[10]
Mystic.
This, with the original possession, he called ‘The Ten Hills Farm,’ from the fact that it contained ten hillocks.
Probably the original farm contained about seven hundred and fiftyfive acres, or a goodly portion of what is now the city of Somerville and the city of Medford.
On the death of Governor Winthrop, March 26, 1649, the property fell to his son, John, Jr., then governor of Connecticut, by whose executors it was deeded in 1677 to Lieutenant-Colonel Lidgett, afterwards to his wife Elizabeth, she c ceding half to her son Charles in the same year.
The Lidgetts and their heirs, among whom were the wife and children of Lieutenant-Governor Usher, of New Hampshire, deeded a portion of it to Sir Isaac Royal in 1731.
This was about five hundred and four acres, and was in what is now the city of Medford, the remaining or Somerville portion, which I will hereafter describe, containing about two hundred and fifty-one acres, the Lidgett heirs sold to Sir Robert Temple.
Sir Robert Temple built a new house on the site of the original Winthrop house.
From old papers, and the material used in the construction of the ‘Manor House,’ as Temple called it, it is evident that the building was designed and executed in England, brought to this country, and set up.
The sills, which were eighteen inches square, and the handmade clapboards were of English oak; wrought-iron nails were used in its construction, and it was brick-lined throughout.
These facts alone point to its great age and origin.
It may be well to add here that Mr. George Jaques had at one time a plan of this estate dated 1637.
I will attempt to describe the house as I knew it, for it was my old home.
We will rendezvous at a point where Temple street, formerly Derby street, joins Mystic avenue, formerly called the Medford Turnpike, and going up the winding driveway, fringed on either side with the fragrant I aim of Gilead, we notice on our left the magnificent English awn, ornamented with marble statues mounted on granite pedestals.
We arrive at
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Somerville. Historical Society. , 1903.
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