THE AUTONOMY OF A PRECINCT. I 87 



Also Joseph Souther, another settler, was granted the 

 same privilege only a month later, and a committee of 

 three was appointed to locate their separate shipyards, 

 where they might not interfere with each other. 



This shipbuilding at the Cove suggests that the shipping 

 of cord wood or other merchandise to Boston had already 

 begun, so that a bit of commerce independent of Hingham 

 had sprung up. To this enterprise at the Cove we must 

 add another already undertaken in the Beechwood region. 



It was the iron works upon Bound Brook at Turtle 

 Island, 1703-4. This island is a few hundred yards south 

 of Beechwood Street, made by the brook splitting into 

 two streams and uniting again below. 



By building a dam on the west branch a good water 

 power of a puny sort was obtained, and here the genius 

 of Mordecai Lincoln contrived a trip hammer to forge 

 out the iron which was smelted. 



The ore was bog iron, carted over from Pembroke, ten 

 miles away, in the rudest sort of two-wheeled ox carts. 

 The wheels were made of solid oak planks fastened to- 

 gether and trimmed to a circular disk ; and they creaked 

 upon wooden axles over the insufferably rough roads that 

 led between the Pembroke ponds where the ore was found 

 and the Turtle Island smelting furnace where the ore was 

 reduced. 



The ore was miserable stuff, but iron was precious in 

 those days. It is said that the only piece of iron which 

 could be afforded in making a cart was the bolt that held 

 on the yoke. 



To encourage the iron industry a subsidy had been 

 offered by the Massachusetts government about fifty 

 years before to any person that might undertake it. In 

 Lynn, Braintree, and Bridgewater some success had 

 already been achieved, and here were some enterprising 

 Cohasseters working against great odds to get a little 

 iron out of the miserable bog ore that they might haul 



