Hampshire Council of Governments

Titlepage, vol. 1

From the mid-1630s, European settlement of western Massachusetts progressed northward up the Connecticut River Valley, spreading gradually to the east and west. Under the authority of the General Court in Boston, Hampshire County was established in 1662 with courthouses in the two largest settlements, Springfield and Northampton, assuming jurisdiction over most of the current-day Commonwealth west of Worcester. Civil authority was administered through a three-tiered system in which magistrates (later justices of the peace) dispensed justice at the local level, above which sat a system of county-level courts and the General Court and Court of Assistants in Boston (later the Governor and Council).

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