''AN HIGHWAY SHALL BE THERE, AND A WAY." 2O9 



The ends of the lots along this main highway from 

 Scituate became confused in fifteen or more years, so that 

 " new marks for the northeast ends of lots in the First 

 Division " were ordered in the year 1699. The lots butting 

 on the west side of Main Street are far from a straight 

 alignment even to-day, and they bear witness either to 

 careless surveys or greedy encroachments upon the com- 

 mon land. 



At that same date, 1699, "the south ends of the lots 

 on Great Neck " were ordered to be re-marked. These 

 ends are bounded by Elm Street and Highland Avenue 

 upon the south border of Great Neck, and they are now 

 fairly straight, especially that part of Highland Avenue 

 lying along the side of the Common, which was made 

 straight by a town order, through the efforts of Samuel 

 Hall, in the year 1864. 



Originally all the private premises between Highland 

 Avenue and Main Street were common land reserved by 

 the Fisher plan. 



A few years before these new marks were ordered " the 

 selectmen of Hingham appointed Samuel Jacob to lay out 

 a highway for Israel Nichols near his now dwelling house 

 at Cohassett," March 25, 1695. This way was along the 

 border of Straits Pond, and is now a part of Jerusalem 

 Road. It was to facilitate Israel Nichols' travel to Hing- 

 ham, and it needed only to reach as far as the Straits Pond 

 mill, for there was already a horse track there at the mill 

 and a bridge that horseback riders could cross in going 

 from Hull to Hingham.* Twenty-three years after this 

 date there was an order for relocating two important high- 

 ways : one was Jerusalem Road and the other Beechwood 

 Street. 



It will be remembered that Beechwood settlers began to 

 gather there in the first years of seventeen hundred, when 



* Hingham Records of |une 9, i6g6. The town refused to make this liorse 

 bridge into a cart bridge. 



