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Governor and Assistants, Feb. 3, 1631-2, that “there should be three scoore pounds levyed out of the several plantations within the lymitts of this pattent towards the makeing of a pallysadoe aboute the newe towne.”
1 But no definite line of division between the New Town and Charlestown appears to have been established until March 6, 1632-3, when “it was agreed by the parties appointed by the Court, &c., that all the land impaled by the newe towne men, with the neck whereon Mr. Graves his house standeth, shall belong to Newe-town, and that the bounds of Charlestowne shall end at a tree marked by the pale, and to passe along from thence by a straight line unto the midway betwixt the westermost part of the Governor's great lot and the nearest part thereto of the bounds of Watertowne.”
2 The line, thus established, was substantially the same as that which now divides Cambridge from Somerville.
The “neck whereon Mr. Graves his house standeth,” was the upland included in East Cambridge.
The line between Cambridge and Watertown was not definitely established until April 7, 1635.3 In the mean time, on complaint of “straitness for want of land,” at the Court held May 14, 1634, leave was “granted to the inhabitants of Newe Towne to seek out some convenient place for them, with promise that it shalbe confirmed unto them, to which they may remove their habitations, or have as an addition to that which already they have, provided they doe not take it in any place to prejudice a plantation already settled.”
4 After examining several places, “the congregation of Newtown came and accepted of such enlargement as had formerly been offered them by Boston and Watertown.”
5 This “enlargement” embraced Brookline, Brighton, and Newton.
Brookline, then called Muddy River, was granted on condition that Mr. Hooker and his congregation should not remove.
They did remove; and thus this grant was forfeited.
But the grant of what was afterwards Brighton and Newton held good.
1 Mass. Col. Rec., i. 93. Dr. Holmes, writing in 1800 (Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., VII. 9), says: “This fortification was actually made; and the fosse which was then dug around the town is, in some places, visible to this day. It commenced at Brick Wharf (originally called Windmill Hill) and ran along the northern side of the present Common in Cambridge, and through what was then a thicket, but now constitutes a part of the cultivated grounds of Mr. Nathaniel Jarvis; beyond which it cannot be distinctly traced.” Cambridge was at first called “The New Towne,” and afterwards New Town or Newtown, until May 2, 1638, when the General Court “Ordered, That Newetowne shall henceforward be called Cambridge.” Mass. Col. Rec., i. 228. No other act of incorporation is found on record.
3 Ibid., p. 144.
4 Ibid., p. 119.
Boston. Houghton and Mifflin. 1877.
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