SEPAKA TION FROM II INGHAM. 257 



preserve in our day the flavor of those early precinct 

 days. 



It is interesting to note, furthermore, that more than 

 twenty-five acres of orchard, eighty acres of tillage land, 

 and one hundred and fifty acres of mowing land were in use 

 as early as 1737 ; but such was the growth of the precinct 

 and the energy of its inhabitants that these figures were 

 all doubled in sixteen years, as the tax list of 1753 reveals. 



The houses had multiplied from about fifty to nearly 

 one hundred ; and the doubling process was so universal 

 in the wealth and population of the precinct that this 

 sixteen-year period from 1737 to 1753 might fairly be 

 named the hundred per cent era. 



It was at about the height of this energetic progress 

 that the efforts to break away from the domination of the 

 Hingham town government were inaugurated. 



The vigorous precinct had been forced by its growth to 

 tear down the old meeting-house and to build larger. 



No sooner was the new large building finished than 

 the agitation began which culminated in the charter for 

 the separate township of Cohasset. 



On February 11, 175 1, the pulse of the community was 

 first taken upon the subject of separation. The record 

 reads : " A vote was tryed whether we should Petetion the 

 other part of y^ Town that we might be sett off a distinct 

 District or Township — passed in y'^ affirmative." John 

 Stephenson, Samuel Gushing, and Isaac Lincoln, Jr., were 

 appointed a committee to present this petition at the next 

 town meeting at Hingham, in May of that year. 



They performed their disagreeable duty on May 16, 

 175 1, and the Hingham records read as follows: "The 

 Petition of the Inhabitants of Cohassett Read & the Ques- 

 tion put whether the prayer of the petition be Granted — 

 passed in the negative." 



This was the first repulse in their twenty years of 

 petitioning for town rights. The next move was to ap- 



