Christmas Light Installation in Lincoln, MA

Lincoln was settled by Europeans in 1654, as a part of Concord. The majority of Lincoln was formed by splitting off a substantial piece of southeast Concord and incorporated as a separate town in 1754. Due to their “difficulties and inconveniences by reason of their distance from the places of Public Worship in their respective Towns,” local inhabitants petitioned the General Court to be set apart as a separate town. Because the new town was composed of parts “nipped” off from the adjacent towns of Concord, Weston (which itself had been part of Watertown) and Lexington (which itself had been part of Cambridge), it was sometimes referred to as “Niptown.”

Chambers Russell, a Representative in the Court in Boston, was influential in the town’s creation. In gratitude, Russell was asked to name the new town. He chose Lincoln, after his family home in Lincolnshire, England. His homestead in Lincoln was later known as the Codman House property, which was occupied after his death by his relatives, the Codman family.

Lincoln is reportedly the only town in America named after Lincoln, England (and not the Revolutionary War Major General, Benjamin Lincoln or President Abraham Lincoln), although Lincoln, New Hampshire was named for the 9th Earl of Lincoln, an English nobleman and incorporated in 1764, 45 years before Abraham Lincoln’s birth.