Today, the Massachusetts State Quarter Coin tells the story of the renaming of the “Trimountane” area of Massachusetts on September 7, 1630 (Old Style).
In his 1903 book, Boston, A Guide Book, Edwin Monroe Bacon provided information about those early days.
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The town of Boston was founded in 1630 by English colonists sent out by the “Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England,” under the lead of John Winthrop, the second governor of the Bay Colony, who arrived at Salem in June of that year with the charter of 1629.
It originated in an order passed by the Court of Assistants sitting in the “Governor’s House ” in Charlestown, on the opposite side of the Charles River, first selected as their place of settlement.
This order was adopted September 7, Old Style, and established three towns at once by the simple dictum, “that Trimountane shalbe called Boston ; Mattapan, Dorchester ; & ye towne upon Charles Ryver, Waterton.”
“Trimountane ” consisted of a peninsula with three hills, the highest (the present Beacon Hill), as seen from Charlestown, presenting three distinct peaks.
Hence this name, given it by the colonists from Endicott’s company at Salem, who had preceded the Winthrop colonists in the Charlestown settlement.
The Indian name was “Shawmutt,” or “Shaumut,” which signified, according to some authorities, “Living Waters,” but according to others, “Where there is going by boat,” or “Near the neck.”
The name of Boston was selected in recognition of the chief men of the company, who had come from Boston in England, and particularly Isaac Johnson, ” the greatest furtherer of the Colony,” who died at Charlestown on the day of the naming.
The peninsula was chosen for the chief settlement primarily because of its springs, the colonists at Charlestown suffering disastrously from the use of brackish water.
The Rev. William Blaxton, the pioneer white settler on the peninsula (coming about 1625), then living alone in his cottage on the highest hill slope, “came and acquainted the governor of an excellent spring there, withal inviting him and soliciting him thither.”
The three-hilled peninsula originally contained only about 783 acres, cut into by deep coves, estuaries, inlets, and creeks.
It faced the harbor, at the west end of Massachusetts Bay, into which empty the Charles and Mystic rivers. It was pear-shaped, a little more than a mile wide at its broadest, and less than three miles long, the stem, or neck, connecting it with the mainland (at what became Roxbury) a mile in length, and so low and narrow that parts were not infrequently overflowed by the tides.
By the reclamation of the broad marshes and flats from time to time, and the filling of the great coves, the original area of 783 acres has been expanded to 1801 acres; and where it was the narrowest it is now the widest.
Additional territory has been acquired by the development of East Boston and South Boston, and by the annexation of adjoining cities and towns. Thus the area of the city has become more than thirty times as large as that of the peninsula on which the town was built.
Its bounds now embrace 27,251 acres, or 42.6 square miles. Its extreme length, from north to south, is eleven miles, and its extreme breadth, from east to west, nine miles.
While the Colonial town was confined to the little peninsula, its jurisdiction at first extended over a large territory, which embraced the present cities and towns of Chelsea and Revere on the north, and Brook- line, Quincy, Braintree, and Randolph on the west and south.
So there was quite a respectable ” Greater Boston” in those old first days. The metropolitan proportions continued till 1640,andwere not entirely reduced to the limits of the peninsula and certain harbor islands till 1739.
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But what was the order of the day?
In the History and Antiquities of Boston, Samuel G. Drake included a synopsis of the orders decided upon by the Court of Assistants.
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Many people having, by the seventh of September, taken up “their residence on Shawmut,” a court was held on that day, which is called the Court of Assistants; and this was the second court held at the new settlement of Charlestown.
There were present the principal men from Salem, Dorchester, and Watertown, though at the opening of this court the two last mentioned places were not so named.
Among the orders passed, were the following:—
“Thomas Morton, of Mount Wollaston, shall presently be set in the bilbows, and after sent prisoner to England, by the ship called the Gift, now returning thither; that all his goods shall be seized to defray the charge of his transportation, payment of his debts, and to give satisfaction to the Indians for a canoe he took unjustly from them; and that his house be burnt down to the ground in sight of the Indians, for their satisfaction for many wrongs he has done them.
“Ordered, that no person shall plant in any place within the limits of this Patent, without leave from the Governor and Assistants, or major part of them; that a warrant shall presently be sent to Agawam to command those who are planted there, forthwith to come away; And, that Trimountain be called Boston; Mattapan, Dorchester; and the town upon Charles river, Watertown.”
This last was called Pigsgusset, by the Indians.
Although the seventh of September, Old Style, is justly regarded as the date of the first settlement of Boston, yet it was not till a month or more that the government was removed from Charlestown, where, on the twenty-eighth of September, the third Court of Assistants was held.
In the mean time, among other things, probably fortifications had been considered necessary to be at once erected; for at this court an order passed for raising fifty pounds for the use of Mr. Patrick and Mr. Underhill, who were military men.
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The Massachusetts State Quarter Coin shows beside a portrait of Governor John Winthrop.
