The early Puritan settlers of Cambridge used the small settlement which is now called Lexington as a supplier of hay and wood. Unlike towns that had a river like Concord or Cambridge, Cambridge Farms could not become a port or market town, but it was eventually incorporated as Lexington in 1713. Main Street, later Massachusetts Avenue, witnessed cattle and poultry drives by New Hampshire farmers bound for Porter Square or Boston.
Trees soon became an area of conflict between the ambitious colonists and their English Mother Country. England expected to control New England's timber sales, and one British surveyor-general used a cane to beat a colonial timber merchant who dared to cut down and sell pine trees. Colonists used the symbol of the pine tree to represent their land's wealth on coins, and Revolutionary Patriots popularized the Liberty Tree to draw plain folks, artisans, women, and the lower classes into their movement of resistance against British tyranny. [1]
[1] Rutkow, American Canopy, pp. 30-35.