previous next
[192] ambitious young men of Medford joined heartily to make it the banner corps of the county.

In the war of 1812, this company was called to guard the powder-house, and did duty there for some weeks.

The zeal for military display declined after 1814, and there was only an annual training for keeping up the show of warlike preparation.

March 7, 1831: One hundred knapsacks were ordered by the town for the use of the militia.

Brooks Phalanx.

Sept. 22, 1841: Fifty-two citizens of Medford petitioned the Governor for a charter to establish a company of volunteer militia, to be attached to the fifth regiment of infantry, in the first brigade and third division of Massachusetts militia. This petition was granted; and the company adopted the name of Brooks Phalanx, in honor of his late Excellency Governor Brooks.

Oct. 11, 1841: The following officers were chosen:--

Samuel BlanchardCaptain.
H. N. Peck1st Lieutenant.
Joseph W. Mitchell2d Lieutenant.
James B. Gregg3d Lieutenant.

A Constitution and By-laws having been adopted, the first parade was on the 22d of August, and seldom has any company appeared better.

Aug. 21, 1843: The ladies of Medford presented the Phalanx with a beautiful standard. The ceremony took place before the meeting-house of the first parish, and was worthy the occasion.

Captain Blanchard having been promoted to the office of Lieutenant-Colonel, he resigned his office as commander of the Phalanx; and, Nov. 13, 1844, James W. Brooks was chosen as his successor. In 1846, Captain Brooks was honorably discharged; and, April 10, Charles Caldwell was elected Captain. After serving acceptably, he resigned; and, May 9, 1849, Gilman Griffin was elected in his place. The last meeting held by the company was Dec. 18, 1849, when it was concluded to discontinue the organization, resign the charter, and return the standard to the ladies who gave it. The standard was placed in the Town Hall.

John Wilson and son. 22 School Street. Boston. 1855.

Tufts University provided support for entering this text.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Medford (Massachusetts, United States) (3)
Massachusetts (Massachusetts, United States) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
James W. Brooks (2)
Samuel Blanchard (2)
H. N. Peck (1)
Joseph W. Mitchell (1)
Isaac Hall (1)
Gilman Griffin (1)
James B. Gregg (1)
Charles Caldwell (1)
Caleb Brooks (1)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: