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

“ [187] being tenants in common” of lands at and near Lechmere Point, with their associates, as “the Lechmere Point Corporation.” Within the next two months the several proprietors conveyed their shares to the Corporation at the nominal price of five dollars. Streets and lots of suitable size were laid out; but the records indicate that the sales of land were few. The first deed of a house-lot, entered on record, is dated Aug. 20, 1810, and conveys to Samuel S. Green the lot on the northeasterly corner of Cambridge and Second streets, where he resided more than threescore years, and where he died, Sept. 8, 1872. One store-lot, on Bridge Street, had previously been sold to Aaron Bigelow, but the deed was not placed on record so early as the other. The records exhibit only ten deeds of lots given by the Corporation, until Sept. 20, 1813, when a sale was made to Jesse Putnam, which contributed materially to the prosperity of the new village; this lot was bounded on East Street 400 feet, on North Street 400 feet, on Water Street 300 feet, and “on land covered with water” about 400 feet, and was conveyed by Putnam, March 16, 1814, to the “Boston Porcelain and glass company.” But the “crowning mercy” to the whole enterprise was the agreement, approved by the Corporation Nov. 1, 1813, and by the Court of Sessions at the next December Term; namely, that the Corporation would give to the County of Middlesex the square bounded by Otis, Second, Thorndike, and Third streets, and a lot, seventy-five feet in width, across the westerly side of the square¹ bounded by Thorndike, Second, Spring, and Third streets, and would erect thereon a court-house and jail, satisfactory to the Court, at an expense to the Corporation not exceeding twenty-four thousand dollars, on condition that as soon as the edifices were completed, they should be used for the purposes designed. The town protested most earnestly against the removal of the courts and records from Harvard Square, but in vain. At the March Term of the Court, 1816, a committee reported that the court-house and jail were satisfactorily completed, and it was ordered that they be immediately devoted to their intended use. It was also ordered that the sum of $4,190.78 be paid to the Corporation, being the amount expended in excess of $24,000. From this time, the success of the enterprise was assured.

During the period embraced in this chapter, while two new villages were established, which, after many vicissitudes, became more populous than the older settlements, the town was sadly