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

The other old brick house, built probably about the same time and by the same persons, was not large. It stood about five hundred feet north of Ship Street, and about five hundred feet west of Park Street, opposite Mr. Magoun's ship-yard, and was taken down many years ago by that gentleman.

The third house was built by Major Jonathan Wade, who died 1689. It was sometimes called, like the other two, a “Fort,” and is yet standing in good repair, and used as a comfortable residence. It is seen from the main street as we look up the “Governor's Lane.” Its walls are very thick, and it is ornamented with what have been called “port-holes.” When first built, it was only half its present size: the addition was made by Benjamin Hall, Esq., about seventy-five years ago.

That Medford is rich in monuments of its early history is a gratifying fact, saddened only by one circumstance, which is, that we have lost our first records. We must therefore rely on our early records which are not written with ink. From Pine Hill, south-westerly, to Purchase Street, there are scattered remains of houses, now almost lost in the forest, which prove that there were living in this region many families. The cellars are, in some places, so near together as to show quite a social neighborhood. When some of the “Scotch Irish,” who settled Londonderry, N. H., in 1719, became dissatisfied with that place, they came into this quarter; and many of them settled in Medford. They built some of the houses, whose cellars yet remain among us, and introduced the foot spinning-wheel and the culture of potatoes. They were as scrupulous about bounds and limits in these wilds as they had been in Scotland; hence the remarkable stone walls which still stand to testify to their industry. They were Scotch Presbyterians in religion; and the Rev. Mr. Morehead, of Boston, frequently came to preach to them. Some of them migrated to the District of Maine; and there was recently living a General Jacob Auld, of that district, who was born about a mile north-east of Medford meeting-house, whose father was Irish, and left Londonderry about 1730. These people kept up many of their European customs; and tradition says, that once, when a young child died among them, they held a genuine “Irish wake;” a consequence