BRIDGEWATER was the first interior settlement in the Old Colony.   The grant of the plantation, as we have seen, was made in 1645, but the actual settlement was not commenced till after 1650.   Each settler had at first a grant of a house lot of six acres on the town river, then called Nuckatest or Nuncketetest, and Indian name in close affinity with that of the pond from which it flows, now called Nippenicket, formerly written Neapnucket of Neapnuncket.   The first lots were taken up in West Bridgewater, and the first houses built, and first improvements made there; and the settlement was called after the name of the river, Nuncketest, or Nunckety, sometimes Unkety.   These Indian names were variously written in the early records and documents.   We have seen that in Governor Hinckley's deed of confirmation, the pond itself called Unketest.   The plantation bore the more general appellation of Satucket.   These house lots were contiguous, and the settlement compact, with a view to mutual aid when common protection and defence against the Indians should be required, and extended on each side of the river, from where Seth Lothrop lately lived, down to Johnson's four corners, a little easterly of where Capt. Rider now lives.   The proprietors or original purchasers, whose names have already been given were fifty-four in number, and were all inhabitants of Duxbury, excepting William Bradford, about whom there are some doubts.   He is supposed to have been the son of the Governor and afterwards Deputy Governor.   He lived in Kingston, near the line of Duxbury, and owned land in Duxbury, and, as it is said, attended meeting there.   He was about twenty years old when the grant was made, but before the actual settlement of it, he was over twenty-six, and when the town was incorporated was over thirty.   These were probably house holders, or heads of families; many of them were so certainly, and probably all.   Deacon Samuel Edson, from Salem, was an early settler in the new plantation, and built the first mill in the place; and the Rev. James Keith, from Scotland, was their first minister; and the proprietors gave to each of them one