Cambridge Grant Historic District

The Cambridge Grant Historic District is a 322-acre historic district located on Russell Hill Road and Wilker Road in Ashburnham, Massachusetts, at an elevation of 1240–1300 feet above sea level. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.

The 1,000-acre district was granted to the town of Cambridge in 1734 as compensation for that town's responsibility in maintaining the first bridge across the Charles River connecting Boston to towns to the north, built in 1662. Known as the Cambridge Bridge Farm, it remained unsettled until 1770, when John Adams of Menotomy became the first settler with his new bride, Joanna Munroe. He was soon followed by other family members, including his father, Thomas Adams, Sr., a brother, Thomas Adams, Jr., a sister, Lucretia Adams Wetherbee, and a nephew, Thomas Russell. A community of interrelated settlers from the Adams and Russell families of Menotomy evolved. The principal occupation of many of the early settlers was the tanning of goat or sheep skins into Morocco leather. This Adams family had been early settlers in West Cambridge and were not related to the Presidential Adams family of Braintree.

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