Amazing Mare For Sale**Price Reduced**

The area was inhabited by Mahicans, Algonquian speakers who largely lived along the Hudson and Housatonic Rivers. Hostilities during the French and Indian Wars discouraged settlement by European colonial settlers until 1750, when Jonathan and Sarah Hinsdale from Hartford, Connecticut, established a small inn and general store. The Province of Massachusetts Bay thereupon auctioned large tracts of land for 10 townships in Berkshire County, set off in 1761 from Hampshire County. For 2,250 pounds Josiah Dean purchased Lot Number 8, which included present-day Lenox and Richmond. After conflicting land claims were resolved, however, it went to Samuel Brown, Jr., who had bought the land from the Mahican chief, on condition that he pay 650 pounds extra.