Tag: Cambridge MA

Wikipedia says: Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, and part of the Boston metropolitan area as a major suburb of Boston.

In December 1630, the site of what would become Cambridge was chosen because it was safely upriver from Boston Harbor, making it easily defensible from attacks by enemy ships. Thomas Dudley, his daughter Anne Bradstreet, and her husband, Simon Bradstreet, were the town’s founders. The first houses were built in the spring of 1631. The settlement was initially referred to as “the newe towne”. Official Massachusetts records show the name rendered as Newe Towne by 1632, and as Newtowne by 1638.

Located at the first convenient Charles River crossing west of Boston, Newtowne was one of several towns (including Boston, Dorchester, Watertown, and Weymouth) founded by the 700 original Puritan colonists of the Massachusetts Bay Colony under Governor John Winthrop. Its first preacher was Thomas Hooker, who led many of its original inhabitants west in 1636 to found Hartford and the Connecticut Colony; before leaving, they sold their plots to more recent immigrants from England. The original village site is now within Harvard Square. The marketplace where farmers sold crops from surrounding towns at the edge of a salt marsh (since filled) remains within a small park at the corner of John F. Kennedy and Winthrop Streets.

In 1636, the Newe College (later renamed Harvard College after benefactor John Harvard) was founded by the Massachusetts Bay Colony to train ministers. According to Cotton Mather, Newtowne was chosen for the site of the college by the Great and General Court (the Massachusetts legislature) primarily for its proximity to the popular and highly respected Puritan preacher Thomas Shepard. In May 1638, the settlement’s name was changed to Cambridge in honor of the university in Cambridge, England.

The town comprised a much larger area than the present city, with various outlying parts becoming independent towns over the years: Cambridge Village (later Newtown and now Newton) in 1688, Cambridge Farms (now Lexington) in 1712 or 1713, and Little or South Cambridge (now Brighton) and Menotomy or West Cambridge (now Arlington) in 1807. In the late 19th century, various schemes for annexing Cambridge to Boston were pursued and rejected.

Newtowne’s ministers, Hooker and Shepard, the college’s first president, the college’s major benefactor, and the first schoolmaster Nathaniel Eaton were all Cambridge alumni, as was the colony’s governor John Winthrop. In 1629, Winthrop had led the signing of the founding document of the city of Boston, which was known as the Cambridge Agreement, after the university. In 1650, Governor Thomas Dudley signed the charter creating the corporation that still governs Harvard College.

Cambridge grew slowly as an agricultural village eight miles (13 km) by road from Boston, the colony’s capital. By the American Revolution, most residents lived near the Common and Harvard College, with most of the town comprising farms and estates. Most inhabitants were descendants of the original Puritan colonists, but there was also a small elite of Anglican “worthies” who were not involved in village life, made their livings from estates, investments, and trade, and lived in mansions along “the Road to Watertown” (today’s Brattle Street, still known as Tory Row).

Coming north from Virginia, George Washington took command of the volunteer American soldiers camped on Cambridge Common on July 3, 1775, now reckoned the birthplace of the U.S. Army. Most of the Tory estates were confiscated after the Revolution. On January 24, 1776, Henry Knox arrived with artillery captured from Fort Ticonderoga, which enabled Washington to drive the British army out of Boston.

Between 1790 and 1840, Cambridge grew rapidly, with the construction of the West Boston Bridge in 1792 connecting Cambridge directly to Boston, so that it was no longer necessary to travel eight miles (13 km) through the Boston Neck, Roxbury, and Brookline to cross the Charles River. A second bridge, the Canal Bridge, opened in 1809 alongside the new Middlesex Canal. The new bridges and roads made what were formerly estates and marshland into prime industrial and residential districts.

In the mid-19th century, Cambridge was the center of a literary revolution. It was home to some of the famous Fireside Poets—so called because their poems would often be read aloud by families in front of their evening fires. The Fireside Poets—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes—were highly popular and influential in their day.

Soon after, turnpikes were built: the Cambridge and Concord Turnpike (today’s Broadway and Concord Ave.), the Middlesex Turnpike (Hampshire St. and Massachusetts Ave. northwest of Porter Square), and what are today’s Cambridge, Main, and Harvard Streets connected various areas of Cambridge to the bridges. In addition, the town was connected to the Boston & Maine Railroad, leading to the development of Porter Square as well as the creation of neighboring Somerville from the formerly rural parts of Charlestown.

Cambridge was incorporated as a city in 1846. The city’s commercial center began to shift from Harvard Square to Central Square, which became the city’s downtown around that time.

Between 1850 and 1900, Cambridge took on much of its present character—streetcar suburban development along the turnpikes, with working-class and industrial neighborhoods focused on East Cambridge, comfortable middle-class housing on the old Cambridgeport and Mid-Cambridge estates, and upper-class enclaves near Harvard University and on the minor hills. The coming of the railroad to North Cambridge and Northwest Cambridge led to three major changes: the development of massive brickyards and brickworks between Massachusetts Ave., Concord Ave. and Alewife Brook; the ice-cutting industry launched by Frederic Tudor on Fresh Pond; and the carving up of the last estates into residential subdivisions to house the thousands of immigrants who arrived to work in the new industries.

For many decades, the city’s largest employer was the New England Glass Company, founded in 1818. By the middle of the 19th century, it was the world’s largest and most modern glassworks.