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and now bears none of that nor several other charges our town is at; whereby we are greatly disenabled so comfortably to maintain our ministry and discharge our public charges as we want and ought to do, by reason one principal arm of our town is cut off, and our accommodations for husbandry so poor and small, and our trade so little and inconsiderable, that it is even a wonder to ourselves how we do subsist and carry on public charge so well as we do, though we do it not so well as we should.
We therefore present unto this honorable General Court's most serious consideration the great damage it will be to this poor Church and town, (that have suffered so many diminutions already), if the honored Court should grant our Farmers' petition to let them have a ministry of their own, and so be wholly taken off from contributing to ours; but much more should we be damnified if the honored Court should grant any part of our outlands unto them, we are so exceedingly straitened in the boundaries of our lands, as we shall plainly demonstrate to the honored Court.
For the distance of place that our brethren at the
Farms are from the public meeting with us, it is but the same it was when they first settled themselves and families there; and they have there other conveniences with it, and
Concord is not far from them, which in bad weather they may go unto.
If we should have this arm cut off too, we shall be much disenabled to carry on God's work amongst us, both in Church and Commonwealth; that as it hath been the care of the honored fathers of our Commonwealth formerly to take care for the subsistence and well being of this senior Church of Christ in
Cambridge, so we still crave the continued care of the honored fathers of the
Commonwealth now in being, that they would not destroy the parent for the offspring.
We humbly leave our languishing condition to your Honors' most serious consideration; and your supplicants shall pray as in duty bound, etc.
William Manning,
Samll. Andrewe,
Samuel Chamne, in the name of the town of
Cambridge.
1
The consideration of this petition was further postponed until the next General Court.
Both the Council and the House of Representatives manifested a willingness, at their session in October, 1684, to establish a village at the Farms; but they could not agree where the division line should be drawn between the village and the parent town, and nothing was accomplished.2
