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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[121] with either of them. At this early period, not a foot of land in Medford was owned by any inhabitant of Charlestown. We have elsewhere shown who were the several purchasers after the death of Mr. Cradock. There is, therefore, no just warrant for considering Medford as “a manor,” any more than Roxbury or Watertown. The early owners in these towns were few. Medford was never called “a manor” till 1846. In all the old histories it is called a “town,” in precisely the same way as Boston and Dorchester. If it was not a town after the passing of the “act” of the General Court, it is not a town now; for it has never been incorporated since. And if it was not a town then, Boston, Roxbury, Charlestown, Dorchester, and Watertown are not towns now; for they have never been incorporated since.

It was called a “plantation,” as other places were, because this was a common name adopted by the Company in London, and very naturally transferred here. The name expressed the actual condition and incipient history of each town. It was sometimes, in the books, called Mistick, after the name of its river. It was sometimes called “Mr. Cradock's farm,” because that gentleman had introduced farmers to cultivate its lands, had impaled a park, had erected houses, built ships, and carried on an extensive fishery. He owned so large a part of the tract, and was so rich and distinguished, that it would have been strange if his name had not attached to it. We have wondered why it has not always been called by his name.

The “celebrated Rev. James Noyes” became the pastor and teacher of the inhabitants of Medford in 1634. If having a Christian minister, resident and laboring in a town, completed the idea of township in those days, then Medford surely had every thing required in the definition.

Let us now look at the earliest records of Medford, and see what they prove. The first twenty-five or thirty pages of the first book of records are unfortunately lost, probably from carelessness about loose and decayed sheets. The next thirty pages are broken out of their places, and may be soon lost. We find the first records, which are preserved, noting down methodically, after the manner of those days, the usual doings of a legal town-meeting. No one can examine the old book, and not see that there was uniformity in the Town-clerk's records. It is most clear that the earliest records which are preserved are the regular continuation of the