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By Constance Manoli-Skocay, reference librarian at the Gleason Public Library in Carlisle and an intern at the Special Collections of the Concord Free Public Library. For the past eight months, she has been organizing and processing Carlisle's local history collection.  The town of Carlisle, Massachusetts is closely associated with the town of Concord:
they share a public high school, community organizations, and the
beautiful trails of Estabrook Woods. The names of the towns are often
spoken in the same breath, and indeed, they were once the same town. It
was not until 1780 that Carlisle was permanently "set off" from Concord,
and it not until 1805 that it officially became a town, but the process
of becoming independent began much earlier."Setting off" was the term used to describe the formation of a new district or town from portions of one or more towns. There was a flurry of "setting off" from Concord in the quarter century between 1729 and 1754. With the addition of several land grants that included the Dudley, Winthrop, and Blood's Farms grants, Concord had grown to an expanse of ten square miles. People living near the outskirts of the town found it increasingly difficult to make the weekly trip to the meetinghouse in Concord Center.
 First Bedford then Acton, Lincoln and Carlisle Bedford was the first to successfully petition for its independence when, in 1729, it was created from portions of Billerica and Concord. Billerica at first balked at the division, but then agreed; Concord freely consented. Acton followed in 1735, being set off from a portion of Concord, but, Concord historian Ruth Wheeler wrote, as a true "daughter-town," every lot being given to a Concord resident or their  representative. It was an agreeable separation. On April 19, 1754, both
Lincoln and Carlisle were set off, Lincoln as a town from parts of
Concord, Lexington, and Weston; Carlisle as a district from the north
district of Concord.What spawned this flurry of setting off? Divisions were the natural outcome of population growth and town expansion, and the most oft-cited reason for petitioning to be set off was the distance from the meetinghouse. When Bedford petitioned to be set off, they cited the difficulty of traveling to meeting "in seasons of heat and cold" and the resulting expense of "nooning" their families between services. In addition to distance, Carlisle's complaint also included the fact that residents had to cross the river, which sometimes proved a difficult task. A 1746 petition read in part, " . . . in order to their more conveniant coming to ye publik worship of God, from which they are many times many of them hindred by ye Difficulty of passing ye river in times of flud and by ye great Distance of their aboad from ye place where ye publike worship of God is now upheld." However, in his history of Concord, Lemuel Shattuck also cites internal problems within Concord stemming from "the religious controversies from 1740-1750" as a reason for petitioning for separate districts. Ruth Wheeler also mentions internal religious disputes as a reason for the setting off of Bedford, which had begun separate church services in 1725, four years prior to its independence.
The Rocky Road to Carlisle Independence Began Early  Unlike Bedford, Acton, or Lincoln, Carlisle's setting off was neither a
peaceful nor permanent separation. People in the northerly part of
Concord had taken the first action toward independence as early as 1732.
In December of that year, Jonathan Blood, John Parlin and twenty-six
others living there subscribed to an agreement to support meetings for
public worship at the house of Joseph Adams. Not yet asking for a
separate district, they simply wanted a more convenient place for Sunday
worship. Concord's Deacon Ephraim Brown attended these meetings. Over the next twenty years numerous petitions were made to the town of Concord as well as to the General Court, none meeting with approval. Having allowed the departure of Bedford and Acton, Concord officials were hesitant to grant further divisions. (When residents of Nine Acre Corner petitioned to be set off for similar reasons, their petition was also declined.) Carlisle's successful petition was finally granted on April 19th, 1754 and the first district of Carlisle ("Old Carlisle," in Shattuck's words) was established. But a peaceful future was not to be. Disputes with Concord were now behind them, but with independence the conflict turned inward as the residents of the new district could not agree on a location for the meetinghouse. Discord divided the new district as the residents of the east and west sides of Carlisle tried to site the meetinghouse. Topography was partially to blame -- the central area (where a meetinghouse must be built to be to everyone's satisfaction) was low and swampy. There were no roads there and few inhabitants. A committee made up of impartial citizens from surrounding towns was brought in to attempt to settle the question, but its report was rejected. At the same time there was another internal battle going on among those residents who wished to remain an independent district and those who wanted to have the district of Carlisle set back to the town of Concord. Petitions and counter-petitions were presented to the selectmen and to the General Court supporting arguments on both sides.
Carlisle Quickly Rejoins Concord In the meantime, a second impartial committee had been formed to decide the meetinghouse question. Its report was accepted on June 16, 1756, the meetinghouse would to be built on Poplar (now Bellows) Hill. Building materials that had already been collected on Jonathan Buttrick's land (another possible site) began to be moved to the Poplar Hill location. But on June 24, 1756 a petition was presented to the selectmen by those residents of the district who wished to be set back to Concord. Its wording is indicative of the resignation felt by some Carlisle residents: "And Seeing all means Fail, and apprehending the utter impossibility of ever Coming into any further agreement for Setting up a House for Publick worship . . . ." Amidst this troubling disunity and still lacking a meetinghouse, the first district of Carlisle was set back to the town of Concord on October 6th, 1756, just two and a half years after its hard-fought inception. After years of problems and the dissolution of the district, the meetinghouse was in fact quietly built in 1758 on land deeded by Timothy Wilkins: "One acre and a half of upland lying in Concord aforesaid, lying Southwesterly from my dwelling house in Concord . . . for the conveyancy of building a Meetinghouse for the public worship of God, and other public uses." Decribed as "a rude structure, thirty by forty feet and without finish inside or out," it was built near the site of the present First Religious Society in the center of Carlisle. "But," as Carlisle historian B.F. Heald wrote, "it answered well enough for the main purpose of the builders, which undoubtedly was to form a nucleus around which to gather their anticipated town." Concord's Reverend Daniel Bliss often preached there, and in August 1764, the Reverend George Whitefield preached from the steps to a congregation gathered outside, there being too many people in attendance to fit inside.
Steady Progress Finally Made
It failed, but six years later, on March 8, 1779, a second petition was filed asking to be set off. This time the land was surveyed and visited by a legislative committee. They approved the request and the new district was established on April 28, 1780. This time the setting off would be permanent. In addition, this division involved not only land from Concord, but from Billerica, Chelmsford, and Acton, enlarging the area of the district. Legally, the second district of Carlisle would be a district of Acton instead of Concord, as the first had been. Still, we find the names of residents shared between the towns: Blood, Heald, Hodgman, Munroe, Brown, Robbins -- as much sons of Concord as of Carlisle, but now proprietors of their own district. Finally, on February 18, 1805, Carlisle became a town instead of a district. This allowed the citizens to send their own representative to the General Court instead of sharing a representative with Acton, as had been done for the previous twenty-five years. Carlisle finally stood alone as a political and cultural entity, but not quite two hundred years later we still recognize the deep historical and community connections shared by these two towns.
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