Norfolk County, Massachusetts Colony

Norfolk County, Massachusetts Colony was one of the original four counties created in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The county was created by the Massachusetts General Court on May 10, 1643, when it was ordered "that the whole plantation within this jurisdiction be divided into four sheires". Norfolk County contained the settlements of Salisbury, Hampton, Haverhill, Exeter, Dover, and Portsmouth.^[1] In 1680 the towns of this county were divided between Essex County, Massachusetts (Salisbury and Haverhill) and the newly formed Province of New Hampshire (Hampton, Exeter, Dover, and Portsmouth) so that the county ceased to exist.

The former Norfolk County is often referred to as "Old Norfolk County."

Four volumes of records of the Old Norfolk County exist and are at the Essex County Registry of Deeds in Salem. They have been electronically imaged into JPG image files but are not yet online. These four record books were also abstracted by Sidney Perley in The Essex Antiquarian. This magazine (published 1897 to 1911) has also been electronically imaged and some volumes are available at books.google.com.

A new, unrelated county was established as Norfolk County, Massachusetts from most of the southern portion of Suffolk County in 1793.

References

1. ^ Davis, William T. Bench and Bar of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, p. 44. The Boston History Company, 1895.

External links

• Essex Antiquarian see pages 18(map), 19-24(article), 81(article continued) volume 1 published 1897; Volume 2 pages 11–15,47-49, etc.