The Descendants of Jacob Schoff (eBook, PDF)

Jacob schoff was one of a party of seven Germans who purchased of the town of Lexington, in the province of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, in 1757, a tract of 1000 acres of land in the plantation then known as Dorchester Canada now the town of Ashburnham, in the northern part of Worcester County, which had been awarded by the Provincial Court to Lexington as payment for the joint maintenance of a bridge over the Charles River at Cambridge. The location of this bridge, on the road from Harvard Square by Soldiers' Field to Brighton, is marked by a commemorative tablet. The name of the plantation was the result of the disastrous expedition of the New England colonies led by Sir William Phips against the French fortress of Quebec in 1690; the various towns having received from the Provincial Court land in the unsettled wilderness, instead of money, in payment for the expense incurred by them in raising and maintaining troops for the expedition. At the time of this purchase, Dor Chester Canada was a forest containing only a few families of hardy pioneers, and F itchburg, twelve miles southeastward, was the nearest settlement. A road was under construction from Boston to the settlements along the southern line of New Hampshire, which, until a short time before, had been claimed as territory belonging to Massachusetts. The dispute was arbitrated by the King of England, who in 1740 drew the dividing line as it now exists, between the Merrimac and Connecticut Rivers. This road, in colonial days, was animportant highway of trade, — one of the two that led west ward from Boston. The first led to Marlboro and Spring field, and so to the settlements in Connecticut; this second road, from Watertown through Acton, Leominster, and F itchburg, branched at Dorchester Canada; one branch leading to New Ipswich and Petersboro, connecting ulti mately with both the Merrimac and Connecticut; the other to F itzwilliam and Keene, being extended subsequently to Walpole on the Connecticut River, to Rutland in Vermont and finally to Lake Champlain In the year 1757 it had probably gone no further than Dorchester Canada, if so far.