o sell property to
newcomers, the town kept a jealous watch over the right of entry into
the corporation.

Dorchester in 1634 enacted that "no man within the Plantation shall sell
his house or lott to any man without the Plantation whome they shall
dislike off." Providence would not permit a proprietor to sell to any
"but to an Inhabitant" without consent of the town. New Haven would
neither sell nor let ground to a stranger. Hadley would sell no land to
any until after three years' occupation, and then only with approval of
the "Town's Mind." In 1637 the General Court very reasonably questioned
whether towns could legally restrain individuals from disposal of their
own property, but the custom was so established, so in touch with the
narrow exclusiveness of the colonists, that it still prevailed. The
expression of the town of Watertown when it would sell lots only to
freemen of the congregation, because it wished no strange neighbors, but
only "to sitt down there close togither," was the sentiment of all the
towns. One John Stebbins, who had twice served as a soldier of Watertown
and lived there seven years, could not get a town lot.

The legal process of warning out of town had an element of the absurd in
it, and in one case that of mystery, namely: a sheriff appeared before
the woebegone intruder, and said, half laughing, "I warn you off the
face of the earth." "Let me get my hat before I go," stammered the
terrified wanderer, who ran into the house for his hat and was never
seen by any mortal eye in that town afterwards. It has become a
tradition of local folk-lore that he literally vanished from the earth
at the command of the officer of the law.

The harboring of strangers, even of relatives who were not local
residents, was a frequent source of bickering between citizens and
magistrates, as well as a constant cause of arbitration between towns. A
widow in Dorchester was not permitted to entertain her own son-in-law
from another town, and her neighbor was fined in 1671 "under distress"
for housing his own daughter. She was a married woman, and alleged she
could not return to her husband on account of the inclement weather.

As time passed on and immigration continued, freemen clung closely to
their right to keep out strangers and outsiders. From the Boston Town
Records of 1714 we find citizens still prohibited from entertaining a
stranger without giving notice to the town authorities, and a
description of the