USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Brookline > History of the town of Brookline, Massachusetts > Part 3
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* New style dates are used throughout this volume, even in citing records kept with dual year dates.
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HISTORY OF BROOKLINE
loved and trusted member of the colony. This is attested by the promptness with which, after his arrival, he was made 'Teacher' of the First Church in Boston, where he exercised an undisputed authority of the kind which only wisdom and character of the first rank can command. He was, in a sense unhappily, never a resident of Muddy River.
William Colborne's grant of one hundred and fifty acres marks a man of standing, too, a deacon and later an elder'in the church, selectman of Boston and representative to the Gen- eral Court. He already owned property in the south part of Boston, where 'Coleborns field' extended from shore to shore across the Neck, not very far distant from his new acquisitions in the suburb.
Thomas Oliver and Thomas Leveritt were both elders in the church, the former a surgeon who had arrived in the William and Francis on June 5, 1632, and although no longer a young man, had taken a vigorous part in the affairs of the colony. When he died at ninety he was, by repute, 'a lively pattern of old age.' Leveritt had been an alderman of the borough of Boston in England, who surrendered his rôle as a 'Lincolnshire gentleman of character and substance' to follow his great friend and former pastor, John Cotton, to the New World. His public trusts were numerous, including service on the first body of officers for governing the town of Boston, membership on the first board of selectmen and on the first 'warrant committee.' He was the father of the distinguished Captain John Leveritt, also an original grantee at Muddy River.
Thomas Savage had come at the age of twenty-seven, on completion of his apprenticeship as a tailor in London, to Boston where he landed from the Planter in April, 1635. In military service he rose to the grades of sergeant, ensign, lieutenant, and captain, achieving distinction as a commander in King Philip's War; the while he accumulated property in Boston, on Hog Island, and at Muddy River, and made himself known as one of the 'richer inhabitants.' He held also a variety of public offices, including those of selectman, deputy, speaker, assistant and special officer on many occasions; and the public records afford frequent recognition of his services. He was involved in the Wheelwright troubles, disarmed, and driven to Connecti-
13
BEGINNINGS AT MUDDY RIVER
cut, where he remained only a little time, returning to Boston to push on his career.
Captain John Underhill had come originally in his capacity as a military man, with the Winthrop colonists. He was one of the first deputies from Boston to the General Court, among the earliest officers of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Com- pany, and the first man definitely recorded as visiting Muddy River, when he went out in command of the party described by Winthrop as sent to disperse the 'ten sagamores and many Indians' who had assembled threateningly there. He returned in triumph from the Pequot War in 1637, only to suffer disarma- ment and the loss of his commission on account of antinomian heresy. Driven to New Hampshire, he soon removed to the Dutch colony on Long Island.
OTHER ORIGINAL GRANTEES
The remaining ten of the first sixteen to receive lands at Muddy River were less prominent men whose names completed a group representative of the widest variety of economic worth and social standing. Of the whole sixteen, seven are listed as among the 'richest inhabitants.' Ten were owners of property in Boston, and eleven belonged to the First Church prior to 1641. An equal number enjoyed the freedom of the colony before that year.
These grantees included the highest officials of church and town, as well as two servants, two tailors, two inn keepers, a surgeon, a blacksmith, and a barber. The assembly was demo- cratic enough in its entirety, but of course there was a careful maintenance of distinctions.
Thus the 'great men' received priority in time, extent, and choice of the location of their grants. In fact, if the grants of marsh lands be excluded, four fifths of the acreage granted went to these five men: Cotton, Colborne, Oliver, Leveritt, and Un- derhill. John Cotton's extensive uplands amounted to a third more than the total of the ten lesser grants.
Moreover, these principal grantees were absentee landlords, who, so far as appears, never lived at Muddy River, though the heirs of some of them played important parts in the community in later years. Of the lesser citizens, too, several probably never occupied the lands granted them.
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HISTORY OF BROOKLINE
EXTENT AND ARRANGEMENT OF GRANTS
From the map of allotments at Muddy River by the town of Boston,I found at the end of this book, it is apparent that the grants ranged from John Cotton's two hundred and fifty acres of rich, upland meadow, to the little five- and ten-acre patches of tide-flooded marshland along the shore of the stream. All were nevertheless designated 'great lots' as distinct from 'house lots.'
The two types of acreage - marshland and upland - had each certain advantages. The latter was suited to cultivation as well as to grazing, while the former, being within reach of the tides, remained sufficiently open during the cold months to provide 'winter pasturage.' Such tidal marshes were used in this way in most of the towns that were appropriately located, and minimized partly the necessity for mowing hay.
Awarding land was a preliminary step to its ultimate trans- fer, and only two grants were actually completed before the considerable group of 'great allotments' of January 8, 1638. These were the properties of John Cotton and William Col- borne; for Thomas Savage's grant, though completed, was not regarded as a regular allotment because it consisted solely of marsh land.
Cotton's land was described as bounded on the north and south by fresh brooks and extending west to the 'cutting over beyond the hill northwest,' the whole containing two hundred and fifty acres. In a general way this included the land bounded on the northeast by the present Washington and Harvard Streets, and on the southwest by the Boston and Albany right- of-way (the railroad tracks, as it happens, closely paralleling the village brook). The area extended at least as far west as Gardner Road, making it roughly triangular in shape, with its apex lying close to the present Village Square.
There is no evidence that the distinguished minister used his grant for anything but a cattle pasture. His great-grandson, however, on inheriting the property, built a house in 1670 on the east side of what is now Harvard Street between Andem
I One of a series of maps of "Land Ownership in Brookline," prepared by Theodore F. Jones, Ph.D., and published by the Brookline Historical Society with its Proceedings, 1923.
HOUSE IN ANDEM PLACE BUILT BY DEACON THOMAS COTTON, GREAT-GRANDSON OF REV. JOHN COTTON
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BEGINNINGS AT MUDDY RIVER
and Harrison Places. Known as Andem House, this dwelling was inhabited by many generations of eminent citizens, and remained a landmark until its demolition in 1879.
Close by Cotton's land were the grants of William Colborne, Thomas Leveritt, and Thomas Oliver, each of these also roughly triangular in shape and with its eastern apex near the present Village Square. The importance of this feature was in making the properties accessible to the Neck, for there the only road from the peninsula (now Huntington Avenue) crossed Muddy River to what were perhaps the most fertile and arable lands of the countryside.
Colborne's hundred and fifty acres lay north of Cotton's, bounded on the south by the same fresh brook (approximately the modern Washington Street), on the east by Muddy River, on the north in a general way by the lines of the present Long- wood and Summit Avenues, and extended to the west some- where in the vicinity of Gardner Road. Leveritt's award of one hundred and seventy-five acres lay between the Boston and Albany right-of-way and Walnut Street, and Oliver's equivalent area was east of Walnut Street, while Warren Street served as the probable southern boundary of both grants.
Although the remaining grants which had been promised were not recorded, with the exception of Savage's marsh land, until the time of the 'great allotments' of January 8, 1638, it seems that these applicants nevertheless received special con- sideration. Instead of having to take land backed by the Cedar Swamp, and fronting the Charles and Muddy River bottoms where the great allotments formally began, these fortunate men shared a strip of land some eighty rods wide, completely spanning the center of the Muddy River area from Roxbury to the Cambridge line. Here were laid out, in ascending order, the farms of Deming (with its eastern border at the Roxbury line), Arratt, Underhill, Talmage, Snow, Grosse, Alcock, Bel- cher, Hull, and Wheeler. The last two had western boundaries coinciding with the Cambridge line.
CHAPTER II LAND FOR THEIR HOMES
COLONIAL POPULATION
THE distribution of the arable acres of Muddy River seems to have started with a generous appropriation by the influential insiders, and to have continued with a sort of free-for-all in which unto those who asked, land was given, though few settled on their grants, and the community became really established only after the land had come by transfer into the hands of men who were ready to establish homes. This attitude toward the acquisition of frontier lands was not abnormal. First of all the chance of large profit inherent in the receipt of free lands from the government was one of the great inducements to coloniza- tion. In view of the fact that a great deal of land - some of it presumably very valuable - was to be had for the asking, it was hardly to be expected that the grantees would be ready at once to make their permanent homes on such plots as they might receive. Some better opportunity was too likely to turn up.
The frontier population was a highly mobile one, in which were a large number of adventurers. In fact, an adventurous character was almost a prerequisite to colonial enterprise, and such men were not only reluctant to settle before they felt cer- tain that they had reached some satisfactory goal, but were also very likely to observe what seemed to be greener pastures in the distance as soon as they had reconciled themselves to settlement.
Thus there are a large number of names associated with the early years of Muddy River which did not long retain signifi- cance in connection with the community. Many of the grantees never occupied the lands which were given them there, and others were quick to dispose of their allotments. Some, of course, did not live long in the new country, while others, because of religious differences or a supposed opportunity to better their circumstances, moved to Connecticut or to remoter parts of the new frontier.
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LAND FOR THEIR HOMES
A detailed discussion of the original grantees would, there- fore, impede this story of Muddy River without contributing materially to its worth. At the end of the book will be found a map covering the original grants, but the names of the land- owners will appear in the story only so far as those individuals actually participated in the history of the town.
POLICY IN LAND GRANTS
The grants thus far described were only a preliminary to the distribution of land on a more extensive scale. Muddy River, like Mount Wollaston (Quincy) and Rumney Marsh (Chelsea), was included in a comprehensive plan of allotments, intended to provide all deserving citizens of Boston with adequate acreage for their home establishments.
But the mere physical task of surveying the region with enough exactness to permit definite assignments, involved a long delay. It was not until January 8, 1638, that the desultory grants and promises of previous months were confirmed or defined; and at that time also, forty-eight new allotments were made. The effect was to nominate, all at once, nearly half of the 'first citizens' of Muddy River, and to assign to them more than half of the soil in what were known as the 'great allotments.'
From the beginning it was apparent that this was to be a com- munity of substantial people, and of homes. The allotments were specified to be for 'planting ground,' which would naturally imply actual residence. Provision was primarily to be made for 'such as are members or likely to be and have noe cattell,' which meant that the neighbors in the new settlement were at least qualified for church membership. But there is something inconsistent in emphasizing the lack of cattle, and then pro- viding that the allotments falling between the 'foote hill and the Water' should be made on the basis of four acres for each head of cattle, and those that were more distant, five acres.
Not until the meeting of March 14, 1637, was a definite move made to lay out the allotments. The task was then committed to the selectmen, who in turn appointed a committee to do the actual work. This group functioned until the selectmen, on January 8, 1638, referred to the order of December 14, 1635, which had first dealt with the lands at Muddy River, and cited
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HISTORY OF BROOKLINE
it as authority for a long list of allotments 'unto the then in- habitants' - a phrase which seems to mark as a privileged class in this respect, those who were inhabitants of Boston on December 14, 1635.
Although these grants are all recorded on the same day, it is probable that the record was simply the concluding formality of a process that had been going on for some time. The last six allotments of this group had been pledged some time earlier, and applications were doubtless still being made during the process of surveying.
Following the order of the town meeting, the 'great allot- ments' began close by Muddy River, as near to the Neck as William Colborne's grant would permit. The total of these, together with the initial grants at Muddy River, amounts to about 1450 acres. This marks the extent of the appropriations exclusive of marsh lands, on and before January 8, 1638. The area includes the breadth of Brookline from Commonwealth Avenue on the north to the vicinity of Chestnut Hill Avenue and Cottage Street on the south.
BASIS OF GRANTS
Individuals of special prominence had profited generously from the first grants; the great allotments represented a different and far broader land policy. Merchants, yeomen, tradesmen and laborers comprised the new grantees, and while some of them appear to have enjoyed a measure of wealth and promi- nence, it seems to have been expected that these people would settle on their new lands.
The business of assigning lots was managed with the greatest fairness, and the most careful consideration of the grantees' needs and prospects. Thus, a misshapen boundary, an un- favorable terrain, proximity to the marshes, a large family, or remoteness from the Neck, seem all to have been weighed in al- lotting increased acreage according to individual requirements.
There were ten members on the committee that superin- tended the great allotments, including Thomas Leveritt, William Aspinwall, William Hutchinson, William Colborne, and John Coggeshall. All of these were prominent citizens whose interest in the Muddy River area, if they had any, had
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LAND FOR THEIR HOMES
already been satisfied, so that they had no inducement to do anything but a thoroughly honest job. There is no doubt, there- fore, that they followed scrupulously the instructions of the town meeting and observed entire equality of treatment.
Under the order of December 14, 1635, special consideration had been promised to the poorer inhabitants and those who either belonged to the church or would probably do so. The close association of church membership with standing in the community meant that church members were probably promi- nent residents of the community as well as godly citizens. The records of the First Church show that of the forty-eight names listed, not less than thirty-four were church members before 1631, and the other fourteen may be largely accounted for either by their early death or removal from the village. Forty of the grantees had been admitted freemen, which means that not only were they church members, but were entitled to participate in charter elections, hold colonial offices, aid in making the more important local regulations (particularly those respecting the admission of new inhabitants, and the 'layeing out of lotts'), and choose from their own number the men to order 'the prudentiall occasions of that Towne.'
To be accepted as a freeman represented not only harmony with the community conscience and full acceptance into com- munity life, but carried with it the colonial marks of public confidence. As Thomas Lechford put it in his Plain Dealing, 'None may now be a Freeman of that Commonwealth ... unlesse he be a Church member amongst them. None have voice in elections of Governours, Deputy, and Assistants; none are to be Magistrates, Officers, or Jurymen, grand or petite, but Freemen.'
CHARACTER OF LANDHOLDERS
That the grantees at Muddy River were men of some standing is shown by the frequent occurrence of their names as holders of public offices. It does not require any distinguished ability to qualify as a fence viewer, cowkeeper or surveyor of highways, but these were nevertheless positions of public trust to which only such men could be elected as commanded the confidence of the community. Under the old Boston town government, such other offices went to Muddy River residents as constable
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HISTORY OF BROOKLINE
and prison keeper, deacon in the church, and Captain in the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, which counted among its charter members three original grantees of the town, namely, John Oliver, Thomas Savage, and John Underhill. At least ten of these first citizens were considered prominent enough to be disarmed during the Wheelwright troubles of 1637, which is some indication that they were persons of local importance.
On the economic side, these people were almost all trades- men, artisans and laborers. Among them were not less than seven described as servants, five shoemakers and four laborers. The rest included one or more representatives of the calling of the thatcher, bricklayer, carpenter, mariner, barber, tailor, innkeeper, slater, glover, cooper, tallow chandler, merchant, weaver, joiner, and even a teacher in the person of Philemon Por- mont, the first public grammar school master in America. While such employments marked a distinctly artisan class, they never- theless represented definite callings which distinguished the craftsman from the unskilled laborer.
These people who helped to settle Muddy River were none of them of such social importance as to be listed among the leading Boston families of the time, and only five of them con- tributed to the school fund, donors to which were described as of the 'richer inhabitants.' But they were men representative of that substantial group of citizens who were to form the yeo- manry of the next generation.
While some fairly comprehensive picture of the grantees may thus be had, their precise relation as individuals to Muddy River is far less clear. It is certain that only a few of them made any immediate use of their allotments and still fewer became actual residents of the village. This is partly explained by the fact that at least twenty-nine of the grantees appear in the Bos- ton Book of Possessions, as owners of more or less extensive proper- ties in Boston, and many of them doubtless found it more con- venient to live there.
NEW REGULATIONS
Before discussing the population further, however, it seems appropriate to dispose of the rest of the Muddy River allotments.
2I
LAND FOR THEIR HOMES
Up to this time, grants of land had been made on terms de- signed primarily to secure orthodox proprietors, and the regu- lations of the town meeting had been given scrupulous attention. Such a policy not only assured a regulated expansion, but did much to strengthen the economic stability of the class which a well bolstered theocracy had chosen to control the colony. But, as has been observed, some of the best laid plans fail to work out exactly as has been intended, and the next three years, during which the available acres at Muddy River were completely exhausted, saw the introduction of familiar methods of land exchange, though the standards for the selection of settlers remained as before.
In the summer of 1638, a meeting of the selectmen ordered that no house should be sold without some part of the 'great allotments,' unless the consent of the 'overseers of the Townes occasions' was first obtained. There is no evidence that this was aimed particularly at Muddy River, but its purpose ap- pears to have been to keep ownership and residence in the same hands, leaving however a power of discretion in the se- lectmen if circumstances seemed to warrant the sale of a dwell- ing apart from the farm to which it properly belonged.
Before the close of the year, on January 21, 1639, the first recorded sale of land in Muddy River was made. It is possible that there was some evasion about the transaction and that the real parties did not appear on the record. Robert Scott, a servant of John Sanford, conveyed to Thomas Savage the great allotment of twenty-three acres originally granted Richard Fairbanks. More than two years earlier, Fairbanks had been charged with speculative tendencies and had paid a fine of eleven shillings. Both he and Savage were men of distinction in the colony, and Scott may have been only a go-between in the transaction. The purchase price was £13 16s., or about $3.60 an acre for land in the Washington Square section of modern Brookline, though even this does not seem exorbitant for having held a public grant for a little more than a year.
THE LAST GRANTS OF LAND
By December of 1639, sixteen grants were added, making a total of eighty-seven since John Cotton was awarded his spacious
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HISTORY OF BROOKLINE
farm. The scene was being filled. Land was running short. Available acreage at Muddy River would not much longer be adequate to meet the continued demand, and the inhabitants of Boston began to act cautiously in the face of an impending shortage.
When a lot was granted to Richard Sherman for 'seven heads' it was with the provision, 'if it be there to be had.' This was December 11, 1639, when three hundred acres were set aside as 'perpetual Commonage' for the use of the 'inhabitants there' as well as of those in the town of Boston itself. The common was to be set aside before any other allotments were laid out, a precaution which makes it apparent that there was uncer- tainty as to how much land remained to satisfy future claimants. From this time careful restrictions were observed, and new grants were promised only with the qualification that previous pledges must first be redeemed.
The sudden awareness of a threatened shortage had the nat- ural effect of enhancing land values. The Fairbanks sale is the earliest of which there is record, but it was presumably followed by other exchanges, and the town itself began to dispose of grants in consideration of a moderate scale of payments. In February, 1640, forty-two grantees were sold land in Mount Wollaston at three shillings an acre; and the next month marsh land was set out at Muddy River for John Odlyn, one of the earliest settlers, described as a cutler or armorer, and dis- franchised as an Antinomian in 1637. He was to pay a price to be fixed by the next town meeting.
So general and so profitable did this practice become that in April, 1640, William Hibbins was chosen treasurer of the 'towns stock' to care for proceeds arising from the sale of lands. At length, on October 26, it was ordered 'that there shall be noe more land graunted at muddy river, nor the mount, untill such lands as are already graunted are layd out, and the residue of the land knowne what the acres are.' The resources of public lands were nearly exhausted, and a record dated January 10, 1641, states: 'It's ordered that there shall be noe more Lands granted unto any Inhabitants that shall hereafter be admitted into the Towne, unless it be at a generall Townsmeeting.'
Thus, between the last of the great allotments of January 8,
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LAND FOR THEIR HOMES
1638, and the last recorded grant, May 28, 1641, the land situa- tion in Muddy River underwent pronounced and rapid change. The choicest lands were disposed of, sales tended to discount the paternal care of the selectmen, and the less ready availability of land made it more valuable. A foundation had been laid, and a watchful town meeting had sought by the standards of the times to assure the Muddy River region a suitable citizenry. The final grants complete the record of the original holders of the area.
Several features distinguish these last allotments from the earlier ones. First is the size of the grants, most of which exceed twenty acres, and two of which extend to three hundred and six hundred acres respectively. There is almost a total lack of lot descriptions, the established boundaries being fixed largely by documentary evidence apart from the town records. Finally, entries indicate that only sixteen of these grants were actually completed, the others being withheld, perhaps because of lack of land, or on account of the removal of the petitioners from the area.
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