Map Fragment, circa 1686
Around 1686 a surveyor designed this plan for the
new town of Deerfield, Massachusetts. Each houselot number on the
main street (in the upper left-hand corner of the drawing) corresponds
to numbers in the common fields. Each person owned both a lot for
his house and several fields for cultivation and land as a source
of wood to supply building materials and fuel.
The lower (southern) portion of the map is missing. The street contains
43 houselots. Find #2 on the main street and color it red. Now look
for all the strips of land marked with #2 and color them the same
color. This will give you an idea of the amount of land owned by
the early Deerfield men.
Native people, who lived in the area for many
thousands of years and who farmed the area for at least one thousand
years before the Europeans arrived, used the land without individual
ownership. Boundaries for the Natives' homelands were not defined
by surveyors, but by mutual agreement.
Links and chains
For an interactive activity based on this map,
please visit the following page at this web site and click on the
Activity icon: Turns
of the Centuries Exhibit > The Land > 1680 - 1720.