The Cambridge of eighteen hundred and ninety-six: a picture of the city and its industries fifty years after its incorporation
Arthur Gilman, Ed.

[9] and sometimes as New Cambridge, became an independent township under name of Newtown. The Lexington area was known as ‘Cambridge Farms,’ but the founding of a church there in 1696 was the preliminary to separation, and in 1713 Cambridge Farms became a distinct town by the name of Lexington.

In 1754, the boundary between Cambridge and Watertown was carried westward about half a mile from its former position at or near Sparks Street, thus adding to Cambridge some of its most valuable area for dwellings. Between 1802 and 1820, other desirable acquisitions, including the Norton estate, were acquired from that part of Charlestown which is now Somerville.

After 1732, Menotomy was the Second Parish of Cambridge, until 1807, when it was incorporated a distinct town under the clumsy title of West Cambridge, for which the name Arlington was substituted in 1867.

After 1779, the territory remaining on the south side of Charles River was known as the Third Parish, or Little Cambridge, until 1807, when it became a separate town under the name of Brighton. In 1873, Brighton was annexed to Boston.

It was in the natural course of things that these outlying districts should with increase of population become organized at first into independent parishes and afterward into separate towns. In 1650, they were little else but wilderness. The palisades were needed to protect Cambridge from wild beasts much more than from any human foes. On February 13, 1665, we find the constables ordered ‘to allow Justinian Holden ten shillings towards a wolf, killed partly in Watertowne and partly in this.’ It would be interesting to know on just what principle the locality of that brute's death was divided. In 1690, the town treasurer allows £ 1 per wolf for 52 wolves killed by Englishmen, but an Indian for the same service gets only half price. In 1696, the reward for killing 76 wolves was 13s. 4d. per head. Bears also roamed in the woods, and persons were sometimes killed by them, but the appearance of a bear in 1754 in what is now East Cambridge was remarked upon as extraordinary.

The nearest Indian tribe dwelt to the west of Mystic Pond, and was governed by a squaw sachem. The land occupied by Cambridge was bought of this tribe, apparently for £ 10 beside