THE " QUONAHASSrV PIONEERS. 105 



including his own family and friends, might be of the town 

 of old Hingham, England. Here they could knit together 

 the strands from their old home, and could draw to them- 

 selves others whom they had left. 



The name of Bare Cove naturally had to give w^ay to the 

 name of Hingham. The pioneers of New England, in 

 nearly every settlement, took names for their towns with 

 vi^hich they had been familiar in their native land. 



On the second day of September of the year 1635 the 

 Massachusetts court allowed the change of Bare Cove to 

 Hingham ; and under this new name, on the eighteenth of 

 the same month, the first twenty-nine proprietors of Hing- 

 ham drew their house lots. 



They were situated along the valley of Town Brook on 

 North Street. 



The old landing at the mouth of this brook, where the 

 boat loads of new settlers drew up, was near the foot of 

 Ship Street, where ducks nowadays play in the mud, and 

 the steam cars hourly go plunging by. 



The wild acres voted away on that eighteenth day of 

 September were more than building lots ; they also had to 

 vote themselves into ownership of separate "planting" 

 lots and "meadow" lands and "Great" lots in different 

 parts of their new realm. Not all of their land was thus 

 at once divided, because they hoped for newcomers, and 

 held open room for their settlement. Thus they left 

 undivided all the land which is now Cohasset. 



A.11 cedar and pine swamps were reserved on accounr 

 of the timber. 



Furthermore they voted, that same day, that any man 

 who wished to sell his land must offer it first to the town. 



The privilege of owning so many acres of land and of 

 slicing it up freely to the several inhabitants must have 

 been an exhilarating experience to these men who had 

 grown up under the tightly locked tenures of English 

 land. 



