Some time after purchasing Winnisimmet from Samuel
Maverick, Governor Richard Bellingham divided his land into four
farms, each operating under the name of its tenant farmer. The farms
included: the Lieutenant John Smith or Smith farm, the Rice/Eustis
farm and the Senter farm. It is not known as to who occupied the
fourth and largest farm between 1635 and 1663. The inland area of
this part of Bellingham’s property was heavily forested and fairly
wild with small game animals. In 1659 Governor Richard Bellingham,
who occupied a summer home near the ferry, built a hunting lodge on
the southern slope of Powderhom Hill, a house that exists to the
present day. The earliest evidence of a tenant for this the largest
of Bellingham’s farms was from a written account of work done by
Samuel Townsend in 1663 for the Governor. Townsend remained as tenant
until his death December 21, 1704. Townsend created a farm that was
that the most profitable and productive not only in farm produce, but
also dairy, poultry and livestock. He also was working the clay pit,
malting and carting bricks and clay and timber. Townsend also
constructed other buildings for convience on the property.
Governor Bellingham died in 1672 and his estate was inherited by
his wife, Penelope. When Penelope died May 28, 1702, the estate went
to her son Samuel and his second wife the former widow Elizabeth
Savage. Elizabeth passed the property to her sister Rebecca, wife of
Edward Watts a London lawyer. Meanwhile the Townsend family remained
managing the farm and improvmg the estate while the absentee
landlords remained abroad. Rebecca bequeathed the property to her
widowed daughter-in-law Ann Watts who married Thomas Greaves of
Charlestown. The estate was then passed to Thomas Greaves’ daughter
Margaret. Margaret married Captain Samuel Cary, a sea captain from
Charlestown December 24, 174 1. Margaret was described as “small
of stature, plain and pitted with the smallpox, but very intelligent
and active.” They had four children Samuel, Thomas, Jonathon and
Abigail. During this time the tenant occupying the estate was Samuel
Sprague, a man who was moderator at the town meetings and influential
in the town. Sprague died in 1783 at the age of seventy-one and by
his will provided that two blacks that worked for him, be supported
by his estate, for the rest of their lives.
By 1865, three years after Margaret’s death, October 8, 1762,
Captain Cary had complete possession of the Bellingham farm and
house. Four years later on December 4, 1769, Captain Samuel Cary
passed away. The estate was acquired by the oldest son, Samuel Cary
Jr. After graduating from Harvard College, Samuel Cary Jr. received
one-thousand pounds and went to the West Indies becoming involved in
buying and selling cargoes. He eventually purchased a plantation in
Grenada and became a planter. Samuel became acquainted with Sarah
Gray, a young lady eleven years his junior, and they were married
November 5, 1772. Samuel and Sarah immediately moved into what was to
become the Cary mansion and the Cary estate. The following summer
Samuel Cary Jr. received word of trouble and insurection arising in
Grenada and had to return leaving his expectant wife with her mother
at the Cary mansion. The Cary’s first child a son, named Samuel, was
bom October 17. 1773. The next winter she reluctantly left her infant
son with her mother and went to join her husband in Grenada. Samuel
and Sarah remained in Grenada for eighteen years and had eight more
children. Samuel and Sarah Cary returned to Chelsea in 1791 and spent
$12,000 paneling and beautifying the mansion making it the showplace
in the east. The Carys once back in Chelsea, had four more children
for a total of thirteen and thus the real beginning of the Cary
family of Chelsea.