The reason Little Cambridge is the least known neighborhood is because it doesn’t exist anymore. Farther south than you’d think, it was south of the Charles River in what is now Brighton. Back in the day, this area was officially known as “South Cambridge,” “South Side,” the Third Parish,” or the “Third Precinct.” Colloquially, it was mostly known as “Little Cambridge.” By today’s paths, you would travel there by crossing the Anderson bridge at the south end of JFK Street in Cambridge, continuing south on North Harvard Street, taking a right at Western Ave, and heading toward Market St in Brighton.
The Beginning
In 1629 the Massachusetts Bay Company received a royal charter from the king of England for a large swath of land which included Cambridge. Subsequently, in 1634, further land south of the Charles was granted to Cambridge for grazing. The town then “contracted with William Patten ‘to keep 100 cattle on the other side of the river for the space of seven months’ for 20 pounds.” (Marchione) The name changed in 1807 when it became its own incorporated municipality named Brighton.
The first settlers to take up residence in South Cambridge were the Holly (sometimes Holley), Champney, Dana, and Sparhawk families. Samuel Holly was born around 1588 in England. He arrived in Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636 and is listed as a property owner in Little Cambridge in 1639. After he died in 1843, Elizabeth, his second wife, married John Kendall in 645. Legend has it that Elizabeth was hanged as a witch in 1647. It is difficult to prove the veracity of this story, but it is an interesting tidbit reflecting the times.
Richard Champney (born ca. 1604 in England and died 1669 in Little Cambridge) emigrated around 1634. A farmer and real estate investor, Champney became a ruling elder of the church. With civil government tethered to parish hierarchy, this was a highly important position in the community. Champney died in Cambridge in 1669 leaving 40 acres in Little Cambridge to Harvard College. He is buried in the Old Burying Ground in Harvard Square.
Today, we associate the Dana family mostly with Old or Mid-Cambridge. However, Richard Dana Sr. owned land in Little Cambridge as early as 1659. He served as a selectman, juror, and constable. In 1648, he married Ann Bullard with whom he had 14 children. One of these offspring, Daniel (1663-1738) was the great-great-grandfather of Richard Henry Dana Jr., author of Two Years Before the Mast, a memoir recounting his two-year sea voyage on a merchant ship from Boston to California.
Nathaniel Sparhawk (born in 1598 in England and died in 1647 in Little Cambridge) emigrated from Dedham, England around 1636-38 when he was about 40 years old. He became a church deacon and deputy to the General Court. Another real estate investor, by the time of his death, Sparhawk had acquired land on both sides of the river amounting to about 1,000 acres total.
By 1690 the population of Little Cambridge was about 125 souls.
The Politics of Parishes
The politics of the Parish system were complex. As mentioned above, until a civil structure of government devolved, the town’s governance was managed by the parishes. Whatever subject – approving a new minister, paying to maintain parishes, developing civil rules and regulations – there would be those on both sides of the issue, causing delays in implementation.
As the population grew, the demand for a separate parish on the south side of the Charles River likewise increased. Attendance at services at the First Parish church (located in Harvard Square) was impeded by distance and the unreliability of the ferry – particularly in the winter when the river froze. Even after the “Great Bridge” across the Charles was built making travel easier, proponents for a separate parish persisted. In 1774 Little Cambridge received permission to have a minister come to their side of the river to preach in the winter. But parishioners wanted more, and the first petition for a separate parish was submitted in 1747. However, the politics of tax issues around who would pay for maintaining a new parish impeded the process. It was not until 1783 that the request for their own parish—the Third Parish—was granted. This group was not alone in its desire for their own parish: the “farmers” living in what is now Lexington, having twice as far to go to church, had the same concern. This assembly received permission for their own parish, the Second Parish, in 1779, a little ahead of Little Cambridge. As you’ll see below, the same politics played out around building the Great Bridge.
The Ferry and Subsequent Great Bridge of 1660
There had been a ferry across the Charles in the vicinity of Dunster St as early 1635. A Mr. Joseph Cooke was the ferryman, charging a penny for an average one-way crossing and three pennies on “Lecture” days at the First Parish. (Paige) But by 1656 calls for a bridge to replace the ferry bubbled up. Little Cambridge proposed that Cambridge should build a bridge, and that they would agree to pay their fair share of the cost. Arguments about who else benefited from the bridge, and hence should help defray the cost, went back and forth. The project became entangled in disagreements about how many “Lectures” per week there should be in the First Parish church and which preachers were unwilling to give up their pulpits. It was not until around 1662/63 that the bridge was finally built. The new structure was dubbed the “Great Bridge” as it was the largest bridge in the Massachusetts Bay Colony at the time. It included a “draw” to enable boats to pass upstream or down and was the sole bridge across the Charles for nearly 130 years.
Inevitably the bridge fell into disrepair and haggling once again ensued. Finally, the General Court agreed that whoever repaired the bridge could charge a toll: “one penny for every person; three pence a head for every horse and man; six pence for every cart; two pence a head for every horse of other neat cattle; one half a penny a head for sheep, goats, or swine.” Later, the Court also agreed to give the communities that benefited from the bridge an allocation to offset the cost of maintenance. The bridge was rebuilt repeatedly throughout its lifetime, once in 1685, 1733, and again in 1862. With the building of Harvard’s stadium in 1904, concern for the bridge’s upkeep and beautification became a more serious priority. In 1907, the Cambridge Municipal Art society lobbied for a replacement bridge, but there were several issues that would impede the bridge’s eventual construction in 1913.
The Great Bridge had an enormous impact on the economy and commerce of Little Cambridge, which included farming, nurseries, and, most significantly, the cattle and abattoir business. We featured the Porter Square Cattle Market, established in the early 1800s, in an earlier blog post. It turns out there was another cattle market in town—in Little Cambridge.
Where’s the Beef?
Picture this: the year is 1776. The continental Army needs food. Little Cambridge citizen Jonathan Winship and his son contracted with the U.S. government to provision the troops with meat. Initially the cattle slaughtering was done elsewhere, but it didn’t take long for the Winships to recognize the profitability of owning their own slaughterhouse. According to the Brighton Allston Historical Society, by 1790 “Jonathan Winship II was the largest meat packer in Massachusetts, putting up some 5,000 barrels of beef a year for foreign markets alone…. By the 1820s the Brighton Cattle Market was receiving between two and eight thousand head of cattle every Monday.” (emphasis added)
The cattle/abattoir business was a huge economic driver, generating a multitude of support jobs. To accommodate the tradesmen involved in buying, selling, and herding cattle, the Cattle Fair Hotel was built in the village center. The proprietor was our old friend Zachariah Porter, who went on to build the hotel in Porter square that is named after him.
Cattle weren’t the only livestock slaughtered at the 50-60 abattoirs that evolved in Little Cambridge. As reported in the Boston Allston Historical Society (BAHS), by 1837 “nearly 33,000 head of beef cattle, 110,000 sheep, and 17,000 swine were sold at the Brighton Market, in addition to large numbers of oxen, horses, and poultry.”
Today the Stockyard Restaurant at 135 Market Street, Brighton commemorates that long-ago cattle business.
Back to the Revolution: one of Little Cambridge’s most prominent citizens was Colonel Thomas Gardner (1724-1775). Before the war he held a variety of positions: selectman, representative to the General Court and in the Provincial Congresses, the Revolutionary Council of Safety, and the Committee of Correspondence. In the spring of 1775, he was commissioned Colonel of the 1st Middlesex Regiment. Shortly thereafter, on June 15, 1775, he was wounded at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Returning to Little Cambridge to recuperate, he died two weeks later on July 3, the day after George Washington had assumed command of the Continental Army in Cambridge. Gardner was held in such high regard that Washington, in his General Orders, July 4, 1775, ordered:
“Col. Gardner is to be buried to morrow [sic] at 3, O’ Clock, P.M. with the military Honors due to so brave and gallant an officer, who fought, bled and died in the Cause of his country and mankind. His own Regiment, except the company at Malden, to attend on this mournful occasion. The places of those Companies in the Lines on Prospect Hill, to be supplied by Col. Glovers regiment till the funeral is over.”
General Washington attended Colonel Gardner’s funeral.
As Time Went On…
In 1769 a schoolhouse was built. In 1777 there were about 315 people living in Little Cambridge. Eight of the families were slaveholders, including the Winships, Sparhawks, and Gardners. Historian Lucius Paige notes that the City Clerk’s records for 1777 show the population of those “‘on the south side of Charles River in Little Cambridge, from sixteen years of age and upwards, 66 whites, 4 blacks.”
The grandsons of the first Jonathan Winship, Jonathan III and his brother Francis Winship, went on to apply the family business savvy to another industry. In 1820 the brothers founded a nursery known as Winship Gardens on 40 acres overlooking the Charles River. Jonathan III, known as “Capt” for his previous career as worldwide sailor and trader, was a horticulturist, a founding member of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, and a champion of the Mount Auburn Cemetery across the river.
In 1793, the West Boston Bridge was built, providing a second route to Boston for those on the north side of the river, substantially minimizing the commercial traffic over the Great Bridge through Little Cambridge. The negative economic impact of this was substantial.
Becoming Brighton
Over time, the burgeoning population of Little Cambridge was piqued by the city’s failure to make improvements to the Great Bridge, which citizens felt had a severe impact on their economy. They appealed to the Massachusetts State Legislature for permission to divorce themselves from Cambridge. In 1807 they won the right to do so. The new town was incorporated as Brighton, in honor of Brighton, England. Colonel Stephen Dana was elected Town Clerk, and Nathaniel Champney, Thomas Gardner, Jr., Jonathan Livermore, Dudley Hardy, and Benjamin Hill as Brighton’s first Board of Selectmen. Brighton was annexed to Boston in 1874.
Today’s post was written by CHC volunteer Kathleen M. Fox
SOURCES
Baldwin, T. W. (Thomas Williams). (1914-15). Vital records of Cambridge, Massachusetts, to the year 1850. Boston, Mass: [Wright & Potter Print. Co.]. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001262127.
Benjamin Dana (1660 – 1738) entry on WikiTree. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Dana-62.
Boston Landmarks Commission, “The Sparhawk House Study Report” (2008). https://www.cityofboston.gov/images_documents/Sparhawk%20House%20Study%20Report_tcm3-17379.pdf.
Brighton Allston Historical Society (BAHS). http://www.bahistory.org/HistoryBrighton.html
Dana, Elizabeth Ellery. The Dana Family In America (1956). https://archive.org/details/TheDanaFamilyInAmerica.
Gardner, Frank A. Gardner Planter, and Some of His Descendants (1907)
Harvard University. Corporation. Records of land and property owned by Harvard University, 1643-1835. Plan of Newton lot (40 acres) given to Harvard by Richard Champney, drawn by surveyor David Fisk(?) in 1704. UAI 15.750 Box 4, Folder 64, Harvard University Archives. (seq. 2).
Howard, Cecil Hampden Cutts (comp.) Materials for a Genealogy of the Sparhawk Family in New England (1892)
Hurd, D. Hamilton. The History of Middlesex County (1890). https://archive.org/details/historyofmiddles01hurdh.
Marchione, William P. Bull In The Garden: A History of Allston-Brighton by William P. Marchione (1986). Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston http://www.bahistory.org/BullInTheGarden.pdf.
Peter H. Dreyer slide collection, Collection #9800.007, City of Boston Archives, Boston
Richard Champney (abt. 1604 – 1669) entry on WikiTree. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Champney-4.
Whitney, Frederick A., “Brighton” in Samuel Drake (ed.), History of Middlesex County, lll, (1889).
Williams, Viv. “Anderson Memorial Bridge” (Nov 5, 2022). Cambridge Historical Commission Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/CklrUKuuH3R/.
Winship, J.P.C. (John Perkins Cushing), Historical Brighton: An Illustrated History of Brighton and its Citizens. Vol. 1 (1899). https://archive.org/details/historicalbright01wins/.