At Medford's old civic Center.
by Eliza M. Gill.
Old Medford has passed away and a new one stands in her place. We see the change in many ways. Once a town with a small unmixed population, now a city with rapidly increasing numbers of many peoples. The quiet that prevailed after the decline of ship building has given way to the rush and scream of the electrics and auto machines, and the dignified demeanor of former citizens is replaced by the bustling nervous energy fostered by modern conditions. Houses of historic association on the old highways have been demolished and hundreds of homes for our new citizens are being built in places formerly never dreamed of as residential districts.Even the physical aspect of the place has become altered. The river above Cradock bridge has been changed and some of the marshes are disappearing. Spot pond has a different look, and the forests around it, where were once wood-cutters' paths, are now the Middlesex Fells pierced by roads for pleasure driving. Hills have been levelled and great boulevards laid out on all sides that offer wonderfully fine views at all seasons, by day or night. In this direction we can honestly confess we see the march of improvement. [p. 12]
For those who have known former generations the following facts are presented concerning a few houses and those who lived in them.
Much about the Watson house, that was taken down a number of years ago, has appeared in the Register, still there are a few items we can give our readers before we write finis to the story of this old house.
Although it was of unpretentious appearance, it had an air of solidity, security and comfort—very desirable qualities in a place for home making and living—and it never seemed to lack tenants. We seldom find one tenant occupying the whole house, the east and west half were generally let to different families.
It was pre-eminent among the old houses of Medford for the varied and interesting personality of those who lived there.
Perhaps all will remember that the most distinguished person who made it his roof-tree was John Brooks, and that he entertained Washington there. When he left, Joseph Barrel, Jr., and his wife made their home for several years in the east part, the part the former had occupied.
The name Barrel immediately attracts our attention, and we wonder why a scion of that well-known family should have made this unpretentious house his dwelling place. The records of the following marriages in a way afford an answer as to why he was drawn thither, and we have elsewhere concluded that Medford in a much earlier time had many attractions to draw here those who were looking for a home.
Timothy Fitch, merchant of Nantucket and Boston, and one-time owner of the Watson house, and Abigail Donnahew of Medford were married by the Rev. Ebenezer Turell, August 19, 1746. There were several daughters by this marriage, and Hannah married Joseph Barrel of Boston, November 26, 1771.
John Brown Fitch of Boston and Hepziah Hall of Medford were married by Rev. David Osgood, January [p. 13] 27, 1785. In this marriage triangle of the Barrel, Fitch and Hall families we understand why Joseph Barrel, Jr., became a resident of our town. He married Electa Bingham of Boston, also given as of Stockbridge, the Rev. S. West performing the ceremony July 5, 1795. (Register, Vol. XIX, p. II.)
Hannah Barrel, sister of Joseph, Jr., was married by the Rev. Jedediah Morse of Charlestown, February 8, 1798, to Benjamin Joy, a well-known physician of Boston.
The senior Barrel was a well-known wealthy Boston merchant who had a fine house and an elegant garden on Summer street, when it was a residential section of the city, where there were many fine places. The estate was well laid out, the garden embellished with fish ponds, and when, toward the end of the eighteenth century, he sold this place and moved to Cobble Hill, Charlestown (Somerville was not set apart from Charlestown till 1842), he built for himself a fine brick mansion, a creation of Bulfinch, and duplicated in some ways the garden of the Summer street residence.
The glass in the house is said to have been from the first works erected in Boston. This beautiful place was called Poplar Grove. Benjamin Joy sold the estate in 1816 to the Massachusetts General Hospital for the Mc-Lean Asylum for the Insane. The mansion was used as quarters for the officers of the institution, and additions were built each side of the central portion. All traces of the estate and even the hill no longer exist. For an interesting item concerning the Barrel family, and one concerning Medford, our readers are referred to Francis Hill Bigelow's ‘Historic Silver of the Colonies and Its Makers,’ pp. 302, 303, 363.
After this digression, which we trust is pardonable, believing it to be correlative and not irrelevant to this sketch, we are back in Medford in the old Watson house again and find John Usher of our town preceding Barrell, Jr., as a tenant.
The old meeting-house had seen under its shadow, [p. 14] living in this house, a Revolutionary soldier who was a friend of Washington, and as a counter-balance, also was a Loyalist, who as one, was an enemy of Washington, living here at an earlier date, and now, about 1800, was to be neighbor to another of the latter class. （Regis-Ter, Vol. XV, p. 97). Our incomparable chronicler1 noted that Mr. Green took the whole house and for a while let the west part to the Wyley family from Georgia. Mrs. Green removed to Boston at the death of her husband, 1809, and the Misses Abby and Mary Hall, sisters of Nathaniel Hall, who lived in the Secomb house, rented the east part. A little later these ladies exchanged their quarters with the Swans, who about this time became owners of the property.
About 1815 the west half was occupied by the wife of Captain Trevet of the revenue service. She was a daughter of Major Warner of Medford. A Mr. Warner lived on the Bishop lot where later the first Thatcher Magoun erected the building now the home of the Public Library. Were these Warners identical?
Two years later Mrs. Green returned to the west half, remaining until 1822, when, with the Gilchrist family, she moved to Charlestown, N. H.
This part then became the home of widowed sisters from Georgia, Mrs. Howard and Mrs. Wallace, who were cousins of Mrs. William R. Gray of Boston. (Register, Vol. XXI, p. 28.)
The old meeting-house next had for its neighbor one whose religious tenets were quite unlike those of the people who worshipped within its walls. A French Canadian, a music teacher whose name was Noreau, had a child born to whom the name was given of Jean Baptiste Napoleon Noreau. What a thrill must have run through the frame of the Puritan building when it became aware that the child had been christened by a Roman Catholic priest! [p. 15]
In 1825 Abner Bartlett and his family were the next tenants, and lived here many years.
The history of this family is too well known for us to make further mention of it, and we only wish to add that Sarah Bartlett, widow of Abner, during the period of our Civil War, knit for the soldier boys three hundred and seven pairs of woolen socks, a feat not surpassed by the busy knitters of recent days. Mrs. Bartlett was then several years beyond four score.
