Somerville fishermen were allowed to take fish on certain nights, and those of West Cambridge or Medford on the alternate nights, and it was the duty of the fish officers to see that this law was followed.
The northwesterly part of the town of Cambridge was made a separate precinct December 27, 1732, and was afterwards styled the Second Parish or more generally Menotomy.
The line of division was Menotomy river from Charlestown till it comes to Spy Pond brook. The Second Parish in Cambridge, together with certain inhabitants of Charlestown, were incorporated into a District June 9, 1762, and Cutter tells us that the District was generally called Menotomy, since it included all the territory in the two towns on the westerly side of Menotomy river.
Cambridge Second Parish was incorporated February 27, 1807, under the name of West Cambridge, to which was annexed, February 25, 1842, that part of Charlestown west of Menotomy river called ‘Line Field.’ The name was changed to Arlington, April 13, 1867.
Russell Cook, a life-long resident of the neighborhood next Menotomy river states that alwives were so plentiful in the river during the spawning season that ‘one could walk across on them.’!!
The great abundance of alewives taken from the river during the first two hundred years of settlement very naturally led to its being referred to as the Alewife brook, and so in the Commissioners' Records, we find under the survey of 1802, the bridge carrying Menotomy road, now Broadway, Somerville, over Menotomy river, referred to as the Alewife bridge. The stream was sometimes referred to as ‘the little river,’ and ‘Little Mystic’; as the Mystic river was called the Great river.
Little river has remained as the name of the outlet of Spy pond, which was sometimes called Menotomy pond, while Menotomy river was the outlet of Fresh pond.
