New Meadow Neck, the peninsula between the Barrington and Palmer Rivers, was part of the Wampanoags' Sowams territory. In 1623, Edward Winslow and John Hampden came from Plymouth on a diplomatic visit to Wampanoag Chief Massasoit; finding him ill, they nursed him with a mixture of English and native food, and he recovered. In 1890, the New Meadow Neck train station was renamed Hampden Meadows to commemorate that visit and honor Hampden, who later became a prominent Parliamentary leader in England, and today the entire peninsula is known as Hampden Meadows. Its southern tip, Tyler Point, was Barrington's center in the early 1700s, with shipbuilding, wharves, and warehouses making it the surrounding community's center of maritime trade, while a large field served as a militia training ground for the American Revolution. Tyler Point also has an early-eighteenth-century cemetery where Lieutenant Moses Tyler (1734-1811) is buried; in 1778, during the American Revolution, he shot and killed a Hessian soldier who was attempting to pillage and destroy Barrington property as other British troops had just done in Warren. Before bridges linked Barrington and Warren, travel across the rivers was by boat, and Colonel Nathaniel Martin operated a ferry at the foot of Ferry Lane carrying goods, cattle, horses, passengers, and military troops. In 1794, John Kelley built a wooden toll drawbridge connecting Tyler Point with Warren, and eight years later another toll bridge linked Tyler Point with central Barrington; both were swept away in the great gale of 1815 and were soon rebuilt. In the mid-nineteenth century, John Kelley, a descendant of the bridge-builder, built a successful tidal-powered grist mill on the Palmer River beside the bridge, which in 1850 produced 7,000 bushels of milled corn and rye and operated until about 1870. Apart from maritime commerce, New Meadow Neck remained largely agricultural until after World War II, when much of its farmland was sold for housing development as automobile use increased. In 1914, while workers were building the Barrington Bridge, Maria Balia, who lived nearby, served them drinks cooled in her well at her house under the grape arbor.