HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF MEDFORD, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, FROM ITS FIRST SETTLEMENT, IN 1630, TO THE PRESENT TIME, 1855.
Charles Brooks, Ed.

In 1754, there were in Medford twenty-seven male and seven female slaves, and fifteen free blacks; total, forty-nine. In 1764, there were forty-nine free blacks. When the law freed all the slaves, many in Medford chose to remain with their masters; and they were faithful unto death.

List of slaves, and their owners' names.

We are indebted to a friend for the following: “It may be interesting here to mention a circumstance illustrative of the general feeling of the town in those days with regard to slavery. In the spring of 1798 or ‘99, a foreigner named Andriesse, originally from Holland, who had served many years at the Cape of Good Hope and in Batavia as a commodore in the Dutch navy, moved into the town from Boston, where he had lost, it was said, by unlucky speculations and the tricks of swindlers, a large part of the property which he had brought to this country from the East Indies. His family consisted of a wife and four children, with from fifteen to twenty Malay slaves. He lived only a month or two after his arrival in the town; and his widow, immediately ”