 On the charter were listed sixty-seven grantees, many of whose surnames can be found among residents today.Earliest settlement of the town was along the West River near the Wardsboro Bridge, now called East Jamaica, where the first school was established in 1791; however, the building of new roads and bridges towards Manchester advanced settlement westward, so that by 1800 the town center was shifting to Jamaica Village.Within the entire forty-two square-mile township developed as many as ten separate hamlets, each surrounded by outlying farms and linked to Jamaica Village by a network of roads.