Petition of John Hector to the Massachusetts General Court

To the Honorable Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in General Court Assembled

The undersigned, a descendant of the Hassanamisco Tribe of Indians respectfully represents that large sums of money are now due the descendants of said tribe from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts arising from the original sale of the Town of Grafton to said Commonwealth,1 that your petitioner in common with the other descendants of said tribe has been placed under the guardianship of said Commonwealth and the money arising from said sale has been without the desire or consent of your petition placed in the hands of the trustees of the who have wasted and diminished said money so that nothing now remains.2

And your petitioner further represents that one Moses Gimbee died,3 seized and possessed of a certain tract of land in the Town of Worcester4 and State of New Hampshire5 and that your petitioner is the sole surviving heir of said Moses Gimbee and is entitled to said property but is unable to obtain it because of the guardianship of the Commonwealth over him.  And your petitioner represents that he is sixty-eight years of age and is now in extreme poverty and is unjustly deprived of his property and the means thereof through no fault or neglect of the Commonwealth, which has assumed to be his guardian.

Wherefore, he prays that Your Honorable Body will cause the matter herein set forth to be fully investigated without delay and will take such prompt and immediate action therein as justice may demand.

• 1. Eight Hassanamisco heads of families transferred their property to English colonists on March 19, 1727. For a copy of the Indian deed, see Frederick Clifton Pierce, The History of Grafton, Worcester County, Massachusetts (Worcester, MA: Press of Chas. Hamilton, 1879), 36-40.
• 2. John Milton Earle discusses some of these instances in his 1861 report. Because the original 1727 sale of Hassanamisco was conducted with “old tenor” money, whose value fluctuated, the tribe lost $1,330.39 to the benefit of the government. Furthermore, the tribal funds were further reduced at the end of the Eighteenth-Century by the malfeasance of two of the community’s trustees, Benjamin Heywood and Captain Isaac Harrington. Earle Report, 89-93.
• 3. Moses Leander Gimbee died June 17, 1847. Massachusetts Town Death Records, 1620-1850. Ancestry.
• 4. The property in Worcester belonged to Hector's relative, Elnathan Freeborn. See Petition of John Hector to the Massachusetts General Court (1859), 1859.02.00.00.
• 5. Gimbee owned ninety acres of land at Winchester, New Hampshire. See Petition of John Hector to the Massachusetts General Court (1859), 1859.02.00.00.