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

Until 1720, the “Common” extended to Linnaean Street, and included also a few acres, lying in a nearly square form, at the northwesterly corner of Linnaean Street and North Avenue.¹ This extreme point of the Common was set apart as a “Place of execution,” or “Gallows lot,” as it was more familiarly called. And after the Common was reduced to its present size, and the lots in this square fronting on the streets, had been granted to individuals, about one acre in its extreme northwesterly corner was reserved for its former use, until trials, and imprisonments, and executions were transferred to East Cambridge.² It was entered from North Avenue through a bridleway or passage, between Lancaster Place and Arlington Street, now called Stone Court.

The names and the number of the wretched convicts who suffered the extreme penalty of the law at this “Place of execution,” are unknown to me. One horrible example, however, was recorded by Professor Winthrop, in his interleaved Almanac, under date of Sept. 18, 1755: “A terrible spectacle in Cambridge: two negroes belonging to Capt. Codman of Charlestown, executed for petit treason, for murdering their said master by poison. They were drawn upon a sled to the place of execution; and Mark, a fellow about 30, was hanged; and Phillis, an old creature, was burnt to death.” The “Boston Evening Post,” of Sept. 22, states more particularly, that “the fellow was hanged, and the woman burned at a stake about ten yards distant from the gallows. They both confessed themselves guilty of the crime for which they suffered, acknowledged the justice of their sentence, and died very penitent. After execution, the body of Mark was brought down to Charlestown Common, and hanged in chains on a gibbet erected there for that purpose.” Dr. Increase Mather, in his diary, printed in the first volume of the “Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society,” page 320, says that on the 22d of September, 1681, “there were three persons executed in Boston,—an Englishman for a rape; a negro ”