being bricks. On the 19th of April 1775 the British columns returning from Concord were harassed by the farmers here, as in the other towns along the line of march. Several of the hills of Somerville (e.g. Prospect and Central Hills) were fortified during the siege of Boston. On Prospect Hill on the 18th of July 1775 Israel Putnam raised the "Appeal to Heaven" flag, and here also is said to have been raised on the 1st of January 1776 one of the earliest of the Continental standards, the Union Jack and Stripes. On Powder House Hill (originally Quarry Hill), in Nathan Tufts Park, there still stands an interesting old slate-stone powder house, a circular building, 30 ft. high, with a conical cap, originally built (about 1703) for a windmill, deeded in 1747 to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, used in 1756–1822 as a powder house, and now marked by a bronze tablet erected by the Massachusetts Society of the Sons of the Revolution; on the 1st of September 1774, General Gage seized 250 half-barrels of powder stored here in anticipation of the outbreak of hostilities; in 1775 the powder house became the magazine of the American forces besieging Boston, and at that time Nathanael Greene maintained his headquarters at the Samuel Tufts House, and Charles Lee had his headquarters at the Oliver Tufts House, in Somerville. After the battle of Saratoga some of Burgoyne's officers were housed here. The opening of the Middlesex Canal through the town in 1803 and of the Boston & Lowell railroad in 1835 gave an impetus to the town's growth. In 1834 an Ursuline Convent, built in 1827 on Mt Benedict, was sacked and destroyed by an anti-Catholic mob. In 1842 Somerville was separated from Charlestown and incorporated under its present name; it was chartered as a city in 1871.
See T. H. Hurd, History of Middlesex County (3 vols., Philadelphia, 1890); S. A. Drake, History of Middlesex County (2 vols., Boston, 1880); E. A. Samuels, Somerville Past and Present (Boston, 1897); Miss M. A. Haley, The Story of Somerville (Boston, 1903).
SOMERVILLE, a borough and the county-seat of Somerset county, New Jersey, U.S.A., in the north central part of the state, on the Raritan river, about 36 m. S.W. of New York City. Pop. (1890), 3861; (1900), 4843, of whom 560 were foreign-born; (1905), 4782; (1910), 5069. It is served by the Central Railroad of New Jersey and by inter-urban electric lines. Adjoining the borough on the west is the town of Raritan (pop. in 1910, 3672). Places of interest in Somerville are the Old Parsonage of the Dutch Reformed Church, built in 1750–1751 of brick imported from Holland by the Rev. Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen, the first pastor; the Wallace House, built in 1778 and occupied by General Washington as his headquarters during the following winter, when the main army was in camp at Bound Brook; and Duke's Park (partly in Raritan), the immense private estate (laid out as a park and open to the public) of James B. Duke, president of the American Tobacco Company. Somerville has a fine county court house (1909) of Alabama white marble. Among the borough's manufactures are stoves, ranges, soil pipe, brick, woollen goods and shirts. Settlements were made within the present limits of Somerville in the last quarter of the 17th century, and the village was at first called Raritan, all that part of the Raritan Valley from Bound Brook to the junction of the north and south branches of the river, and including the present Somerville and Raritan, then being popularly called "Raritans." The present name was adopted in 1801. Somerville became the county-seat in 1783, after the destruction of the court-house in what is now the borough of Millstone (in Hillsborough township, about 6 m. south of Somerville) on the 27th of October 1779 by British troops under Colonel John Graves Simcoe ; it was incorporated as a town in 1863, and as a borough in 1909.
SOMME, a department of northern France, formed in 1790 of a large part of the province of Picardy (comprising Vermandois, Santerre, Amiénois, Ponthieu, Vimeu, and Marquenterre) and a small portion of Artois. Pop. (1906), 532,567. Area 2423 sq. m. It is bounded on the N. by Pas-de-Calais, E. by Aisne, S. by Oise, and S.W. by Seine-Inférieure, and its sea-coast extends 28 m. along the English Channel. Two streams flowing into the Channel—the Authie on the north and the Bresle on the south-west—bound it in these directions. The surface consists of great rolling plains, generally well cultivated and very fertile. The highest point, about 700 ft. above the sea, lies in the south-west, not far from Aumale. From the mouth of the Authie to the Bay of the Somme the coast is lined with a belt of sand dunes about 2 m. broad, behind which is the Marquenterre, a tract of 50,000 acres reclaimed from the sea by means of dykes and traversed by drainage canals. The Bay of the Somme, obstructed by dangerous sandbanks, contains the three fishing ports of Crotoy, St Valery, which is also the chief commercial port, and Le Hourdel. Next come the shingle banks, behind which the low fields of Cayeux (25,000 acres) have been reclaimed; and then at the hamlet of Ault commence the chalk cliffs, which continue onwards into Normandy.
The river Somme rises to the N.N.E. of St Quentin in the department of Aisne, where it has a course of about 25 m.; it traverses the department of Somme from the south-east to the north-west for a distance of about 125 m., through a marshy valley abounding in peat. Commanded by Ham, Péronne, Amiens and Abbeville, this valley forms a northern line of defence for Paris. Apart from the water-power it supplies, the Somme is of great commercial value, being accompanied by a canal all the way from its source wherever it is not itself navigable. From Abbeville to St Valery its lower course forms a maritime canal 165 ft. wide, 12 ft. deep, and 8 to 9 m. long, capable of bearing at high tide vessels of 300 tons burden. From St Valery to the open sea the current hollows out a very variable bed accessible at certain tides for vessels of 500 tons. The most important affluents of the Somme—the Ancre from the north-east by way of Albert and Corbie, the Avre from the south-east by Roye, and the Selle from the south by Conty—join the main streams at Amiens. The Authie and the Bresle are respectively 63 and 45 m. long. The latter ends in a maritime canal about 2 m. long between Eu and Tréport.
The mean temperature is lower than that of Paris (49° F. at Abbeville). The mean annual rainfall is 33 in. at Abbeville. The department, especially in the north-east, is one of the best cultivated in France. Beetroot for sugar is the staple crop of the Péronne arrondissement; cereals, chiefly wheat, fodder and mangel-wurzels, oil plants, poppy, colza, flax, hemp and potatoes are grown throughout the department, the latter more largely on the seaboard. Stock-raising of all kinds is successfully carried on. No wine is grown, the principal drinks being beer and cider. Market gardening is of great importance round Amiens. Peat-cutting is actively carried on, the best qualities and the deepest workings being in the valley of the Somme, between Amiens and Abbeville. Phosphate of lime is also an important mineral product. The manufacture of a great variety of textile goods, especially velvet (Amiens), of beet sugar and alcohol, and of locks, safes and the like (in the Vimeu), are characteristic industries of the department, which also carries on saw-milling, flour-milling, brewing, dyeing, ironfounding and forging, printing and the manufacture of paper, chemical products, machines and ironmongery, hosiery (in the Santerre), &c. Cereals, horses of the Boulogne or Norman breed, cattle, hemp and linen, and the manufactured goods are the exports of the department. St Valery (pop. 3389) exports vegetables and farm-products (to England), and shingle for the manufacture of earthenware. Besides the raw materials for the manufacturing industries, wines and timber, the latter largely imported at St Valery, dyestuffs and coal are imported.
The department is served principally by the Northern railway, and its canals and rivers provide 140 m. of navigable waterway. Administratively the department comprises 5 arrondissements (those of Amiens, the capital, Abbeville, Doullens, Montdidier and Péronne), 41 cantons and 836 communes. The department belongs to the académie (educational circumscription) of Lille, and constitutes the diocese of Amiens, which city is also the seat of a court of appeal and the headquarters of the region of the II. army corps, wherein the department is included.
The most noteworthy places are Amiens (the capital), Abbeville, Montdidier, Péronne, Doullens, St Riquier, Crécy and Ham, which are treated under those headings. The following places may also be mentioned: Albert (pop. 6656), after Amiens and Abbeville the most populous town in the department and a centre for machine construction; Villers-Bretonneux (pop. 4447), a centre of hosiery manufacture; Corbie, once celebrated for its Benedictine abbey (founded in the 7th century) the church of which (16th–18th century) is still to be seen; L'Étoile, with the well-preserved remains of a Roman camp; Folleville, which has a church (15th century) containing the fine Renaissance tomb of Raoul de Lannoy; Picquigny, with
