Wellington retains its name, but how many in Medford know Williamsburg? Twenty houses on either side of Myrtle street, built in 1854, were so called from the name of the builder, who built all to one plan on alternate lots, with none fronting another. Small houses that contained no modern improvements they were, but lured people from the crowded city. Among the number was the French naturalist, Louis Trouvellot, whose gypsy moths have become so well but unfavorably known.
Mr. Brooks said,‘Mr. John Bishop has done the same on the deep forest south of Pine Hill,’ and that no houses were built on this tract he called ‘Bellevue.’ Mr. Brooks described Bellevue as an ‘impenetrable forest’—‘where as children we were forbidden to venture for fear of being lost,’ and ventured a prophecy of its future that was not realized, as few houses have ever been built there.
Two ice ponds were in later years constructed, and the place was for a time a rifle range.
Mr. Swan attached this comment (over date December I, 1860):—
‘Mr. John Bishop was very nearly ruined by “piercing the woods with streets to allow us to ride at ease.” The outlay was pretty much a total loss, as he could not sell the land for building lots after the streets were made; they were too far out of town.’But by the reservation of the Middlesex Fells greater improvements have been made by the Park Commission than either Mr. Brooks or Mr. Swan dreamed of.
Sagamore Vale, Mr. Bishop's ‘lands east of the Fountain House,’ is now a thickly populated section. His ‘similar show of diagrams’ was on July 13, 1853; but who now knows the locality by that name?
According to a newspaper advertisement, to which we find attached in writing this drastic comment, ‘An absolutely inflated description by the auctioneer,’ four hundred building lots and the Bishop mansion lay between
