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

“ [206] Legislature of this Commonwealth now in session, and to state such facts and to petition for such measures in regard to this matter as they may judge proper. Voted, that the Committee consist of the following gentlemen: Hon. Francis Dana, Esq., Hon. Elbridge Gerry, Esq., Hon. Jonathan L. Austin, Esq., Messrs. Royal Makepeace and John Hayden.”

The Committee, thus appointed, presented to the General Court a long and very energetic remonstrance, a copy of which remains on file in the office of the City Clerk. They commence by alleging “that the inhabitants of Cambridge and Cambridgeport are deeply afflicted by the incessant machinations and intrigues of Mr. Andrew Craigie, in regard to roads;” in proof of which they refer to the fact that, at the last session of the General Court, Mr. Craigie caused two petitions to be presented for the appointment of a committee with extraordinary powers to lay out roads in Cambridge; that these petitions “seemed by their tenor to proceed from disinterested persons, whereas some of the petitioners were proprietors of the Canal Bridge, and others deeply interested in lands connected with the proposed roads; and Mr. Craigie, who was not a petitioner, supported them in person and with two lawyers, in the absence of all the petitioners; these two petitions being manifestly, as the remonstrants had stated, a continuation of a plan of him and his coadjutors, commenced in 1797, and invariably pursued to 1809, to turn the travel to that quarter; and the same game he is evidently now playing, by the petition signed by T. H. Perkins and others.” “That such a petition, viz. to lay out roads without number, with courses undefined, by a committee of the Legislature, your remonstrants conceive, never was before offered to any Court, Legislative or Judicial, of Massachusetts;” that a Bill reported in accordance with these petitions, was rejected; “that the principal object of all these petitions, viz. to open a road from Mr. Wyeth's sign-post to Mr. Fayerweather's corner,¹ has been three times before the Court of Sessions of Middlesex, has been as often rejected by it, and has been once suppressed after it had obtained by intrigue and surprise the sanction of that honorable Court; and it is now a fifth time pending in the existing Court of Sessions of that County; that the petition of T. H. Perkins and others prays for a committee to explore, view, and mark out new highways from the westerly end of the Canal Bridge to communicate with the great roads into the country,”