On the closing of Father Rasle’s war the settlement expanded; trade and home manufactures flourished. Deerfield remained no longer the frontier town of the valley, and the brunt of the next border war (of 1743) was felt by the outlying settlements. The one sad blow upon this town fell at a little hamlet called The Bars. August 25, 1746, the families of Samuel Allen and John Amsden, while working in a hay-field on Stebbins Meadow, with a small guard, were surprised by a party of Indians from Canada, and five men were killed, one girl wounded and one boy captured. This followed close on the fall of Fort Massachusetts, and danger of French invasion was felt to be imminent. Active measures were taken for defense; the forts were repaired and the woods filled with scouts.
The closing war with France found Deerfield more strongly bulwarked, and still less exposed to attack. No blood was shed within her narrowed bounds. Her citizens held prominent positions, and did their part in the campaigns which resulted in the conquest of Canada and the consequent immunity from savage depredations. The nest destroyed, the sting of the hornets was no longer felt or feared. The last raid on Massachusetts soil is described in the following mutilated despatch to the military authorities in Deerfield:
“Colrain, March ye 21, 1759.
“SIR:—These are: to inform you that yesterday as Jos McKoon [Kowen] & his wife were coming from Daniel Donitsons & had got so far as where Morrison’s house was burned this day year, they was fired upon by the enemy about sunset. I have been down this morning on the spot and find no Blood Shed, but see where they led off Both the above mentioned; they had their little child with them. I believe they are gone home. I think their number small, for there was about 10 or 12 came [torn off]”
The most important civil events of this period were the divisions of the township. In 1753 the Green River District, which included what is now Greenfield and Gill, was made a distinct municipality. The next year the construction of a bridge over the Pocumtuck River at Cheapside was a prominent issue; the discussion ended in establishing a ferry at the north end of Pine Hill in 1758. That year the people in the vicinity of Sugar Loaf petitioned the General Court-but without success-for liberty to form a ministerial and educational connection with the town of Sunderland, and to be exempted from paying certain town taxes in consequence. In 1767 the inhabitants of Deerfield-Southwest were set off into a town named Conway; and Deerfield-Northwest became the town of Shelburne in 1768. The same year Bloody Brook people caught the division fever, but it did not carry them off.
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