172 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



and then through the Second Division until it reached the 

 home road at Turkey Meadow. The latter end of this 

 road lay along the north side of Turkey Meadow to the 

 present Hull Street, and is still in use under the name 

 Cedar Street. From Cedar Street to Little Harbor this 

 highway, laid out May 4, 1685, is continued to this day as 

 North Main Street, and conforms probably to the original 

 cattle trail leading to the Cohasset meadows. 



Among the first homes that of Israel Nichols the 

 weaver, on the south side of Straits Pond, where Jeru- 

 salem Road now runs, ought to be recounted. On March 

 25, 1695, "the selectmen appointed Samuel Jacobs to lay 

 out a highway for Israel Nichols near his now dwelling 

 house at Cohassett." * 



How long since his dwelling house had been in Cohasset 

 no one can tell, but it had been built upon Green Hill 

 sixteen years before, and at some winter between these 

 two dates, 1679 and 1695, it had been sledded across the 

 ice on Straits Pond. 



It stood until five years ago the oldest house in the 

 town, when it was destroyed. Israel's son, Nathaniel, 

 married Elizabeth, the oldest daughter of Daniel Lincoln, 

 and thus were these two first homes tied together across 

 two miles of rocky wilderness. 



It may be a fair surmise that the journeys of young 

 Nathaniel at the beginning of the eighteenth century to 

 the home of Elizabeth at Little Harbor were along the 

 shore trail where Jerusalem Road now winds its tortuous 

 way. 



The land at the sea border of these lots was left for a 

 town highway ; but long before it was opened for the travel 

 of carts, the children of Israel Nichols and those of 



•This is one of the earliest cases of the abbreviated spelling of the Indian name 

 of Cohasset. The first instance known is in the year 1682 in Nathaniel Baker's 

 probated inventory, where the spelling is " Cohasset." In Cornelius Canterbury's 

 inventory in the probate records, November 23, 1683, the spelling is with two /"s — 

 Cohassett." 



