It is a noticeable fact that Messrs. Devens, Bartlett, Putnam, Hurd, and Gorham, Jr., all retired from office at the same time, and few of their successors, to judge from their terms of service, enjoyed a like degree of popular favor. Jonathan Teel was one of these; he stood for the outlying districts, and continued in office until May, 1805, five years. He died in Somerville June 7, 1828, aged seventy-four, and left worthy descendants to keep the family name in prominence. John Stone and Peter Tufts, Jr., next represent our part of the town, the former serving modestly for one year, the latter for six years. Seth Wyman, the last of the original board, retired in 1807, and was succeeded by Captain Daniel Reed, who for nine years represented the upper end of Charlestown.
Hon. Timothy Walker, Timothy Thompson, Captain Thomas Harris, Deacon David Goodwin, and John Kettell are names that stand for representative Charlestown families, but perhaps the most suggestive name on the list is that of Rev. Jedediah Morse, D. D. (1761-1826). This gentleman, a native of Connecticut, a graduate of Yale, and the leading minister of Charlestown from 1789 to 1820, was at this time delighting the educational world with his Geography, one of the first American text-books to gain an extensive and lasting circulation. For more than fifty years it was used in all parts of the country, but the later editions bore little resemblance to the feeble little volume which first saw the light in Charlestown. It served, where schoolbooks were scarce, not only as a geography, but also as a reading and spelling book. We of to-day are favored with a reminder of this pioneer in American education every time we pass his residence, which is marked with a tablet that proclaims the birthplace of his illustrious son, Samuel F. B. Morse, 1791.
With the election in 1811 and 1812, respectively, of Rev. William Collier, pastor of the First Baptist church of Charlestown, and Abram Rand Thompson, M. D., an old-time physician, whose eighty-five years of life came to an end in his native town
