The Cambridge of eighteen hundred and ninety-six: a picture of the city and its industries fifty years after its incorporation
Arthur Gilman, Ed.

The convention which framed the constitution of Massachusetts that was afterwards adopted met in Cambridge September 1, 1779, and continued its sessions there until March 2, 1780. At a town meeting held in Cambridge May 22, 1780, the Declaration of Rights submitted by this convention was unanimously approved. To the constitution certain amendments were suggested, but the delegates were instructed to ratify it, whether these amendments were adopted or not.

During the thirty years which we have just considered, while there had been but little change in the population of the town, there had been a social development which has attracted considerable attention. Brattle Street as it now runs was open from Brattle Square nearly to Mount Auburn, and the property bordering upon it was owned by wealthy loyalists. This has given rise to the title, ‘Tory Row,’ by which their beautiful houses which are still standing have since been known. The picture of the social life of the inmates of these homes, as it has been handed down to us, is charming in the extreme. Nearly all of them passed into the hands of the Committee of Correspondence, and the revenue derived from them was appropriated for public service. Some of these estates were ultimately confiscated, but others were restored to the families of their former owners. The town was opposed to such returns, and, May 5, 1783, instructed its representative to vote against them.

In October, 1777, Burgoyne's troops were temporarily quartered in this town and vicinity. A part remained until the succeeding November. Burgoyne himself had quarters assigned him in the Borland House, on the easterly side of Dunster Street, about midway between Mount Auburn and Harvard streets. General Reidesel was quartered in the Sewall House, sometimes called the Lechmere House from a former owner. A part of this house still stands at the western corner of Reidesel Avenue and Brattle Street. It was while her husband was quartered there that Madame Reidesel gained the knowledge that enabled her to describe, in her letters, life in ‘Tory Row’ before the war began. ‘Never have I chanced,’ she says, ‘upon such an agreeable situation.’

We have now reached the period indicated at the beginning of this sketch as the point in the history of the town where a