From the American Antiquarian Society, Catalog Record #486497
This circa 1744 map of Boston shows the town as it looked in the time that Isaiah Thomas was a young boy. Boston was settled on a narrow peninsula that was connected to the mainland by a narrow strip of land called the Boston Neck or the Roxbury Neck. In the nineteenth century this area was gradually filled in to form the Back Bay area of the city. When this map was created, Boston had a population of over 16,000 people.