Boston Common is a 50-acre public park in downtown Boston, Massachusetts. William Blaxton, who arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1623, owned the land before inviting Isaac Johnson and his Charlestown settlers to live on his land in 1630. Johnson named the nearby settlement Boston after his home in Lincolnshire before he died less than three weeks arriving on Blaxton's land. Blaxton sold all but six of his 50 acres back to John Winthrop in 1633, having grown tired of his Puritan neighbors, and the 44 acres became the town commons of Boston. Many families used the Common as a cow pasture during the 1640s, but overgrazing led to the collapse of the Common as pastureland. Cows would finally be banned in 1830. Boston Common was used as the town execution grounds until 1817, and a gallows replaced a large oak in 1769. A group of Quakers known as the "Boston Martyrs" was executed at the Common in 1660, Mary Dyer the most famous among them. Evangelists like George Whitefield used the Common as a public speaking grounds, and the Common was also the site of the 1713 Boston Bread Riot and a British Army encampment before the Battles of Lexington and Concord. The Common was enclosed by an iron fence in 1836, marking its transition into a public park. The Charles Street side of the Common was used as an unofficial dumping ground until 1895, when the Tremont Street subway was excavated. The Common was later the site of a 100,000-strong anti-Vietnam War protest on 15 October 1969. Boston Common was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972 and was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1987.