CHELSEA DECLARED A PART OF BOSTON

For one hundred and fifty years, Chelsea was a part of Boston, and called Winnisimmet, Rumney Marsh and Pullen Point. At the time it was not certain whether Chelsea belonged to Boston or Charlestown until the boundary lines between Boston and Charlestown were established. On May 14, 1634 the government ordered that the people of "that place" join themselves to either Boston or Charlestown or the court would decide for them. On September 3, 1634 it was ordered by the General Court that Winnisimmet should belong to Boston. On May 6, 1635 the boundary lines between Boston and Charlestown were established. The bounds between Boston and Charlestown, on the north-east side on the Mistick River, shall run from the marked tree upon the rocky hill above Rumney Marsh near the written tree north north west upon a straight line by a meridian compass up into the country, to the bounds of Lynn Village. Thus the line which now separates Chelsea and Everett and runs through Prattville was fixed. This explains why the line runs right over Mount Washington, dividing not only Chelsea and Everett but Suffolk and Middlesex Counties.

THE PAN HANDLE

The Pan Handle was a narrow strip of land with paralled sides, twenty-five hundred feet wide and four miles long. It extended from Charlestown to Lynn from the Pines River to Reading through what is now Malden, Melrose and Wakefield. The boundary line on the Charlestown side was determined by a committee appointed by the General Court in 1649 and that of Lynn shortly after. There is no known reason why Chelsea should have had such a peculiar outline. An old legend states that the Pan Handle was acquired by a mistake in surveying about 1649. This was due to a difference betwen surveyors for the Town of Charlestown and the party who laid out the Town of Lynn. While Chelsea was seeking the enlargement of her territory by the annexation of the adjacent islands, the people of the Pan Handle, whose relations were with that part of Lynn now Saugus, petitioned the town on December 30, 1745 to be set off as a parish with those of Lynn. The petition was referred to the March 1746 meeting when Thomas Pratt, Samuel Watts and John Brintnall were chosen to consider and report in May. Their report, presumably adverse, was accepted. The petitioners, not content with the refusal, petitioned the General Court on June 15, 1747. Chelsea chose Samuel Pratt, Nathaniel Oliver, Stephen Kent, Hugh Floyd and Samuel Tuttle as a committee to opose their petition. The town again refused their petition on March 7, 1748 and it was not until February 22, 1841 that the part of Chelsea known as the Pan Handle became a part of Saugus.