At a meeting of the Somerville Historical Society in the spring of 1904, I read a paper entitled ‘
Thomas Brigham, the
Puritan—an Original Settler,’ which was published in the issue of
Historic Leaves for October, 1904.
The statements therein confidently made were based on the alleged result of researches said by
Morse to have been made at the instance of the late Peter Bent
Brigham.
This I followed
Mr. Morse in accepting in good faith.
At the meeting to which I have referred, some suggestions by that sterling investigator,
Charles D. Elliot, caused me to doubt the accuracy of the
Morse account; and the result of my own researches, presented herewith, proves beyond question that the
Brigham Family for generations has been weeping at the wrong shrine.
As a matter of historical fact, since ascertained with substantial proof,
Thomas Brigham, the emigrant, lived and died, in comfortable if not affluent circumstances, on what of late ears has been known as the ‘Greenleaf place,’ in the rear of and adjoining Radcliffe College, and recently purchased by that institution for educational purposes.
There is no doubt in my mind that
Thomas Brigham lies buried in the old Cambridge Cemetery, although his grave, like the graves of some others of his time, cannot be identified.
In view of the foregoing circumstances, I feel that the indebtedness of the
Brigham Family, indirectly to the Somerville Historical Society and directly to
Messrs. Elliot and
Thomas M. Hutchinson, is very great.
W. E. B.
William E. Brigham in ‘the History of the Brigham Family.’
In 1648 there was laid out by the town of
Cambridge to
Thomas1
Brigham ‘72 acres on ye Rocks on Charlestown line.’
In view of the important error of
Rev. Abner Morse, the first
Brigham genealogist, in locating upon this plot the homestead in which
Thomas died in 1653, the place has borne a distinction in
Brigham family history which is unwarranted by its actual position as a Brigham possession.
Morse, mistaking the well-known ledges of
Clarendon Hill for ‘ye
Cambridge Rocks,’ declares that the last habitation of
Thomas was in
Somerville.
Having done this, he easily draws a graphic picture of the
Brigham Farm as it might have appeared in the last days of its owner; and he even goes so far as to offer the baseless conjecture that
Thomas was buried in
Medford.f
The ‘
Cambridge Rocks’ were, as
Morse says, a well-known ancient landmark, but they were not where
Morse places them.
They begin in
Cambridge on the
Watertown line, at a point which is now the corner of Pleasant Street and Concord Avenue,
Belmont.
They skirt the western boundary of Pleasant Street to the corner of Massachusetts Avenue,
Arlington, where the public library now stands.
This site was originally the corner of the old Watertown road. Thence they cross Massachusetts Avenue, and, following the line of the present Water Street, extend to Fowle's Mill Pond, and thence northwesterly along the mill pond and brook, and northerly across the brook to the
Charlestown Line.
(This brook,
Sucker Brook, was originally Alewife Meadow Brook, and should not be confounded with the present
Alewife Brook, flowing out of
Fresh Pond, originally the
Menotomy [a] River.
‘The
Rocks’ continued along the
Charlestown Line to a point near the present
Lexington and Arlington Line.
The territory to the west—
Lexington since 1713—was originally known as Cambridge Farms.
It was colloquial to refer to the grants in this immediate vicinity as the ‘small farms’; hence the item in the inventory
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88]
of the property of
Thomas1
Brigham, ‘a small fare at Charlestown line, £ 10.’
The ancient use of the term ‘farm’ did not imply that the land was under cultivation.
It will thus be seen that all the present
Arlington Heights, also the well-known
Turkey Hill (which is
half an inch lower), was included in what was anciently known as the
Cambridge Rocks.
Of the seventy-two-acre grant to
Thomas1
Brigham, it may be said, in modern terms, that it is now in a northwest part of
Arlington.
While originally bounded on the north by Charlestown Line, a change in the line at the incorporation of
Winchester (originally
Woburn) in 1850 left a trianglar piece in the northwest corner lying in
Winchester.
Turkey Hill is near the centre of the grant.
Forest Street runs across the property, less than a mile from Massachusetts Avenue, where one leaves the electric car.
The forty-eight-acre grant of
Nicholas Wyeth, which adjoined that of
Thomas1 Brigham on the northwest, later passed into possession of
Henry Dunster, first president of Harvard College, and was held by his descendants many years.
In a bill of sale of the Dunster piece given by
John Steadman, county treasurer, to Thomas Danforth, in 1674, the lot is described as bounded ‘n. (n. e.) by Woburn line. . . e. (s. e.) by a small farm layed out to
Thomas Brigham.’
The
Brigham grant also adjoined, on the
Charlestown Line, a 300-acre farm of Increase
Nowell, and also the 480 acres of ‘Squa Sachem,’ which the colony reserved to her when settlement was made with the Indians for the territory comprising
Charlestown and
Cambridge.
The familiar Indian monument on the
Peter C. Brooks place in West Medford was erected by
Mr. Brooks in memory of the son of Squa Sachem,
Sagamore John.
Thomas1
Brigham died December 8, 1653, leaving this seventy-two-acre grant, with all his other property, to his widow and five children.
In 1656 the General Court gave the overseers of his will the right to sell all his
real estate.
It would appear that this ‘Brigham Farm,’ as many ancient deeds refer to it, was bought for £ 16 by
Hon. Thomas Danforth, an executor
[
89]
of the will, although no deed of the property is recorded.
In 1695 the farm on the
Rocks figures in the suit brought by the children of
Thomas Brigham to recover, apparently, all the property which the overseers of their father's will had sold.
In the formal ceremony of claiming the ‘Brigham Farm,’ as quaintly attested the witnesses in the chapter on ‘
Thomas Brigham the Emigrant,’ it will be noted that the ‘ffarne’ is described as ‘upon the
Rocks within the bounds of
Cambridge.’
Settlement was reached apparently in 703, when on February 26
Thomas2, Samuel2, and John2
Brigham quitclaimed ‘that tract or prcell of land commonly called or known by ye name of Brighams farme:
Scituate, lying and being on ye Rocks neer Oburn line within the
Township of Cambridge . . . containing by Estimation Seventy Two acres be the same more or less. . . .,’ to
Francis Foxcroft,
Esq.,
Samuel Sparhawk, and
Daniel Champney, joint executors of the will of
Hon. Thomas Danforth.
This deed was given ‘in consideration of the Sum of Sixteen Pounds pd to ye Children of
Thomas Brigham late of Cambridge Dece'd by Thomas Danforth Esq. and
Thomas Fox called Overseers of ve Estate of sd
Thomas Brigham Dece's: and Thirty pounds in money to us in land etc.’
From tins document, and others affecting the other properties, it might be inferred that the suits grew out of the dissatisfaction of the children of
Thomas, now of age, with the disposition of their property while they were yet minors.
In 1706 the property was bought by
Thomas3
Prentice for £ 68. It was then bounded ‘N. E. by Charlestown line, N. W. by Nathaniel Patten Senor and
John Carter of Oburn, W. by Walter3
Russell E. and S. E. by the land of
Jason Russell.’
Thomas3
Prentice was a brickmaker, and resided on what is now the west side of Garden Street, opposite the
Botanical Garden.
He died December 7, 1709 and the inventory shows: ‘72 acres, Brigham's Farm, £ 68.’
In the distribution of his property, the
Brigham Farm went to his son,
Rev. Thomas4
Prentice (b. 1702, H. C. 1726, d. 1782), who made his first sale, of nine acres, in 1724, as if to aid him through Harvard, to
Andrew Mallet, whose relative,
John Mallet, built the Old Powder
[
90]
House in
Somerville.
A second purchaser, of twenty acres, was
Deacon John Bradish, a celebrated
real estate trader of his day. He always styled himself, even in his deeds, ‘glazier of Harvard College,’ and he held this unique position for forty years. By 1753
Rev. Thomas Prentice had disposed of more than seventy acres of the original grant for £ 443. Much of the property remained within the Prentice family.
In 1773
Johns Hutchinson, whose descendants at the present time own all but about ten acres of the original grant, made his first purchase from the Brigham tract, paying
Henry Prentice, an uncle of
the Rev. Thomas, £ 50, 13s. 4d. for nine and one-half acres ‘on
1Turkey Hill’—the first mention of this name in the deeds.
John Hutchinson owned and occupied the
Nowell-Broughton-Gardner farm of about seventy acres adjoining on the
Charlestown side of the line, and at his death in 1783 had acquired, also, some forty acres of the
Brigham place.
In 1817 his son
Thomas6, to whom the farm later descended, bought twenty-two and one-half acres more, twenty of which were ‘
Brigham land,’ of
Daniel Reed, of
Charlestown, making all but about eight acres, on the southwest side, of the original grant.
At the death of
Thomas6 in 1863, the property was divided among his six children, and most of it is still held by their heirs.
No building ever has been erected on the land originally owned by
Thomas Brigham.
It is now partly tilled.
The
Hutchinson homestead, on the original
Charlestown side, on the old Nowell farm, and replacing the buildings erected in 1743–'45, and burned a few years ago, stands on the corner of Ridge Street and Hutchinson Road (Fruit Street),
Winchester.
It is occupied by
Mrs. Mary A., widow of
Thomas7
O. Hutchinson, a daughter, Miss Mary A., and a son,
Thomas8
M. Hutchinson, the well-known antiquarian, to whose generosity and exhaustive researches, covering many years, the writer is indebted for many of these authenticated facts relative to the ‘Brigham Farme on Ye Rocks.’