THE " QUONAIJASSIT " PIONEERS. I03 



up sons and two daughters and several grandchildren, 

 whose determination to seek a land of no tyranny has 

 profoundly influenced the affairs of Cohasset. In the 

 year* 1633 the head of this family, Edmond Hobart, 

 with his wife and their son Joshua and their daughters 

 Rebekah and Sarah, came to Charlestown, New England, 

 bringing their servant named Henry Gibbs. 



Edmond Hobart, Jr., with his wife, and Thomas 

 Hobart, with his wife and three children, came the same 

 year ; as also did Nicholas Jacob, with his wife and two 

 children and his cousin Thomas Lincoln, a weaver. 



There was much prospecting to be done by these 

 pioneers to find land well situated near the water, because 

 no roads had been hewn through the primeval forests, and 

 they did not wish to scatter far. When the Hobarts and 

 Nicholas Jacob arrived, most of the available spots had 

 been preempted. Salem and Saugus and Ipswich and 

 Charlestown and Medford and Watertown and Cambridge 

 and Boston and Roxbury and Dorchester and Weymouth 

 had begun their careers. No pioneer with an eye for 

 agricultural needs would choose the rocky harbor of 

 Cohasset. But there was another harbor lying inside of 

 the peninsula of Nantasket that was still vacant and 

 somewhat inviting. It is true that that cove looked very 

 bare when the tide withdrew its water; but the channel 

 could be used at any time for a small boat, and the adja- 

 cent land was fertile. Consequently this Bare Cove, as 

 they called it, had so much favor with the Hobarts and 

 their friends that they decided to establish a community 

 there. Which of these men were the first who squatted 

 upon this land at Bare Cove in order to claim it as a town 

 site can never be known. 



According to an order passed by the Massachusetts Bay 

 Company in England five years before, in the year 1629, 

 any man was allowed fifty acres of land wherever he might 



* Daniel Cushing's manuscript, as quoted by Solomon Lincoln in his Centennial 

 Arldress. 



