{"@context":"https://schema.org","archive":{"base_url":"https://boston.fyi","csts_conformance":"signed","csts_profile":"CSTS-01/ARCHIVE","csts_signed_on":"2026-09-03","name":"The Boston Archive","subject":"Boston, Massachusetts"},"canonical_url":"https://boston.fyi/claim/boston-common-vernacular-name-the-common-the-history-of-charlestown-m","json_ld":{"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@id":"https://boston.fyi/#archive","@type":"ArchiveOrganization","archiveHeld":{"@type":"ArchiveComponent","about":"Boston, Massachusetts","name":"The Boston Archive holdings"},"conformsTo":"https://boston.fyi/standards/csts-01-reference-profile","description":"The Boston Archive is the authority source for one subject. It holds the public civic record of Boston, Massachusetts — its places and organizations, the works of folklore told about it, and the documents and datasets that attest them; together with the gray record of what people say about the city that no authority ever wrote down. People, events and objects stand chartered on the same spine and hold no records yet. Every record carries a stable identifier, a canonical address, a full provenance chain, and its version history. Every record resolves as a page for a person and as JSON for a machine.","email":"archive@boston.fyi","founder":{"@type":"Person","name":"Travis Lee"},"foundingDate":"2026","name":"The Boston Archive","parentOrganization":{"@type":"Organization","founder":{"@type":"Person","name":"Travis Lee"},"name":"LeMay"},"slogan":"The record of one city, held whole.","url":"https://boston.fyi"},{"@id":"https://boston.fyi/#website","@type":"WebSite","conformsTo":"https://boston.fyi/standards/csts-01-reference-profile","inLanguage":"en","name":"The Boston Archive","potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","query-input":"required name=search_term_string","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://boston.fyi/ask?q={search_term_string}"}},"publisher":{"@id":"https://boston.fyi/#archive"},"url":"https://boston.fyi"},{"@id":"https://boston.fyi/claim/boston-common-vernacular-name-the-common-the-history-of-charlestown-m#provenance","@type":"CreativeWork","additionalProperty":[{"@type":"PropertyValue","name":"sourceCollection","value":"Internet Archive — Boston texts"},{"@type":"PropertyValue","name":"licenseName","value":"Public domain — published before 1929"},{"@type":"PropertyValue","name":"licenseOpenness","value":"public_domain"},{"@type":"PropertyValue","name":"retrievedAt","value":"2026-09-05T13:18:22.321288+00:00"},{"@type":"PropertyValue","name":"transformCount","value":3}],"creator":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Internet Archive — Boston texts"},"creditText":"Frothingham, Richard, 1812-1880","dateCreated":"2026-09-05T13:18:22.321288+00:00","isBasedOn":"https://boston.fyi/document/the-history-of-charlestown-massachusetts-2","license":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_in_the_United_States","name":"Provenance of a held record"},{"@id":"https://boston.fyi/claim/boston-common-vernacular-name-the-common-the-history-of-charlestown-m","@type":"Thing","additionalProperty":[{"@type":"PropertyValue","description":"This record is HELD: the archive retains it, marks it contested, and does not assert it. The assertion is deliberately absent from this graph — it is not emitted in any field, including the record's own name — because the quoted evidence raises a name and does not settle it, and a name emitted here would be quoted as settled. The record is neither published nor withdrawn: it resolves at its canonical address, its passage and its attestation are served there for a reader to weigh, it is excluded from the archive's composed layer and retrieval corpus, and it will be published or withdrawn on evidence the day a cleaner source settles the name.","name":"recordStatus","value":"held"},{"@type":"PropertyValue","description":"A held record is not a tombstone. Nothing here says the archive found the evidence wanting; it says the archive has not settled what the evidence carries.","name":"recordStatusIsNotWithdrawal","value":"true"}],"conformsTo":"https://boston.fyi/standards/csts-01-reference-profile","creativeWorkStatus":"Contested","dateCreated":"2026-09-05T13:18:31.603056+00:00","dateModified":"2026-09-13T20:23:21.986902+00:00","description":"Held as contested. The archive holds this passage and this attestation and does not assert the name they are filed under. The archive's test for a vernacular name asks whether the asserted name stands beside the verb that would be naming it — English puts a name against its naming construction, as in “Boston was called Shawmut” and, inverted, “it was ordered that Trimountain be called Boston”. In the passage quoted from Frothingham, Richard, 1812-1880, The history of Charlestown, Massachusetts the words “the Common” and a naming verb both appear and do not stand together, so the test cannot show that this passage gives “the Common” as a name of Boston Common. WHAT IS WRONG HERE IS THE EVIDENCE, NOT THE TEST. Read the passage: the naming verb in it is doing its other job — a meeting or a council being summoned, an island “so called” for its deer, another building “familiarly called” by its own name — and “the Common” sits in a different clause, brought in for some other purpose. Nothing here names Boston Common anything, and no sharpening of the archive's test would change that. THIS RECORD AWAITS A BETTER SOURCE: it is resolved the day the archive holds a passage that names Boston Common unambiguously, and it will be published or withdrawn on that evidence rather than on this. Meanwhile the disposition is neither of the two the archive had. Publishing would assert a place-name the evidence does not settle, which is a fabrication carrying a citation. Withdrawing would throw away real evidence for being untidy, which is the one thing an archive of the gray record must not do. So it is kept, marked contested, printed here whole with its passage and its attestation, and excluded from the archive's composed answers, from the corpus its retrieval surface draws on, and from every structured assertion it emits — so that no machine can quote it as settled while it is unsettled.","identifier":"urn:lemay:boston:claim:boston-common-vernacular-name-the-common-the-history-of-charlestown-m","inLanguage":"en","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://boston.fyi/#archive"},"name":"A held record of this archive — contested","provenance":{"@id":"https://boston.fyi/claim/boston-common-vernacular-name-the-common-the-history-of-charlestown-m#provenance"},"url":"https://boston.fyi/claim/boston-common-vernacular-name-the-common-the-history-of-charlestown-m","version":3},{"@id":"https://boston.fyi/claim/boston-common-vernacular-name-the-common-the-history-of-charlestown-m#breadcrumbs","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","item":"https://boston.fyi","name":"The Boston Archive","position":1},{"@type":"ListItem","item":"https://boston.fyi/claim","name":"Claims","position":2},{"@type":"ListItem","item":"https://boston.fyi/claim/boston-common-vernacular-name-the-common-the-history-of-charlestown-m","name":"A held record — contested","position":3}]}]},"json_url":"https://boston.fyi/claim/boston-common-vernacular-name-the-common-the-history-of-charlestown-m.json","questions":[{"anchor":"q-attestor","answer":"Frothingham, Richard, 1812-1880, The history of Charlestown, Massachusetts attests it, as scholar, since 1845. The archive records the attestation strength as attested — a count of independent attestations, never a truth value.","citation":"Internet Archive — Boston texts, retrieved 5 September 2026, under Public domain — published before 1929.","question":"Who attests that Boston Common is called the Common?"},{"anchor":"q-evidence","answer":"1 evidence row supports the claim. The passage carrying the attestation reads: “That the people without the Neck might vote, without danger, \" with their brethren,\" a town-meeting was called, June 9, at the house Jabez Whittemore, It was adjourned \" to the Common under the great tree.” A claim with no evidence row is served with that fact stated rather than served bare.","citation":"Frothingham, Richard, 1812-1880, The history of Charlestown, Massachusetts (1845)","question":"What evidence does the archive hold for this claim?"},{"anchor":"q-adjudication","answer":"No. This archive does not adjudicate. It records who attests an assertion, since when, and on what evidence, and it assigns no truth value and no rating. Sibling attestations of this same assertion share the group boston-common-vernacular_name and are served beside it. Variants of one assertion are served together, unranked and unresolved.","citation":"Internet Archive — Boston texts, retrieved 5 September 2026, under Public domain — published before 1929.","question":"Does the archive say this claim is true?"},{"anchor":"q-holding","answer":"The Boston Archive holds this record of Boston Common is called the Common from Internet Archive — Boston texts, retrieved 5 September 2026, under Public domain — published before 1929 (public domain). 3 recorded transforms stand between the retrieved bytes and this record. Attribution is due to Frothingham, Richard, 1812-1880.","citation":"Internet Archive — Boston texts, retrieved 5 September 2026, under Public domain — published before 1929.","question":"What does the archive hold for Boston Common is called the Common, and under what license?"}],"record":{"attestation_strength":"attested","attested_since":null,"attested_since_text":"1845","attested_until":null,"attestor_kind":"scholar","attestor_record_id":"e8106f3d-880d-4198-bb78-763a2e72fce0","attestor_text":"Frothingham, Richard, 1812-1880, The history of Charlestown, Massachusetts","canonical_path":"/claim/boston-common-vernacular-name-the-common-the-history-of-charlestown-m","claim_group":"boston-common-vernacular_name","created_at":"2026-09-05T13:18:31.603056Z","evidence":[{"citation":"Frothingham, Richard, 1812-1880, The history of Charlestown, Massachusetts (1845)","document_id":"e8106f3d-880d-4198-bb78-763a2e72fce0","document_path":"/document/the-history-of-charlestown-massachusetts-2","evidence_url":"https://boston.fyi/document/the-history-of-charlestown-massachusetts-2","id":123,"page_reference":null,"quoted_passage":"That the people without the Neck might vote, without danger, \" with their brethren,\" a town-meeting was called, June 9, at the house Jabez Whittemore, It was adjourned \" to the Common under the great tree."}],"held_reason":"Held as contested. The archive holds this passage and this attestation and does not assert the name they are filed under. The archive's test for a vernacular name asks whether the asserted name stands beside the verb that would be naming it — English puts a name against its naming construction, as in “Boston was called Shawmut” and, inverted, “it was ordered that Trimountain be called Boston”. In the passage quoted from Frothingham, Richard, 1812-1880, The history of Charlestown, Massachusetts the words “the Common” and a naming verb both appear and do not stand together, so the test cannot show that this passage gives “the Common” as a name of Boston Common. WHAT IS WRONG HERE IS THE EVIDENCE, NOT THE TEST. Read the passage: the naming verb in it is doing its other job — a meeting or a council being summoned, an island “so called” for its deer, another building “familiarly called” by its own name — and “the Common” sits in a different clause, brought in for some other purpose. Nothing here names Boston Common anything, and no sharpening of the archive's test would change that. THIS RECORD AWAITS A BETTER SOURCE: it is resolved the day the archive holds a passage that names Boston Common unambiguously, and it will be published or withdrawn on that evidence rather than on this. Meanwhile the disposition is neither of the two the archive had. Publishing would assert a place-name the evidence does not settle, which is a fabrication carrying a citation. Withdrawing would throw away real evidence for being untidy, which is the one thing an archive of the gray record must not do. So it is kept, marked contested, printed here whole with its passage and its attestation, and excluded from the archive's composed answers, from the corpus its retrieval surface draws on, and from every structured assertion it emits — so that no machine can quote it as settled while it is unsettled.","id":"2f2ca2ad-acc5-405e-9123-e7bedfe640da","kind":"claim","object_geojson":null,"object_point_geojson":null,"object_record_id":null,"object_text":"the Common","predicate":"vernacular_name","provenance":{"attribution":"Frothingham, Richard, 1812-1880","license_id":"public-domain-pre-1929","license_name":"Public domain — published before 1929","license_url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_in_the_United_States","openness":"public_domain","retrieved_at":"2026-09-05T13:18:22.321288Z","rights_statement":"NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT (Internet Archive item rights review), corroborated by the item's own publication date of 1845 — before 1929, and therefore in the public domain in the United States","rights_statement_url":"https://archive.org/metadata/historyofcharles45frot","source_id":"internet-archive-boston","source_identifier":"the-history-of-charlestown-massachusetts-2#the-common","source_name":"Internet Archive — Boston texts","source_url":"https://boston.fyi/document/the-history-of-charlestown-massachusetts-2","transforms":[{"description":"searched a text the archive itself holds, not a source it merely knows of","input_sha256":null,"operation":"read","output_sha256":null,"parameters":{},"performed_at":"2026-09-05T13:18:31.713773Z","seq":1,"tool":"archive-ingest 0.1.0"},{"description":"required ONE sentence to carry the name at a word boundary, a naming verb, and the subject — all three, or nothing","input_sha256":null,"operation":"test","output_sha256":null,"parameters":{},"performed_at":"2026-09-05T13:18:31.749178Z","seq":2,"tool":"archive-ingest 0.1.0"},{"description":"took that sentence unaltered as the evidence for this claim","input_sha256":null,"operation":"quote","output_sha256":null,"parameters":{},"performed_at":"2026-09-05T13:18:31.786593Z","seq":3,"tool":"archive-ingest 0.1.0"}]},"record_kind":"claim","slug":"boston-common-vernacular-name-the-common-the-history-of-charlestown-m","status":"held","subject_label":"Boston Common","subject_path":"/place/boston-common","subject_record_id":"33d4bbd4-0c7f-4313-9695-0b55f98dbc98","subject_uri":null,"summary":"That the people without the Neck might vote, without danger, \" with their brethren,\" a town-meeting was called, June 9, at the house Jabez Whittemore, It was adjourned \" to the Common under the great tree.","title":"Boston Common is called the Common","updated_at":"2026-09-13T20:23:21.986902Z","urn":"urn:lemay:boston:claim:boston-common-vernacular-name-the-common-the-history-of-charlestown-m","variant_note":"What Bostonians call it.","version":3,"withdrawn_reason":null},"related":[{"record":{"canonical_path":"/place/boston-common","id":"33d4bbd4-0c7f-4313-9695-0b55f98dbc98","kind":"entity","title":"Boston Common","urn":"urn:lemay:boston:entity:boston-common"},"relation":"about"},{"record":{"canonical_path":"/document/the-history-of-charlestown-massachusetts-2","id":"e8106f3d-880d-4198-bb78-763a2e72fce0","kind":"document","title":"The history of Charlestown, Massachusetts","urn":"urn:lemay:boston:document:the-history-of-charlestown-massachusetts-2"},"relation":"derived_from"}],"urn":"urn:lemay:boston:claim:boston-common-vernacular-name-the-common-the-history-of-charlestown-m","variants":[{"attestation_strength":"attested","attested_since":null,"attested_since_text":"1873","attested_until":null,"attestor_kind":"scholar","attestor_record_id":"f0b1074c-4bd2-4f21-840d-9e4406150d16","attestor_text":"Samuel Adams Drake, Old Landmarks and Historic Personages of Boston","canonical_path":"/claim/boston-common-vernacular-name-the-common-old-landmarks-and-historic-p","claim_group":"boston-common-vernacular_name","created_at":"2026-09-05T13:18:29.813846Z","evidence":[{"citation":"Samuel Adams Drake, Old Landmarks and Historic Personages of Boston (1873)","document_id":"f0b1074c-4bd2-4f21-840d-9e4406150d16","document_path":"/document/old-landmarks-and-historic-personages-of-boston","evidence_url":"https://boston.fyi/document/old-landmarks-and-historic-personages-of-boston","id":120,"page_reference":null,"quoted_passage":"Diudap relates that Copley's death was thought to have been hastened by the following circumstance : — \" Some American speculator who was acquainted with the superb situation of Copley's house in Boston, overlooking the beautiful green and parade called the Common, made an offer to the painter for the purchase, which, in comparison to the value of property m former days ia Boston, seemed enormous."}],"held_reason":null,"id":"c627d818-5702-4fc0-beb1-7211d4c7a90d","kind":"claim","object_geojson":null,"object_point_geojson":null,"object_record_id":null,"object_text":"the Common","predicate":"vernacular_name","provenance":{"attribution":"Samuel Adams Drake","license_id":"public-domain-pre-1929","license_name":"Public domain — published before 1929","license_url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_in_the_United_States","openness":"public_domain","retrieved_at":"2026-09-05T13:18:22.321288Z","rights_statement":"NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT (Internet Archive item rights review), corroborated by the item's own publication date of 1873 — before 1929, and therefore in the public domain in the United States","rights_statement_url":"https://archive.org/metadata/oldlandmarkshist00drakuoft","source_id":"internet-archive-boston","source_identifier":"old-landmarks-and-historic-personages-of-boston#the-common","source_name":"Internet Archive — Boston texts","source_url":"https://boston.fyi/document/old-landmarks-and-historic-personages-of-boston","transforms":[{"description":"searched a text the archive itself holds, not a source it merely knows of","input_sha256":null,"operation":"read","output_sha256":null,"parameters":{},"performed_at":"2026-09-05T13:18:29.929267Z","seq":1,"tool":"archive-ingest 0.1.0"},{"description":"required ONE sentence to carry the name at a word boundary, a naming verb, and the subject — all three, or nothing","input_sha256":null,"operation":"test","output_sha256":null,"parameters":{},"performed_at":"2026-09-05T13:18:29.967895Z","seq":2,"tool":"archive-ingest 0.1.0"},{"description":"took that sentence unaltered as the evidence for this claim","input_sha256":null,"operation":"quote","output_sha256":null,"parameters":{},"performed_at":"2026-09-05T13:18:30.003169Z","seq":3,"tool":"archive-ingest 0.1.0"}]},"slug":"boston-common-vernacular-name-the-common-old-landmarks-and-historic-p","status":"published","subject_label":"Boston Common","subject_path":"/place/boston-common","subject_record_id":"33d4bbd4-0c7f-4313-9695-0b55f98dbc98","subject_uri":null,"summary":"Diudap relates that Copley's death was thought to have been hastened by the following circumstance : — \" Some American speculator who was acquainted with the superb situation of Copley's house in Boston, overlooking the beautiful green and parade called the Common, made an offer to the painter for the purchase, which, in comparison to the value of property m former days ia Boston, seemed enormous.","title":"Boston Common is called the Common","updated_at":"2026-09-05T13:21:30.106740Z","urn":"urn:lemay:boston:claim:boston-common-vernacular-name-the-common-old-landmarks-and-historic-p","variant_note":"What Bostonians call it.","version":1,"withdrawn_reason":null}],"version_history":[{"change_note":"Prior state, before the house spelling was applied to what the archive composed here (records.held_reason). Each phrase corrected is one the ARCHIVE wrote, replaced whole; no word supplied by a source was touched.","changed_by":"archive-ingest 0.1.0","recorded_at":"2026-09-13T20:23:21.836639Z","version":3},{"change_note":"Prior state, before the record was held as contested. Held as contested. The archive holds this passage and this attestation and does not assert the name they are filed under. The archive's test for a vernacular name asks whether the asserted name stands beside the verb that would be naming it — English puts a name against its naming construction, as in “Boston was called Shawmut” and, inverted, “it was ordered that Trimountain be called Boston”. In the passage quoted from Frothingham, Richard, 1812-1880, The history of Charlestown, Massachusetts the words “the Common” and a naming verb both appear and do not stand together, so the test cannot show that this passage says Boston Common is called the Common. WHAT IS WRONG HERE IS THE EVIDENCE, NOT THE TEST. Read the passage: the naming verb in it is doing its other job — a meeting or a council being summoned, an island “so called” for its deer, another building “familiarly called” by its own name — and “the Common” sits in a different clause, brought in for some other purpose. Nothing here names Boston Common anything, and no sharpening of the archive's test would change that. THIS RECORD AWAITS A BETTER SOURCE: it is resolved the day the archive holds a passage that names Boston Common unambiguously, and it will be published or withdrawn on that evidence rather than on this. Meanwhile the disposition is neither of the two the archive had. Publishing would assert a place-name the evidence does not settle, which is a fabrication carrying a citation. Withdrawing would throw away real evidence for being untidy, which is the one thing an archive of the grey record must not do. So it is kept, marked contested, printed here whole with its passage and its attestation, and excluded from the archive's composed answers, from the corpus its retrieval surface draws on, and from every structured assertion it emits — so that no machine can quote it as settled while it is unsettled.","changed_by":"archive-ingest 0.1.0","recorded_at":"2026-09-05T18:25:44.936019Z","version":2},{"change_note":"attested from The history of Charlestown, Massachusetts at the-history-of-charlestown-massachusetts-2","changed_by":"archive-ingest 0.1.0","recorded_at":"2026-09-05T13:18:31.823187Z","version":1}]}