person was allowed to receive into his family, as an inmate, any single person more than sixteen years of age, without the consent of the town. Every breach of this order would subject the offender to a fine of 10s. a week for the whole time any such person should be in his family, the fine to be collected by the constable, by distress. No person was permitted even to hire a servant from out of town, without giving security, that the town should not receive any damage thereby.

This regulation was made to avoid the support of paupers; for by a law of the colony, then in force, if a person not having a family, should be resident in any town in the colony, more than three months, without being formally notified of the town's unwillingness that he should remain, he should, if needy, be provided for and relieved by such town.

No particular reason is assigned for passing such a vote at this time, but one may be inferred, from another vote passed at the same meeting, relation to one Christopher Gould, subjecting any person who should receive him into his family, to the fine specified in the former vote.

THE CITIZEN ON SQUAMSCOTT PATENT

The same day, the town granted to Mr. Andrew Wiggin, at his own request, liberty to take forty pines from the common on the northwest side of Ass brook, at a place where one James Kidd had, on some former occasion, hauled out logs. (James Kidd appears to have been regarded as a trespasser, and Mr. Anthony Stanian and William Sanborn were appointed by the town to compel him to pay for the timber he had taken from the town's land.) This Mr. Wiggin was a son of Capt. Thomas Wiggin, heretofore mentioned as a magistrate residing on Squamscott Patent. The son lived there also, and paid taxes to Hampton as his father had done. He, therefore, might perhaps justly be considered as entitled to some favor from the town.

The part of the common whence these logs had been taken is now included within the limits of Exeter. It had hitherto been considered as a part of Hampton, and it evidently belonged to this town according to several acts of the General Court, in which the boundaries of the two towns were described. But not long after this a controversy arose concerning tract of land near the borders of these towns, in which this portion was probably included. Of this controversy and its result, some account will be given farther on.

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