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[62] which for the present neither side foresee, nor is hereby clearly determined, that then all such matter of grievance or difference shall be from time to time heard and determined by meet persons, three or five, indifferently chosen by the prudential men of Cambridge and Shawshin.

And these aforementioned propositions to be subscribed by all the present inhabitants of Shawshin, and by all such as hereafter shall have any allotments granted them there, and return hereof made to the inhabitants of Cambridge within ten days after the end of the first session of the next General Court. Given under our hands this 17th 12m. 1654, by us,


These propositions are accepted of and consented unto by us the present inhabitants of Shawshin; and we do humbly crave this honored Court to confirm and record the same.

Your humble servants,


On the same day, May 23, 1655, “in answer to the petition of several proprietors and inhabitants of Shawshin, humbly desiring a tract of land lying near the line of the farms of John and Robert Blood, and so along by the side of Concord River, &c., the Court grants their request in that respect, so as it hinder no former grants, and grant the name of the plantation to be called Billirikey.” 1

Thus was this first dismemberment of the extensive township of Cambridge amicably accomplished. No reasonable objection could be urged against granting an independent ecclesiastical and civil organization to those persons who resided at such a great distance from the centre of the town, as soon as they were able to defray their necessary expenses.

1 Mass. Col. Rec., IV. (i.), 237-240.

Boston. Houghton and Mifflin. 1877.

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