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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“ [110] discouraging extravagance, and promoting industry and frugality amongst us.” This step shows that our fathers were ready and willing to lighten their burdens by generous self-denials. If they seemed to take morality the natural way, they show the very spirit of self-sacrifice in their calculating shrewdness. The Committee make the following report:--

We, the subscribers, being chosen a Committee to consider of some method to discourage extravagance, idleness, vice, &c., and promote industry and frugality, do present the following resolves, passed in the House of Representatives, Feb. 26, 1768, for an example to this town.

In the House of Representatives, Feb. 26, 1768. Whereas, the happiness and well-being of civil communities depend upon industry, economy, and good morals; and this House taking into serious consideration the great decay of the trade of the Province, the scarcity of money, the heavy debt contracted in the late war still remains on the people, and the great difficulties by which they are by these means reduced, therefore--

Resolved, That this House will use their utmost endeavors, by example, in suppressing extravagancies, idleness, and vice, and promoting industry, economy, and good morals, in their respective towns. And, in order to prevent the unnecessary exportation of money, of which this Province has been, of late years, so much drained, it is further resolved that this House will, by all prudent means, endeavor to discountenance the use of foreign superfluities, and encourage the manufactures of this Province.

Thomas Seccomb. Benjamin Hall. Joshua Simonds. Thomas Brooks. Samuel Angier. John Bishop. Willis Hall.

Medford, April 1, 1768.

1770: Voted to raise £ 130 for town expenses, and to give eleven-pence on the pound as premium to the collector.

1773: Meeting for the annual choice of town-officers. “Voted that it be on the first Monday of March for the future.” The town-meeting was, from earliest days, a marked occasion by the boys. The school had the day as a vacation. The gallery of the meeting house was ornamented with urchins from six years old to half-men of fifteen, who had come there to learn, unconsciously, the science of republicanism. The front seats were all filled, and each boy was eagerly watching the progress of events below. If a new road, wharf, grist-mill, engine, schoolhouse, or candidate,--in