Editing Bernardston, Massachusetts (section)

== History ==

===Falls Fight Township===

Bernardston, Massachusetts, initially known as ''Falls Fight Township'',<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.franklincountyhistory.com/bernardston/everts/03.html |title=Bernardston, Massachusetts -- 1879 History -- Early Settlement |access-date=July 12, 2013 |archive-date=November 6, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121106024444/http://www.franklincountyhistory.com/bernardston/everts/03.html |url-status=dead }}</ref>  was a frontier settlement created by and for the families of soldiers who had fought in [[King Phillips War]], specifically in the [[Battle of Turner's Falls]], a major engagement under Captain Turner in 1676.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/conn.river/massacre.html |title=Turners Falls Massacre |access-date=September 19, 2015 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061004221929/http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/conn.river/massacre.html |archive-date=October 4, 2006 }} U Mass</ref> [[Burke's Rangers|Major John Burke]] was an early settler of the town, his father was one of the veterans granted land in Falls Fight, as was the son of [[Hope Atherton]].
  
In November 1734, the following was presented to the General Court of Massachusetts:<ref>Louis H. Everts, ''History of the Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts, Volume II'', 1879.</ref>

{{blockquote|A petition of Samuel Hunt, of Billerica, for himself and other survivors of the officers and soldiers that belonged to the company of Capt. Turner, and the representatives of them that are dead, shewing that the said company in 1676 engaged the Indian enemy at a place above Deerfield, and destroyed above three hundred of them, and, therefore, praying that this court would grant them a tract of land above Deerfield suitable to make a township.}}

The petition was granted and the proprietors of the new township began recruiting 60 families to settle in the town. John Burke, Samuel Connable, Lieut. Ebenezer Sheldon, and Deacon Sheldon built the first four houses, in 1738. They were of hewn logs, with port-holes in the walls for defense against the Indians.