[This act passed _February_ 3, 1803.]

The Worcester and Nashua Railroad was opened through the township of
Groton in the month of December, 1848. It ran at that time a distance of
eight miles through its territory, keeping on the east side of the
Nashua river, which for a considerable part of the way was the dividing
line between Groton and Pepperell. The railroad station for the people
of Pepperell was on the Groton side of the river, and in the course of a
few years a small village sprang up in the neighborhood. All the
interests and sympathies of this little settlement were with Pepperell;
and under these circumstances the Legislature, on May 18, 1857, passed
an act of annexation, by which it became in reality what it was in
sentiment,--a part and parcel of that town. The first section of the act
is as follows:--

An act to set off a part of the Town of Groton, and annex the same
to the Town of Pepperell.

_Be it enacted, &c., as follows_:

All that part of the town of Groton, in the county of Middlesex,
with the inhabitants thereon, lying north of the following
described line is hereby set off from the town of Groton, and
annexed to the town of Pepperell, to wit: Beginning at the boundary
between said town of Groton and the town of Dunstable, at a stone
monument in the wall on land of Elbridge Chapman and land of Joseph
Sanderson, and running south, eighty-six degrees west, about six
hundred and sixty rods, to a stone monument at the corner of land
called the "Job Shattuck Farm," and land of James Hobart, near the