Norfolk County, Massachusetts Colony was one of the original four counties created in the

Massachusetts Bay Colony The Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630–1691), more formally the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, was an English settlement on the east coast of North America around the Massachusetts Bay, the northernmost of the several colonies later reorganized as the ...

. The land was originally granted as separate from Massachusetts, but boundary disputes among the settlers led to their petitioning to join the colonial government to the south. The county was created by the

Massachusetts General Court The Massachusetts General Court (formally styled the General Court of Massachusetts) is the state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The name "General Court" is a hold-over from the earliest days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, ...

on May 10, 1643, when it was ordered "that the whole

plantation A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...

within this jurisdiction be divided into four sheires". Norfolk County contained the settlements of

Salisbury Salisbury ( ) is a cathedral city in Wiltshire, England with a population of 41,820, at the confluence of the rivers Avon, Nadder and Bourne. The city is approximately from Southampton and from Bath. Salisbury is in the southeast of Wil ...

Hampton Hampton may refer to: Places Australia *Hampton bioregion, an IBRA biogeographic region in Western Australia *Hampton, New South Wales *Hampton, Queensland, a town in the Toowoomba Region * Hampton, Victoria Canada * Hampton, New Brunswick *Ha ...

, Haverhill,

Exeter Exeter () is a city in Devon, South West England. It is situated on the River Exe, approximately northeast of Plymouth and southwest of Bristol. In Roman Britain, Exeter was established as the base of Legio II Augusta under the personal comm ...

Dover Dover () is a town and major ferry port in Kent, South East England. It faces France across the Strait of Dover, the narrowest part of the English Channel at from Cap Gris Nez in France. It lies south-east of Canterbury and east of Maidstone ...

, and

Portsmouth Portsmouth ( ) is a port and city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire in southern England. The city of Portsmouth has been a unitary authority since 1 April 1997 and is administered by Portsmouth City Council. Portsmouth is the most dens ...

.Davis, William T. ''Bench and Bar of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts'', p. 44. The Boston History Company, 1895. It effectively encompassed all settlements from the

Merrimack River The Merrimack River (or Merrimac River, an occasional earlier spelling) is a river in the northeastern United States. It rises at the confluence of the Pemigewasset and Winnipesaukee rivers in Franklin, New Hampshire, flows southward into Mas ...

, north to the

Piscataqua River The Piscataqua River (Abenaki: ''Pskehtekwis'') is a tidal river forming the boundary of the U.S. states of New Hampshire and Maine from its origin at the confluence of the Salmon Falls River and Cochecho River. The drainage basin of the river ...

, and extending inland about a dozen miles. In 1680, the

Province of New Hampshire The Province of New Hampshire was a colony of England and later a British province in North America. The name was first given in 1629 to the territory between the Merrimack and Piscataqua rivers on the eastern coast of North America, and was nam ...

was formally separated from Massachusetts, with Norfolk County forming the core. Massachusetts retained the northern bank of Merrimack River and the towns of Salisbury and Haverhill were added to Essex County. Hampton, Exeter, Dover, and Portsmouth were governed at two levels, town and province/colony, until 1769, when New Hampshire was itself divided into counties, so that Norfolk 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 Sidney Perley (1858–1928) was a lawyer, writer, poet, author, editor, and historian. Biography Sidney Perley, son of Humphrey and Eunice Perley, was born in Boxford, Massachusetts on March 6, 1858. He acquired his early education within t ...

in ''The Essex Antiquarian''. This magazine (published 1897 to 1911) has also been electronically imaged and some volumes are available at

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical c ...

. A new, unrelated county was established as

Norfolk County, Massachusetts Norfolk County is located in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. At the 2020 census, the population was 725,981. Its county seat is Dedham. It is the fourth most populous county in the United States whose county seat is neither a city nor a boro ...

from most of the southern portion of Suffolk County in 1793.

References

External links

* * {{Coord, 43, 00, 00, N, 71, 00, 00, W, display=title Former counties of the United States Essex County, Massachusetts Pre-statehood history of Massachusetts Pre-statehood history of New Hampshire Former counties of Massachusetts