In the last years of the expiring colony, while Samuel Phipps was a selectman of Charlestown, some lovers of old English sports and customs had erected in Charlestown a maypole for the ordinary May festivities. It was cut down. Directly another and bigger pole was erected, and a garland hung upon it. This was not to be endured. Increase Mather called it an abominable shame, a piece of heathenism. Selectman Phipps ordered the town watch to cut the pole down. In the resulting disturbance, the selectman and the captain of an English vessel in the port, the frigate Kingfisher, came to blows. The sailor captain promptly entered a complaint before the magistrate, and the selectman was put under bonds to the next court. The case never came to trial.
Charlestown ‘beyond the Neck’ included the elevated land on the river side of the present Broadway and seat of the Ten Hills Farm, which had long been in private ownership, the ‘stinted commons’ being on the southerly side of Broadway, and extending to the Cambridge line, ‘stinted’ meaning bounded by defined limits. That was done in 1637. These commons lay between ‘the Neck, Menotomies river, and the farms of Medford and Mr. Winthrop,’ the ground being reserved for such cattle as ‘milch cows, working cattle, goats, and calves of the first year.’
By the time of the three Samuel Phipps, the commerce which lingered at the port of Charlestown had tended gradually to improve the condition of provincial life. While the country folk were yet content with the wooden plates, bowls, knives, and pewter spoons of the Colonial period, and sanded their floors from the inspiration of cleanliness, the town inhabitants had pewter ware, some crockery and glass. The chair-makers developed an industry in the high-backed, split-bottomed frames,
