Legends die hard. Most of Cambridge gathers this weekend to celebrate its 350th birthday, but the party actually should have been held last year. Thomas Graves built the first house here in 1629, on a hill in what is now East Cambridge.

Cambridge was born with a silver spoon in its mouth--before the first foundation was dug, its planners had agreed it would serve well as the capital of this infant colony. Deputy Gov. Thomas Dudley and Gov. John Winthrop led the first expedition, described by historian Thomas Wentworth Higginson at the 250th anniversary as a "semi-military picnic." They picked this bend in the Charles for the governmental seat because it seemed far enough inland to be safe from naval attack, but could be easily defended against overland aggression. And they agreed, along with about ten other officers of the colony, that they would build homes there and bring the government with them from Boston.

Cambridge's luck soured--the colonists befriended the Indians, reducing the need for strong fortifications. And Winthrop apparently grew tired of the new town--one historian reports that when two walls of his home, caulked with lime instead of mud, washed out in an October rainstorm, he was unwilling to rebuild, and fled to his Boston residence.

But some of the original settlers, including Dudley, remained, and operated a local government--the first town records include a stern warning to citizens to keep their property in "good and sufficient repair." It also lists Cambridge's first criminals--Knox, of Watertowne, who apparently cut lumber in the town, and Goodman Kinsbury, also of Watertowne, for "encroaching the bounds of this town."

The Watertowne crime wave under control, the government decided in 1635 to run a ferry from the foot of Boylston St. to Boston. A year later, an event of even greater significance to the city's future--the general court decided to build a college in Massachusetts, and as a site chose Cambridge, named for the English college town on a river. With the grant of 2 2/3 acres from the city, Harvard opened a small school to educate the clergy.

The next 100 years of Cambridge history is marked by slow, steady growth. All the land to the east of Quincy and Bow streets, extending through what is now Cambridgeport, was known as The Neck--acres upon acres of pastures, woodlands and marsh used only for farming. And in the other direction, Cambridge was an assortment of far-flung towns. At its greatest length, in 1651, the town was in Higginson's words, "long and thin, as becomes an overgrown youth, measuring 18 miles in length and only a mile in width. It is shaped like a pair of compasses, one leg extending through Arlington, Lexington, Bedford and Billerica," while the other, shorter leg bisected Brighton and Newton. The present Cambridge formed only the head of the compass.

Cambridge shrunk slowly through the century, as townsmen asked for the right to open their own churches, instead of making long trips each Sunday. Newton pulled away in 1662, and Lexington opened its own parish in 1696, but Brighton remained a part of Cambridge until 1779. But as it shrunk in size, Cambridge grew in stature, an increasingly wealthy city that also served as the intellectual capital of the 13 colonies.

The Revolutionary War shook Cambridge out of its tranquillity. When the British troops left Boston for Lexington and Concord, they came by way of Cambridge, landing on Lechmere Point the night of April 18th, 1775. Silently they crept over the causeway (now. Gore St.). Their movement would have gone unnoticed save for one British regular who took sick and found his way to a house near the point. From there, the alarm was given, explaining why the Cambridge militia were among the first aroused.

The Redcoats had to come through Cambridge on their way home as well, except now they ran instead of marching, terrified by the guerilla tactics of the thousands of Americans who kept on their heels. Three Cambridge men were killed in one engagement on the retreat--Moses Richardson, William Marcy and John Hicks were buried in a common grave in the churchyard, a funeral that, as one chronicler put it, "brought the war to our doors."

With the British trapped in Boston, Cambridge became the cork on the bottle. Thousands of colonials poured into the town, sending Harvard to Concord so the College buildings could be used as barracks. But most of the soldiers slept in tents, a sight Emerson described: "Who would have thought, 12 months past, that all Cambridge would be covered with American camps and cut up into forts and entrenchments?... It is very diverting to walk among the camps. They are as different in forms as the owners are in their dress, every tent a portraiture of the temper and tastes of the persons who encamp in it."

George Washington took command soon after the initial fighting, and began fortifying the community. The British kept a steady, but ineffectual, fire trained at the colonials as they dug trenches and built walls. The Americans, too short of ammunition to return the fire, instead chased after errant musket balls to recycle them.

The British left Boston in 1776, and the Revolution shifted to other sections of the newly-united nation. But in October of 1777, Cambridge again played a part, this time less glamorous--after Gen. Burgoyne and 5700 men surrendered at Saratoga, the colonial leaders decided to deport them. While they were waiting for ships home, the men were quartered in Cambridge. Officers lodged with civilians, to the distinct displeasure of some crowded patriots. As the war drew to a close, Massachusetts leaders gathered in Cambridge to draw up the Bay State's constitution, a document that later served as a model for the United States Constitution.

Life returned to peace and profitability in the next few decades, as speculators and developers began to lay the base for the 19th century expansion that should turn Cambridge from a town into a city of the first rank. Andrew Craigie created East Cambridge out of almost nothing, purchasing acres of land through straw buyers on Lechmere Point. The success of his development was assured when he persuaded the county officials, over the loud protests of the "Old Cantabrigians," to move the county buildings to their present location, well out in East Cambridge. And the Neck was slowly being transformed into the Port--though the commercial potential of a big shipping port was never realized, Cambridgeport grew fast enough that Congress made it an official port of entry in January, 1805. The neighborhood's first schoolhouse went up in 1802, a fire company was formed in 1803. By 1806, Cambridgeport had 1000 residents.

But that was only the beginning. From 2,323 persons in 1810, the city grew to 8,409 in 1840. And then, suddenly, population growth mushroomed. A 48-per-cent increase in just five years, to 12,490 in 1845, was only the start; by 1900, the total had doubled three times, and 100,000 lived in Cambridge.

The cause of the boom was not more babies; it was more immigrants. S.B. Sutton reports that the voting list in 1822 contained 481 names, of which only four sounded even "vaguely foreign." Even as late as 1848, only 25 names sounded foreign, but by 1855 there were 1420 Irish and 587 Scots here. The Irish had begun settling in 1830, and after the potato famine their ranks swelled. By 1880, there were at least 15,000 first-generation immigrants, including 8366 from Ireland, 3981 from Canada and the West Indies, 1396 from England, 636 from Germany, 169 from Sweden and 36 from Italy.