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[p. 65] line, which was at first called Minottamie. The Whitmore family came from Lexington, England. There were probably other families coming over at the same time, and it is supposed that they desired that the new town should receive the name of Lexington in memory of their old home. At all events the name was changed from Minottamie to Lexington, and the home of Francis Whitmore stood on the boundary line. He was a tailor, and evidently an active, energetic man, much concerned in the real estate transfers of that time, as his name occurs again and again in the early records of deeds in East Cambridge.

Rev. Charles Brooks tells us that Edward Collins was the first land speculator in the Massachusetts Colony, but after looking over the early records it has seemed to me that many of our ancestors had this mania.

Certainly Francis Whitmore possessed a great craving for buying and selling land, and he owned much in Cambridge and Medford, as well as in Charlestown, Bedford, and even bought it in Rehobeth. The first record of a sale I found was February 3, 1654, when he and his wife Isabel bought the land on the division line between Cambridge and Lexington that I have mentioned. He bought more land on November 25, 1663, of Richard and Jane Champney, and more still on July 27, 1670. In February, 1672, he sold land in Cambridge, and the deed is signed by himself and his second wife, Margaret Harty. There are many other records of his sales. At first Cambridge extended from the Boston Line to Groton, but on the twenty-fifth of March, 1650, the town gave land now forming Billerica and Bedford (at that time a part of it) to some of its towns-people; later on another large tract was given away, and among these names we find that of Francis Whitmore. He bought land also in Medford near the present West Medford station, about which I shall speak again. He was a man of some prominence, apparently, and did not belong to the extreme Puritan party, as is shown by the fact that he and his wife signed a petition in favor

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