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April 7, 1823: Voted to build a new schoolhouse “on the front line of the burying-place.”
Nov. 1, 1824: Voted to divide the town into two districts, to be called Eastern and Western; and the $1,200, voted this year for the support of the schools, was to be divided equally between the districts.
In 1825, the number of children in Medford, under fourteen years of age, was 525; and the thickening of population in new places made it necessary to multiply schoolhouses, and scatter them over the whole territory.
1829: Voted to build a schoolhouse, of wood, in the west part of the town.
This was placed on the Woburn Road, on land bought of Jonathan Brooks, Esq. In 1831, it was removed and placed near the alms-house, on land belonging to the town.
1833: Voted to build a schoolhouse in the eastern district, the cost not to exceed four hundred dollars.
The primary schools were taught by females, but not continued through the winter.
March 3, “1834: Voted that the school-committee be directed so to arrange the town-schools that the girls shall enjoy equal privileges therein with the boys throughout the year.”
This tardy justice to the female sex was not peculiar to Medford; and we are now amazed that Anglo-Saxon men, living in a free commonwealth and professing the Christian religion, should have needed two hundred years to convince them that girls have an equal right with boys to all physical, intellectual, and moral development.
The new interest awakened in the cause of elementary instruction, by the friends of common schools, produced its effects readily in Medford; and, in 1835, the town chose a committee “to inquire how proper education might be more extensively and effectually promoted in the town.”
In this year a new schoolhouse was ordered,--the land and building to cost eight hundred dollars.
March 2, 1835: The town appointed a committee to “inquire into the best methods of conducting public schools.”
This vote shows that the efforts of the school-reformers of previous years had not been lost on Medford.
Among these early friends of a better system was a talented son of Medford, Mr. William Channing Woodbridge, who received from his father a knowledge and love of school-teaching, and who, as editor of the “Annals of Education,” labored successfully
John Wilson and son. 22 School Street. Boston. 1855.
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