The executive committee secured the services of Unitarian, Universalist, Baptist and Methodist preachers for about two months, and at last secured the services of Rev. William Edwards Huntington, who supplied the pulpit till the end of the year, viz., April, 1872. Mr. Huntington was a young man of rare gifts, just finishing his studies in the Theological School of Boston University, of which he is now the able and honored president.
During these months circumstances clearly indicated that it was time for some church organization to enter and occupy this field. The attendance on Sundays at the hall had decreased materially, till in March scarcely more than twenty-five attended.
One afternoon early in August Rev. N. T. Whitaker called upon some of his people in the west end, also came to the house where the writer was at work, and introduced himself as the Methodist pastor, and before leaving had secured a promise of attendance upon the weekly class meeting he proposed to establish on Tuesday evenings. He also gave a cordial invitation to attend the afternoon preaching at Medford when convenient to do so, though none realized more than he the effort it required.
On a Tuesday evening in October (187 I), Mr. Whitaker organized a class meeting, according to the usage of the church, at the home of Brother N. D. Ripley on Lincoln street. The Medford parsonage was then at the corner of Salem and Park streets and almost the nearest house to the Malden line, while the Ripley home was the last next Arlington, and the good man walked both ways.
Of the members then present only the writer survives. Youth and inexperience were his then, but in his few years of church membership he had learned to cherish the tenets and usage of the church of his parents and around which his earliest memories were entwined, and this gathering of others of like faith was helpful.
Others came on succeeding weeks, and on the evening of March 18, 1872, there gathered a company of men
