Paving Contractor in Charlestown, MA

Thomas and Jane Walford were the original English settlers of the peninsula between the Charles and the Mystic. They were given a grant by Sir Robert Gorges, with whom they had settled at Wessagusset (Weymouth) in September 1623 and arrived at what they called Mishawaum in 1624. John Endicott, first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, sent William, Richard and Ralph Sprague to Mishawaum to lay out a settlement. Thomas Walford, acting as an interpreter with the Massachusett Indians, negotiated with the local sachem Wonohaquaham for Endicott and his people to settle there. Although Walford had a virtual monopoly on the region’s available furs, he welcomed the newcomers and helped them in any way he could, unaware that his Episcopalian religious beliefs would cause him to be banished from Massachusetts to Portsmouth, New Hampshire within three years.

Originally a Puritan English city during the Colonial era, Charlestown proper was founded in 1628 and settled July 4, 1629, by Thomas Graves, Increase Nowell, Simon Hoyt, the Rev. Francis Bright, and the Spragues (Ralph, Richard, & William Sprague), among some 100 others who preceded the Great Migration. John Winthrop’s company stopped here for some time in 1630, before deciding to accept the invitation of William Blaxton to settle across the Charles River with him on the Shawmut peninsula. This was the first act in the foundation of the city of Boston.

The territory of Charlestown was initially quite large. From it, Woburn was separated in 1642, Malden in 1649 (including what is now Melrose and Everett) and Stoneham in 1725. South Medford, the land south of the Mystic River (now surrounded by Somerville), was known as “Mistick Field” and was transferred from Charlestown to Medford in 1754. This grant also included the “Charlestown Wood Lots” (the Medford part of the Middlesex Fells), and part of what was at the time Woburn (now Winchester). Other parts of Medford were transferred to Charlestown in 1811. Still-rural Somerville was split off in 1842 as Charlestown was urbanizing. Everett, Burlington, Arlington and Cambridge also acquired areas originally allocated to Charlestown. Landfill operations eliminated the narrow Charlestown Neck that connected the northwest end of the Charlestown Peninsula to the mainland at Sullivan Square.