Site of Pownal's first proprietor's meeting
This is Dr. Seth Hudson's home site as it looks today. It is located in Williamstown, MA on West Main St
by Hemlock Brook.
In March of 1760, shortly after the Pownal Charter was
granted, Seth Hudson called the first meeting of the
Proprietors. The minutes were written by himself, and the
effort to conceal the place and the number of Proprietors, is
apparent. "Now is the time and here is the place" for the
meeting, he says, "the Proprietors or number of them being
assembled..." Very likely the meeting took place at his house
in Williamstown (West Hoosick) and no Proprietors were
present beyond his neighbors. Not that he needed to be
secretive, since the Charter had not required the meeting to
be in Pownal, nor did it specify any number of Proprietors for
a legal meeting. Hudson was elected Town Clerk and Town
Treasurer, and a committee of seven persons, all apparently
Hudson's West Hoosick neighbors but not all Proprietors,
were appointed to lay out the lands of the First Division,
being the small lots of the Town Plot which was to be the
central village, and the Second Division, being 180-acre lots
of prime farmland.