stable of "the newe towne." In June a grant of two hundred acres of land across the river was made to the deputy-governor. By November a difference had arisen between "Charles-Towne and Newe-Towne," "for ground," and the same was referred by court to a commission, which shortly effected an amicable settlement.

And thus "Newe Towne" came fairly into being, a lusty child, with a strong voice, active limbs, and a mind of its own, destined to make | itself heard and felt, from the outset, the colony through.

The first event of prime importance in the history of "Newe Towne's" settlement was a considerable accession to its population, in August, 1632, from Mount Wollaston. This accession consisted of what was known as the "Braintree Company," from the place of its English origin, or as "Mr. Hooker's Company," from the name of its pastor, the Rev. Thomas Hooker. Mr. Hooker was a native of Leicestershire, England; horn in 1586, and educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Taking up the ministry, and exercising it with great talent, piety, and zeal, he was first silenced for his non-conformity, and afterward compelled to flee to Holland for his life. This was in 1630, and there he remained for three years. Meanwhile a body of the people to whom he had ministered had emigrated to New England, and, after beginning a settlement at Mount Wollaston, made this removal, by order of the court, to "the newe towne." The company would appear to have included about fifty men. On their re-establishment in "the newe towne," word was sent to Mr. Hooker in Holland to come over and unite himself to them again, which he accordingly did in 1633. He was accompanied by an assistant, Mr. Samuel Stone, a native of Hertford; and in October of this year, a church being then or having been previously duly organized, Mr. Hooker and Mr. Stone were solemnly ordained to their respective offices of pastor and teacher. A meeting-house with a bell had already been built.1

Thus the religious life of "the newe towne" was formally begun, though, as it proved, in only a temporary form.

The old division line between "the newe towne " and Charlestown was substantially that which now divides Cambridge from Somerville. That part of the town which lay to the eastward, now Cambridgeport and East Cambridge, passed under the

1 Prince's Annals.

general name of "the neck," and was a waste of woodland, pasture, swamps, and marshes. Its main portion was divided into the Old Field and Small-Lot Hill. The upland and marsh, since built over by East Cambridge, went by the particular name of "Graves his Neck." The ten or twelve streets which composed "the towne" enclosed and intersected a space corresponding, in the main, to that now bounded by Harvard, Brattle, Eliot, South, Holyoke, and Bow streets. Beyond this centre, toward Watertown, was the West End. Along the river, to the southward, stretched a succession of marshes, each of which had its name; the tract now bounded by North Avenue, Garden, and Linnæan streets was set apart as "a cow common"; on the two sides of this joined the West End Field and the Pine Swamp Field; while beyond all lay the Fresh Pond meadows.

The territory we are now surveying, before its adoption as the site of "the newe towne," was traversed by the "path from Charlestown to Watertown," which is to be accounted the most ancient highway of Cambridge. Its course was about that of the present Kirkland, Mason, and Brattle streets, Elmwood Avenue, and Mount Auburn Street. From the town, when planted, radiated the highway to Watertown, now Brattle Street; the highway to Fresh Pond, now Garden Street and Vassall Lane; the highway to Menotomy, now North Avenue; the highway into the neck, now Main Street; and the "highway to Roxbury," now Brighton Street. Access to Boston, as the new tri-mountain capital had been called, could be had only indirectly, through Charlestown, or through Roxbury, the rivers in both cases being crossed by ferries.

Great pains must have been taken in laying out and building "the newe towne," for one of the earliest visitors to it1 describes it as "having many fair structures, with many handsome contrived streets." "One of the neatest and best com-, pacted towns in New England," he calls it. It made upon him the impression that "the inhabitants, most of them, are very rich." The earliest municipal regulations were well calculated to bring about this result. It was ordered in 1633 that no person should put up any house within the town limits without leave from a majority of the inhabitants; that all houses should "range even," six feet in each lot from the street front; and that roofs should be slated or boarded, and not thatched.

1 Wood, in New England's Prospect.

The building of wooden chimneys had been previ- | theirs, and the boys herded, awe-stricken, together ously forbidden. It was afterwards ordered that under the stern eye of the tithing-man; and we whoever felled a tree should not allow it to lie can almost hear the weird strains of Sternhold and across the highway; that felled lumber should not Hopkins, and the impressive accents of the godly be sold out of the town; that every inhabitant minister, as prayer and praise proceed. should keep in orderly and neat condition that part of the highway "against his own ground"; that the town should have the first privilege of buying improved lots which owners might wish to sell; etc.

In October, 1633, the court imposed a tax of £48 each upon Boston, Roxbury, Charlestown, Watertown, and "the newe towne"; three years later (March, 1636) "the newe towne's" share in a tax of £300 was £42, no other of the towns being assessed above £37 10s. Thus early did | Cambridge take the leading place it has continued to hold among the towns of the commonwealth in the scale of taxable property.

Under the precious droppings of this sanctuary, so to speak, were clustered the first rude cabins of "the new towne." It was barely more than shelter that they gave. The life was new, and there was exposure to all manner of necessities and privations. Conveniences were few. Bread was the first requisite. The "planting fields," whose laying out was the first occupation of the people, supplied prompt crops of corn and fodder. A windmill, for grinding, had been early erected on what was known as Windinill Hill, near what is now the foot of Ash Street, where the old gas-works stood; but it had been removed to Boston, because it would work only in a westerly wind; and the nearest waterpower grist-mill was now at Watertown. Meetinghouse and windmill were the first of "the new towne's" public buildings.

The church organization of the inhabitants, as above intimated, took precedence, in respect both of time and of importance, of all others, and was the basis of all other; but as early as December, 1632, provision was made for regular town-meet

The reader must keep in mind, as we run over these first sources of Cambridge society and life, the very peculiar but rigid mould in which every such organization was cast. Town and church were but two names for one and the same constituency. The town was the church, acting in secular concerns, and the church was the town, acting in religious concerns. The ecclesiastical and the civil bodies were two forms, which one spirit ani-ings for the transaction of business. These meetmated. There was a duality in unity. The members of the church only were the freemen and voters of the town. Those were the times when congregationalism of the purest type was the standing order, and its principles dominated everything. The "dissenter" therefrom was more than a heretic; he was politically an alien. The town was taxed to support the minister. Selectmen and deacons jointly "seated" the meeting-house, which, having | served its religious purpose on the Sabbath Day, was used as the town-house on Monday. This was the central edifice of the community; and the ideas which it doubly typified were the core of the communal life.

Of the situation of the first meeting-house of Cambridge, -the rallying-point of "the newe towne," and of its size and appearance, we know nothing. But we can imagine its eminence in the eyes of the little band of settlers as being their tabernacle in the wilderness, and we can picture the scene, as with devout unanimity they assembled under its lowly roof for the two sacred services of each Lord's Day. We can see the women sitting apart on their side of the house, and the men on

ings were at first held on the afternoon of the first Monday of every month, at the meeting-house, "at the ringing of the bell." Here the sturdy settlers roughly hewed and firmly joined the foundation timbers of their municipal structure. The first town officer having been a constable, there was presently added a surveyor, the latter being charged with care of the highways. In February, 1634-35, a new departure was made by the appointment of seven townsmen to manage all town affairs in their discretion, and to serve in that ca-, pacity till their successors should be chosen in the November following. At the same time a board of surveyors was appointed, four men beside the constable, to make a survey of the town lands. This was in compliance with an order of the court directing such a survey to be made by every town in the colony. The result of this survey, a "Regestere Booke of the lands and houses in the New Towne," is preserved to this day in the archives of the city.

These particulars of town business enable us to name a dozen of the chief inhabitants of "New Towne" in 1634. Such may be supposed to have

been James Olmstead, constable; John White, sur- | to Watertown," beyond Ash Street. Mr. Thomas veyor; John Haynes, "Symon" Bradstreet, John Chesholme, a deacon of the church, who lived Taylcott, William Westwood, William Wadsworth, next to the meeting-house, in Dunster Street, was of the "townsmen"; John Benjamin, Daniell licensed by the General Court, which at present Denison, Andrew Warner, and William Spencer, of took jurisdiction of such concerns, "to keepe a the committee of survey. house of intertainmente," the first in the town; And Mr. Nicholas Danforth, who lived on the northerly side of Bow Street, near Plympton, was similarly licensed "to sell wine and strong water." Somewhat later a "town spring," convenient for man and beast, was opened in the field west of the present University Press, between Brattle and Mount Auburn streets; and, later still, the extreme northeastern corner of the cow common was set apart as a "gallows place" for public executions.

Such was "the newe towne" in its earliest aspect, a little network of streets and lanes, laid

The plan of Cambridge in 1635, given in Paige's History, shows most of the homestead lots occupied or owned in "the newe towne." Substituting the modern street names for the ancient, Mr. Olmstead lived on Harvard Street, about where the old Wadsworth house stands; Mr. Westwood just west of him; Mr. White on the east side of Holyoke Street, about midway between Harvard and Arrow; Mr. Haynes in the centre of the block bounding Mount Auburn, Eliot, and Winthrop streets, and Winthrop Square; Mr. Bradstreet on the east side of Brighton Street, just south of Harvard; Mr. Wadsworth on the west side of Holy-out on an upland surrounded by marshes, midway oke, between Harvard and Bow, and opposite Mr. White's; Mr. Benjamin on the south side of South Street, between Dunster and Holyoke; Mr. Warner on the north side of Eliot Street, as you go round from Winthrop to Brighton Street; and Mr. Spencer on the south side of Brattle, just north of the corner of Mount Auburn Street. The names of Taylcott and Denison do not appear, but it is known, that the former, who was a large landholder, lived out of "the Towne," at the "West End," namely, at what is now the easterly corner of Brattle and Ash streets; the latter probably on or near Bow Street, between Arrow and Mount Auburn. William Man lived on the road to Fresh Pond; Thomas Judd on or near the site of the Craigie House, now Mr. Longfellow's home; and John Gibson on the hill about where now lives Charles Deane, LL. D. Atherton Hough had a farm on the East Cambridge upland.

on "the path from Charlestowne to Watertowne "; a cluster of forty or fifty houses centred about the meeting-house; a population of a few hundred souls, sturdy men and brave women, with their children, intent on occupying and improving their place in the new Christian state they had crossed the seas to found; these simply organized, first as a church, with a pastor and a teacher beloved, and secondly as a town, with their constable, surveyor, and selectmen looked out day by day across the Charles River bay to the horizon line of the Shawmut peninsula, on whose farther slopes were slowly rising the walls of the new colonial capital. Taking a wide sweep around them, beyond the limits of sight, New Hampshire had scarce emerged from a wilderness; the scattered settlements in Maine and Rhode Island were yet all hidden in the trackless woods; Roger Williams had just made his escape from Salem to the shores of Narragan

It will be further of interest to note that Rev.sett; the figure of Vermont lay yet imbedded in Thomas Hooker lived on the north side of Harvard the granite of her mountains; New Haven was Street, about where Dane Hall stands, but of only just lifting up its head; and the Dutch were course nearer the strect; and his assistant, Mr. intrenching themselves commercially at the mouth Stone, on Brighton Street,, next south of Mr. of the newly discovered Hudson River, on an island Bradstreet; while the total number of homestead which they had bought of the Indians for $24 in lots in "the Towne," most of which were occupied, goods. "The newe towne" was a single grain in was something like sixty. What is now Win- the handful of wheat which had been flung by the throp Square was set off very early as a "market-hand of Providence over on the wild New England place." At about the same time the present burying-ground on Garden Street, opposite the junction of North Avenue, was ordered to be "paled in," though a lot for graves had, in all probability, been provided previously on the "path

shore.

A variety of local events diversified the two or three years immediately ensuing upon the arrival of Mr. Hooker's Company. One of the earliest manifestations was a feeling of some uneasiness on