Notes here and there.
‘Gather up the fragments that nothing be lost.’
The Hathaway school.
The following list of pupils during the summer of 1850 is contributed by Mrs. Susan B. (Noyes) Thompson of Medford. Mr. A. K. Hathaway kept a boarding school at his home on Ashland street, corner of Chestnut street. The school room was in the rear, facing Chestnut street, and is now changed into a dwelling.Miss Annette Hale, Mr. Hathaway's sister-in-law, was his assistant.
The Mystic house.
This summer an old landmark has been removed from its old foundations and now stands in Tufts Square, to be remodeled for mercantile and other purposes. It is the old Mystic House, famous for its hospitality in the palmy days of the trotting park. The long rows of stables were removed last year. The track has not yet been disturbed and occasionally one sees a trotter taking [p. 66] his exercise there, but the ‘Park’ is a thing of the past, and the names of the streets which are being built across it will alone recall the days when Wright, Billings, Willis and Alexander controlled the place and Bonner's horses under the hands of jockeys like Golden, Doble, Trout and others came under the wire amid the plaudits of thousands.The Mystic House occupied the site of the ‘tenement’ mentioned in early deeds of Ten Hill Farm. Before 1850 the land upon which it stood was the Nathan Adams Farm.
From the Selectmen's records.
Some of us who groan at the price of fuel in 1906 may take courage and cease to bemoan the ‘good old days of yore,’ as we read the following item from the Medford Selectmen's records:—‘Voted to pass Timothy Dexter's acct for 14 cords of hard wood & 6 cords walnut dld Dr. Osgood the year past agreeable to vote of the Town past 13 May 1812 at $6.50, $130.00.’
The bill for the same quantity in 1809 was $114.00.
Opposite Blanchard's Hotel on Main street, just south of the land taken in recent years by the Metropolitan Park Commission, was a town well, used principally for watering cattle. The trough was at the edge of the sidewalk.
July 1, 1811, Voted to have a new pump placed in the Town's well on the south side of the river near the house of Timothy Symmes, and a good trough fixed to the same.
August 5, 1811, Voted to pass Samuel Townsend's acct. for a pump in the well opposite the Hotel. $11.71.
A permit was granted to Jonathan Porter to build a powder house, May 12, 1806. The structure is standing [p. 67] on the premises of Charles M. Green, M. D., Powder House Road. It is of brick, with small apertures for air, and a heavy wooden door.
Standing Committee of the Brooks Phalanx, January 1st, 1844: Eben Waterman, David Carlton, B. H. Samson, W. B. Thomas, George Holmes.