The Founding of Newtowne / Newtowne and Cambridge

Puritans from Lincolnshire and East Anglia organized the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1628, received from King Charles I a grant of territory between the Merrimac and Charles Rivers, and chose John Winthrop as Governor, Thomas Dudley as Deputy Governor, and the Assistants to transfer the colony’s government to settlers in Massachusetts. In 1630, seventeen vessels carrying nearly 1,000 people sailed from Britain, with the Arbella arriving first at Salem on June 22, and the settlers soon established themselves at Charlestown, Watertown, Medford, and Dorchester. After water problems in Charlestown, Winthrop, Dudley, and the Assistants moved to Trimountain, renamed Boston, then sought a more defensible inland site along the Charles River and selected Newtowne in late 1630. A grid plan of streets and lots was laid out there, and by July 26, 1631, eight houses were occupied, though Winthrop never finished his own house, beginning a lifelong feud with Dudley. The General Court met alternately in Newtowne and Boston until 1638, and the arrival of the Braintree Company under the Reverend Thomas Hooker greatly enlarged the settlement; Hooker was settled as minister in 1633, and after he left for what is now Hartford in 1636, the Reverend Thomas Shepard became minister. The colony ordered a college to be established at Newtowne in 1637, the town was then renamed Cambridge in recognition of the Cambridge University education of many colonial leaders, and after John Harvard’s bequest of £700 and his library, the college was named Harvard College in 1639. Early Cambridge also saw the arrival of Stephen Daye with America’s first printing press in 1639, the publication of the Body of Liberties in 1641, the Cambridge Platform in 1646, the forced resignation of Lieutenant Governor Thomas Oliver and Cambridge members of the Mandamus Council in September 1774, George Washington’s assumption of command of the Continental Army on Cambridge Common on July 3, 1775, and the drafting of the Massachusetts Constitution in Harvard Square in 1780. The original town grant extended far beyond present-day Cambridge, and over time outlying areas became separate towns while boundary adjustments and new bridges to Boston reshaped Cambridge from a village centered on Harvard College into distinct villages including Cambridgeport and East Cambridge.

Cambridge, Massachusetts · United States