Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 170, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 July 1915 — CORNER IS LONG DISPUTED [ARTICLE]

CORNER IS LONG DISPUTED

Tract Waged Before Rebellion and For Year* Afterward. In the early colonial days, when the Puritan commonwealth of Massachusetts claimed "everything from Cape Cod westward to the western ocean,” there was a little tract known as Boston Comer, over which a question of Jurisdiction was waged by New York. Ten years before the revolutionary war the two colonies appointed commissioners to fix upon a mutually acceptable boundary line, but after long negotiation, while they came near enough to agree upon a starting line, they could not decide whether or not It should parallel the Hudson river, and finally gaVe it up. After the war the controversy was renewed and was referred to Congress, and this time a boundary was definitely fixed, beginning at a point on the MassachusettsConnecticut line, twenty miles from the Hudson, and extending northwestward In a straight line parallel with the general .trend of the river. This line followed closely the western slope of the Taconlc mountains, leaving the valley lands in New York state. At the southwest angle, however, the mountains receded and left about 300 acres of bottom land In Massachusetts. This section was Inaccessible from the eastern side of the mountains, and in time its people bore an unenviable reputation for lawlessness, and Boston Corner, as It was known, became the resort of all manner of lawbreakers. Its inhabitants did not vote, and the tax collector left them severely alone. Matters grew wdrse till 1853, when John Morlrssey, the famous pubilist, afterward serving in congress, fought weight championship of the world. These was a general melee over the result of thlsrflght. Puritan Massachusetts rose In Indignation. The state assembly had been considering the organization of a special police for Boston Comer, but in 1854 the knot was cut by the legislature ceding some 8,000 acres of lang, which included Boston Comer, to the state of New York. And New York accepted the gift. Boston Comer is now peaceful and law abiding, a different class of people having replaced those of the ’6os, and the only evidence remaining may be seen by noticing the map of Massachusetts which shows the southwest comer chopped off at an angle.