[13] called the Stinted Pasture) Unto the proprietors thereof (According Unto A Vote of thiers past, when Conveened together March Tenth, 1684-5), which was Effected and performed by their Committee (Chosen and Confirmed by the Said proprietors March 27th, 1685), who haveing finished the said worke, The Selectmen of Said Towne being satisfied therewith, Ordered it, yt each mans proprietie in the Said Land According to the platt of Ensigne David ffiske the Surveyor (According to Law) be recorded in the Towns booke of records, to be their propper Right, and Estate.
This record shows that a plan was made of this last division; I think no such plan has ever been discovered, yet a description of each lot is recorded, and the whole record is much more definite than in any of the previous allotments.
This last division extended as far as Alewife brook; it covered 650 acres of land. These two divisions, or ‘Dividents,’ as they were called, included all the territory between Washington street, Bow street, Somerville avenue, and Elm street on the south, to Broadway on the north, and from the present Charlestown line to the present Nathan Tufts Park, which it included, and the land on both sides of Broadway, from Powder House square to Alewife brook.
It is perhaps doubtful whether or not all the lots in these two divisions could be identified and located at the present day, but the greater part of them have been; one, for instance, which was the lot set off to the Church of Charlestown, was on Cross street, and remained in its possession for a century or more. Another was the Wheeler lot of twelve acres, on which are now the city hall, public library, high school buildings, Winter Hill station, etc.; and another the Rowe lot, on which the old Tufts house, headquarters of the Historical Society, stands; undoubtedly, with time and patience a fairly correct map of these old property divisions could be made. In these two divisions of 1681 and 1685 the common land was laid out in ranges, running nearly north and south, and of forty rods' width, with rangeways or
