page_title: Zechariah Symmes
section_title: Foundation of Woburn
hierarchical_section_title: Zechariah Symmes / Foundation of Woburn
caption_attribution_description: First Burial Ground, Woburn, Massachusetts, USA. In use from 1642 to 1794.
context_page_description: Zechariah Symmes was an English Puritan clergyman who emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in New England and became pastor of the First Church in Charlestown, an office he held continuously from 1634 to his death in 1671. Although not one of the original Charlestown founders of 1629, on arrival in 1634 he swiftly found his place among them in the church they had convened two years previously. One of the many emigrant ministers who emerged from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, he was a close fellow-worker among the leading lights of the "Bible Commonwealth".
  Having helped to formulate the laws by which the civil and ecclesiastical polity of the Colony were interwoven, throughout his long ministry he strongly upheld the conservative Puritan orthodoxy of his own Church, and of the Congregational collective, against doctrinal threat or dissent. Even in his passage to America he was confronted with the Antinomianism of Anne Hutchinson, and having urged and participated in the proceedings against her party which led to their banishment, he played an active part in the many unfolding controversies against the Baptists, the Quakers, and other subversive tendencies.
context_section_description: The foundation territory of Charlestown was apportioned to its townsmen and investors, and as outlying settlements developed administrative authority was ceded to them, defining fresh boundaries. The township stood on the Neck or peninsula fronting inner Boston Harbor between the Charles River to the south and the Mystic River descending from the north-west. Its leading citizens had farm estates extending through "Mistick field" along the Mystic River valley, and in the difficult first years a large estate on the north-east side at Medford was staked out for Mathew Cradock, first Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company; formally granted in 1634, this private domain became a Peculiar managed on his behalf by his representatives. The town of Charleston granted 300 acres to Zechariah Symmes, the abutters of which are noted in records of 1638. Some 280 acres lay in a body in the area of Winchester either side of the river, with Mystic Pond at its south-west and the Woburn area to its north-west: the old farmstead was in the north of the estate, near the river. He also held some 11 acres of meadow in the southern part of Stoneham and some 9 acres of salt-marsh at Menotomy (in what is now Arlington).
  On 13–15 May 1640 Charlestown petitioned for the addition of two miles square to its territory at its western border, to accommodate farms for new townsmen who might be admitted. This being granted by the General Court, Increase Nowell, Zechariah Symmes, Edward Convers, Edward Johnson and others, whose own lands lay towards that quarter, went at once to explore it. After a further visit in September to observe its boundary with Lynn (later Reading), on 7 October the grant was increased to four square miles, with a view to settling a village there. On 5 November a committee was appointed by the town to draw a boundary between the proposed village and the town, but immediately the Charleston church appointed its own commissioners to develop a new distinct township there with its own church. The idea gained so much favour that the church hesitated, fearing too large a departure: but in February the Convers Bridge was built, and a site was chosen for the town, from which however the intending settlers were dissuaded by Nowell and Symmes as being unsuitable, and another was decided upon. As the town was a-building, a pastor was sought, and after two disappointments hopes were renewed in Thomas Carter (of Hinderclay, a graduate of St John's College, Cambridge) now an Elder at Watertown, Massachusetts.
  The commissioners obtained leave to have public worship at the village, and Symmes preached the first sermon at the village on 21 November 1641 ("Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns" - Jeremiah IV v. 3): Carter preached on 5 December. Over the next months he continued to encourage them. The settlers obtained dismissal from Charlestown in June 1642, and in August the Woburn congregation was solemnly gathered in the presence of the leading ministers of Massachusetts. Zechariah Symmes continued between four and five hours in praying and preaching, after which the elders made their formal declarations and covenant to welcome the new church. The town of Woburn was incorporated at the end of September 1642. Thomas Carter was ordained their pastor in November, in the presence of the same assembled ministers, by the laying on of hands by two laymen: since the church had no elders of its own, other elders present might have performed it, but they chose to avoid any suggestion of a presbytery or dependency of churches. Carter was pastor until his death in 1684.
  Certain "remote lands" mentioned in the 1640 petition, commonly called "The Land of Nod", lay to the north of Woburn, and although all was laid under the municipal authority of the new town, the more remote part of this tract was granted to Charlestown proprietors. Of these lands Zechariah Symmes and Thomas Allen were each allotted 300 acres in 1643, though they were not laid out until 1650. Meanwhile, a town boundary dispute arose between Charlestown and Woburn, which in 
caption: The First Burial Ground at Woburn, Massachusetts
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "", "Image Make": "SONY", "Image Model": "DSC-H55", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Picasa", "Image DateTime": "2012:02:05 10:19:09", "Image Artist": "Picasa", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "294", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 51, 48, 48, 0, 0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 3, 0, 0, 0]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail Make": "SONY", "Thumbnail Model": "DSC-H55", "Thumbnail Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail DateTime": "2012:01:01 14:58:23", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "11020", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "14300", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/125", "EXIF FNumber": "8", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "80", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2012:01:01 14:58:23", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2012:01:01 14:58:23", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "29/8", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "17/4", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4320", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3240", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "Interoperability RelatedImageWidth": "4320", "Interoperability RelatedImageLength": "3240", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "10790", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Landscape", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "acfe3fd69e59d3f5bdbfdf05da053376"}