I04 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



choose it, if he would only cross the Atlantic at his own 

 expense. 



Some adventurous men were at Bare Cove, enough of 

 them to be taxed as a "plantation," on September 25, 

 1634.* They must have been few, perhaps only fourteen, 

 for their tax to be paid to the colonial government was 

 only twenty dollars {£4), the least of all the twelve settle- 

 ments, and only one twentieth the size of the largest ones.f 

 In the summer of the next year their number was much 

 augmented, and their career under the name of Hingham 

 was commenced. 



Twenty-eight more persons in the year 1635 came out 

 from the vicinity of old Hingham to join their cr/ends 

 upon this distant shore. Among them was one who be- 

 came the most famous of all our pioneers. It was Rev. 

 Peter Hobart. 



A minister was necessary to any colonial town, and the 

 Hobarts had one in their own family. This son of Edmond 

 Hobart was about thirty-one years of age, with his father's 

 great sturdiness, and an education such as a graduate of 

 Cambridge, England, might have gained at that time. For 

 several years he had preached in the vicinity of his old 

 home, but the king's suppression of free speech, and the 

 general prejudice against a Puritan minister, made life at 

 home unendurable. 



Two years after his father's family had gone, he fol- 

 lowed across the sea, and upon June 8, 1635, with his 

 wife and four children, he arrived at Charlestown,J where 

 he found his relatives. 



Cotton Mather says that several towns addressed Peter 

 Hobart to become their minister ; but the little settlement 

 at Bare Cove was more to his liking, where the majority, 



*The exact date of the Bare Cove settlement cannot be ascertained. We may 

 guess at the date 1633, but September 25, 1634, is the first mention of Bare Cove 

 in the Records of Massachusetts. 



tSee the Records of Massachusetts, Vol. I, p. 129. 



:[:This is the first entry in Peter Hobart's Journal. 



