Burncoat Street
From Worcester Activist wiki
Also BURNCOAT PLAIN and BURNT SHIRT HILL
There are more legends about how Burncoat street took its name than there are about any other street in Worcester.
The street was named in 1851 for Burncoat Plain, the plateau at the top of Lincoln street which reaches north from Brittan square.
The plain is historically important. One of the early settlements was located there, commemorated by a marker on Lincoln street.
Burncoat Plain appears in many old records in the Antiquarian Society as Burnt Coat Plain.
One legend has it that an early settler burned his coat while burning rubbish, and so named the site.
Another legend is that Indians scalped an early settler and burned his coat to show his contempt for the white man.
An intriguing explanation was once given to the Worcester Society of Antiquity, now Worcester Historical Society, by Henry M. Wheeler.
The settler may have escaped from the Indians, he suggested, and fled to the northwest. But he again fell prey to the redskins who seized his breeches in Breeches Meadow.
The meadow was so named by John Hancock, who sold the plot to Benjamin Child on Oct. 6, 1783.
Our settler, now bereft of both coat and breeches, escaped once more and wound up on a Hubbardston hilltop. Alas and alack, there were Indians there, too.
According to Wheeler, the Indians must have removed the remaining garment, a shirt, and burned it.
For the hill in Hubbardston is called Burnt Shirt Hill!
The core of this article comes from A History of Your City Streets.
