Historic leaves, volume 7, April, 1908 - January, 1909

[78] eight cow commons, and, therefore, twelve acres were set off to him. This was a parcel of forty rods frontage on Barberry Lane, and forty-eight rods frontage on School Street. Its opposite sides were equal.

By deed dated July 9, 1683, Captain Wheeler for ‘£ 55 lawful money of the colony of Massachusetts paid by William Stetson, John Cutler, and Aaron Ludkin, Deacons and Trustees for the Church of Charlestown,’ conveyed the whole twelve acres to said deacons and trustees.

This £ 55 was a gift from Captain Richard Sprague and his wife, Mary. This was the Richard Sprague who was called ‘Leffttenant,’ and with whom, February 15, 1662, the proprietors of the stinted common made an agreement whereby, for the use of twenty cow commons for twenty-one years, he agreed to erect and maintain a fence between the common and Mr. Winthrop's (the Ten Hills) farm. He died in 1668, and this agreement was one of his assets. He was captain of the ‘pink’ convent, and a member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company. He must have been a prominent man in Charlestown, for his name appears many times in the records. His total estate was inventoried at £ 2,337; no small estate for those times. Included in it was a warehouse and wharf, and interest in three vessels, the ‘Dolphin,’ the ‘Society,’ and another of which Michael Long was master. He also owned, besides large tracts of land, two and one-half years of the time of Stephen Gere, a bondman, I suppose. He gave to Harvard College thirty ewe sheep and thirty lambs, and to the Church of Charlestown his remaining interest in the twenty cow commons above mentioned.

His wife, Mary, died 1674, and she gave to the church a shop adjoining the meeting-house. She had, in 1671, loaned this shop to the church for its benefit. This land (our locus) remained in the ownership of this church till 1833, when John Doane, Jr., sole deacon of the First church in Charlestown, and Isaac Warren and John Soley, ‘a committee for the purpose,’ by deed dated May 18, 1833, for $1,800 conveyed the whole twelve acres to Patrick T. Jackson, who was acting in the interest