135 



proximity to the common lands, which were then no 

 doubt covered with woods, may have led to the selection 

 of this place for a shipyard, on account of the facility for 

 bringing the timber to the water side. 



The following order of the town, Nov. 29, 1642, is the 

 only evidence we can find of the first laying out of Bos- 

 ton street : "Its ordered that the highway by the bridge 

 shall be laid out through the lots of goodman Moulton, 

 &c., not round about." 



Next east of the Buffum estate was a house-lot of about 

 an acre upon which Henry Reynolds lived in 1655 ; it 

 was one hundred and seventy feet wide on Essex street, 

 beginning at a point one hundred feet east of Buffum's 

 corner, and extending back two hundred and forty feet. 

 Henry Reynolds sold it to John Pickering, jr., in 168$ ; 

 Timothy Pickering sold the eastern half with the house 

 to Henry Williams in 1739. The old house, which was 

 taken down about twenty-five years ago, stood where the 

 dwelling house of Thomas Nichols, jr., now stands, next 

 west of Fowler street. 



Next east of the Reynolds lot was an acre of land 

 which the heirs of Philip Veren conveyed to Wm. Lord 

 in 1655, and he to his son in 1658, who in 1664 conveyed 

 it to Edward Flint. Edward Flint, in 1679, conveyed the 

 western quarter part of it to Ann, wife of Anthony Need- 

 ham, who, in 1696, conveyed it to Caleb Buffum, and he, 

 in 1718, gave it to the Society of Friends, they having, 

 as the deed says, "built and finished" on the front part 

 of it "a House for the Public Worship of God, and the 

 other halfe of the said ground the Donor hereby freely 

 gives to the Society aforesaid for a burying place." The 

 Quaker meeting house stood on the front part of this lot 

 for more than a century, and then was sold to Samuel 

 Brown and removed to his land where the Lynnfield road 

 crosses the old Ipswich road^in Peabody. 



