Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, a nexus of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Notably, Cambridge is home to two internationally prominent universities, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. According to a 2008 census estimate the city population was 105,594. It is the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, Worcester, and Springfield. Cambridge is one of the two county seats of Middlesex County (Lowell is the other). The site for what would become Cambridge was chosen in December 1630, because it was located safely up river from Boston Harbor, which made it easily defensible from attacks by enemy ships. The first houses were built in the spring of 1631. The settlement was initially referred to as "the newe towne". Official Massachusetts records show the name capitalized as Newe Towne by 1632. Located at the first convenient Charles River crossing west of Boston, Newe Towne was one of a number of towns (including Boston, Dorchester, Watertown, and Weymouth) founded by the 700 original Puritan colonists of the Massachusetts Bay Colony under governor John Winthrop. The original village site is in the heart of today's Harvard Square. The marketplace where farmers brought in crops from surrounding towns to sell survives today as the small park at the corner of John F. Kennedy (J.F.K.) and Winthrop Streets, then at the edge of a salt marsh, since filled.
