Lucius R. Paige, History of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1630-1877, with a genealogical register

[183] as the Cambridgeport Parish; and Feb. 2, 1809, the proprietors (reserving private ownership of pews) conveyed to the Parish the meeting-house and lot, containing two acres, together with a parsonage lot at the northeasterly corner of Harvard and Prospect streets.

By an Act passed March 4, 1809, Rufus Davenport, Henry Hill, Samuel May, Elijah Davenport, Pliny Cutler, and their associates, were incorporated as the “Cambridgeport manufactory, for the purpose of manufacturing cotton and sea-salt;” and they were further authorized, Feb. 27, 1813, to manufacture “printing-types and other articles usually manufactured in chemical laboratories.” I find no trace, however, of the establishment of such a manufactory.

While the measures adopted for the improvement of Cambridgeport were in the “full tide of successful experiment,” a similar enterprise was undertaken at Lechmere Point in which the prime mover was Andrew Craigie.¹ The earliest transactions were conducted by Mr. Craigie with much skill and secrecy. His name does not appear on the records until the whole scheme was accomplished; indeed he took no deed of land in his own name until Feb. 14, 1803, when he purchased of Abraham Biglow nearly forty acres of land, formerly the northwesterly part of the Inman or Jarvis Farm. But other purchases, manifestly in his interest, had been made at an earlier period. It has heretofore been stated that the estate of Richard Lechmere was confiscated by the State, and sold to Andrew Cabot in 1779. This estate, together with the share of the Phips Farm assigned to Judge Lee and his wife, and subsequently bought by Cabot, was sold for £ 3,300 to Seth Johnson of New York, Jan. 31, 1795, and mortgaged by him to John Cabot for £ 2,200: and on the 18th of December, 1797, Johnson, for a nominal consideration, quitclaimed all his interest in the estate to Bossenger Foster of Cambridge (brother-in-law to Mr. Craigie), who, by an agreement dated six months later, engaged to convey the estate to Craigie, on the performance of certain conditions. The next step was to secure the reversionary rights of Mrs. Lechmere and her children in the confiscated estate of her husband, or in so much thereof as was held in her right by inheritance from her father. These