More About Governors Naming Towns
Most of what Mr. Whitmore had to say about governors naming towns was based on the records of the provincial government that began in 1692. The legislative act or order that established a town always specified the town’s name, but never said anything about who supplied it. The only direct evidence that a governor was responsible came about when the order was recorded with a blank for him to fill in. Whitmore found no orders of this kind before 1732, and very few after that until the 1760s, when they multiplied. He concluded from this evidence that governors seldom if ever chose town names before the mid-1700s. But although it’s very likely that petitions to the General Court for township status often did specify the petitioners’ preference for a name, we can find earlier evidence that at least sometimes the business of naming a town was left entirely up to the legislature or the governor. The naming of Stow in 1683 is an example. The General Court’s order reads as follows (emphasis mine):
In answer to the petition of Benjamin Bosworth, Thomas Steevens, Boaz Broune, &c., inhabitants of Pompositticut, and at the motion of the committee there appointed to order the affairs of the said new plantation between Concord and Lancaster, … this Court doth grant that place to be a township, and do allow the choice already made by the inhabitants of selectman, constable, &c, provided they act nothing contrary to the instruction and order given them by the committee for the prudent distribution of their lands, and encouragement to the settling of a minister among them; and that the name of the said town be Stow; and they are freed from country rates for three years next ensuing.
“That the name of the said town be Stow” appears in the Court’s order as one of the conditions the inhabitants are obliged to meet, suggesting strongly that they hadn’t asked for that name. They may have been perfectly happy with Pompositticut, but, as we’ve seen, the records suggest that the General Court in the 1600s didn’t like English townships to have Indian names.
The history of Newton suggests that it was commonly considered to be the duty of the governor and General Court to name a town if the inhabitants didn’t choose to do so. According to Lucius Paige’s History of Cambridge, when Cambridge Village, having already become a separate precinct and parish, petitioned for full separation in 1678, the petition concluded with the plea to the General Court “that you will please to grant us our freedom from Cambridge and that we may be a township of ourselves, without any more dependence upon Cambridge, which hath been a great charge and burden to us; and also that you would please to give the place a name, and if there should be any objection against us that the honored Court will admit our reply and defense.” [My emphasis.]
Cambridge responded angrily, and the inhabitants of “Cambridge Village” had to wait another ten years before their petition was granted. The body that finally granted it was not the General Court, which was out of business at the time, but the council of Sir Edmund Andros, governor of the Dominion of New England—the regime that was imposed on the colony during the reign of King James II, and overthrown shortly after he was.
The Andros council’s order declared Cambridge Village “a distinct village and place of itself, wholly freed and separated from the town of Cambridge, and from all future rates, payments, or duties to them whatsoever”—with the standard exception of sharing maintenance costs for the Great Bridge. However, the order said nothing about a name, and when the town and the village signed an agreement, the three signers from the village were listed as “Selectmen of New Cambridge.”
The inhabitants were evidently dissatisfied with this derivative name—perhaps they couldn’t forget the bitterness of their quarrel with Cambridge. In 1691, when the General Court and Governor Simon Bradstreet were once again functioning (temporarily, while the colony awaited a new charter from King William) they sent up a petition asking the legislature to finish the job properly by giving the town a new name. The General Court complied: “In answer to the petition of the inhabitants of Cambridge Village, lying on the south side of Charles River, sometimes called New Cambridge, being [that is: ‘having previously been’] granted to be a township, praying that a name be given to said town, it is ordered, that it be henceforth called New Town.”
It must have amused Governor Bradstreet or some members of the Court to satisfy the village’s determination to distinguish itself from Cambridge once and for all, even in this minor respect, by choosing that particular name to give it. New Town said loudly and plainly that this child had renounced all ties with its parent—but the same name had also at one time belonged to the same parent. Cambridge had officially shed its original name in 1638, and by 1691 no one could still have been calling it Newe Towne. However the villagers felt about that name, however, time and speech habits converted it to Newton before many more years had passed.
Although the examples of Stow and Newton belong to an earlier century and a different political era than the 1713 naming of Lexington, they stand as evidence that the naming of towns was at least sometimes considered a job for the governing authorities of Massachusetts. There’s no reason to think that this tradition had been lost from public memory in the ten years between Simon Bradstreet’s last term as governor, ending in 1692, and the beginning of Joseph Dudley’s governship in 1702.
(End.)
