Lucius R. Paige, History of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1630-1877, with a genealogical register

[93] Ensign John Ward appeared as a Deputy from New Cambridge, and was admitted to a seat, apparently without objection. So far, Mr. Jackson has a good case. But other facts of public notoriety would justify grave doubts whether the town was incorporated so early as 1679. It is a very suspicious circumstance, scarcely reconcilable with such an early date of incorporation, that for the seven years following 1679, until the charter government was overturned in 1686, the Village, or New Cambridge, never assumed, as a town distinct from Cambridge, to send a Deputy to the General Court; but did not miss representation a single year for half a century after the government was established under the new charter. People as tenacious of their rights as the inhabitants of the Village manifestly were, both before and after incorporation, would not be likely to let the newly-acquired right of representation lie dormant for seven years, during a period of intense political excitement. The election of a Constable and three Selectmen in 1679 by no means furnishes countervailing proof of incorporation; for this is precisely what the inhabitants were authorized to do by the order passed May 7, 1673, which was never understood to confer full town privileges, and which, for aught that appears to the contrary, was the order mentioned in the Town Record dated 27. 6. 1679.¹

But the evidence in the case is not wholly of this negative character. One of the documents published by Mr. Jackson² indicates with some distinctness a different day (Jan. 11, 1687-8) as the true date of incorporation into a distinct town:—

Articles of agreement, made September 17, 1688, between the Selectmen of Cambridge and the Selectmen of the Village, in behalf of their respective towns: That, whereas Cambridge Village, by order of the General Court in the late government, was enjoined to bear their proportion in the charges in the upholding and maintaining of the Great Bridge and School, with some other things of a public nature in the town of Cambridge; also there having been some difference between the Selectmen of said