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Historic churches and homes of Cambridge.
In a sketch necessarily so brief as this must be, much can be merely touched on, much must be omitted that would be of interest to all who visit our beautiful, historic town.
All that the writer can hope to do is to make these brief comments of sufficient interest to serve as guides to the tourist, or as finger-posts to storehouses of knowledge from which the curious may extract the hoards to be had there for the asking.
Cambridge has been called the “first capital of our infant republic, the cradle of our nascent liberties, the hearth of our kindling patriotism.”
Intimately associated as indeed it is with the stirring times of the Revolution, its two oldest churches, Christ Church, Episcopal, and Shepard Congregational, have their history most intimately woven with that of the patriots.
First let us take Shepard Church the first church in
Cambridge, because it is the oldest society, though its present building is comparatively modern.
When
Cambridge was established and called Newtowne, it was designed to be the metropolis, but later this plan was given up in favor of
Boston.
Still, many people stayed here, reinforced in 1632 by the
Braintree Company under
Mr. Hooker.
The latter, a graduate of Emanuel College,
Cambridge,
