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

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[81] souled mulatto man, who lived on the Woburn Road, in West Medford, opposite where the town schoolhouse once stood. Hannah was kind-hearted, a faithful friend, a sharp enemy, a judge of herbs, a weaver of baskets, and a lover of rum. Toney was once well off; and on Thanksgiving Day, when he was to give a rich dinner to a dozen of his colored friends, his house took fire, and was wholly consumed. They, of us, who remember the old liberated slaves, remember how much they suffered from winter's coldness. The black man's skin is made to bear the heat, the white man's to bear the cold; and both races flourish best by regarding the law. “Deb Saco” was another specimen whom many remember, and who died about twelve years ago. “Sulk and Lucy” were the last couple in West Medford of the liberated slaves. They lived near the road leading to West Cambridge, in a small building, whose roof was turf, and which obtained the title of “Salt box.” We know that all these persons were tenderly cared for by their neighbors, and their last days made comfortable and happy.

We fear that the modern scheme of gathering all the Indians within the limits of one free state, and that state to be wholly theirs, with all the powers and privileges of other states, will not succeed. It will be found extremely difficult to persuade all the chiefs to abdicate and destroy their crowns; to annihilate the deadly hostilities of ancient tribes; to change the established habits of hunting, and substitute hard labor, and to reconcile the opposing religious beliefs.

This noble and peculiar people seemed doomed to retreat, before the resistless march of the Anglo-Saxon race, till they reach the shores of the Pacific; and we can imagine the last Indian, the sole survivor on this western continent, standing on a lofty crag, which overhangs the sea, and there calling to mind the sad and eventful histories of his wasted countrymen. He thinks of the time when the wigwams of his brethren were scattered over the entire region, from the spot where he stands to the borders of the Atlantic coast, and each wigwam filled with a happy and prosperous family. He thinks of their ancestral rights and their traditional glories, their feats in the hunt and their valor in the fight, their calumet of peace and their dance of victory. He remembers the deeds of his father and the love of his mother, the sweet devotion of his wife, and the noble promise of his children; and he sees now that all these have vanished. He sees that