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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[297] and will aim at the highest results. Medford looks upon it as an object of peculiar interest within its borders. The selection of president and professors is a fortunate one; and, believing that the denomination will be true to itself, we can anticipate numbers of intelligent and virtuous young men, who, in their old age, will look back with gratitude and joy to the happy and prosperous years they spent at Tufts College in Medford. Year after year, under the divine guidance and blessing, may this nursery of learning and virtue send forth those who shall hasten the coming of universal light, universal liberty, and universal love!

The following account has been kindly furnished us by the president:--

Tufts College originated in a movement among Universalists in the United States, who felt it important that the denomination to which they belong should take a more active part in the cause of liberal education. Some ten years ago, a number of them met in convention, at New York, to adopt measures for establishing a college. For this purpose they ordered a subscription to be opened for $100,000, as the minimum sum. The enterprise, however, was delayed for some years. At length another meeting of the convention was held, at which the Rev. O. A. Skinner, now of Boston, was appointed agent to obtain and collect the subscription. In the summer of 1851, he gave notice that the amount of $100.000 was subscribed; and a meeting of the subscribers was held in Boston on the 16th and 17th of September of that year. The trustees chosen at this meeting selected Walnut Hill, near the line between Medford and Somerville, for the site of the college. To this selection they were in some measure influenced by the offer of twenty acres of land on the summit, by Charles Tufts, Esq., of Somerville, and also by the offer of adjoining lots by two public-spirited gentlemen of Medford. In gratitude for a munificent donation by Mr. Tufts, the name, Tufts College, was adopted.

In the spring of 1852, a college charter was granted by the Legislature of this Commonwealth. Under the provisions of this charter, a board of sixteen trustees was subsequently chosen, of which Mr. Oliver Dean, M. D., of Boston, is president. In July, 1852, Rev. Thomas J. Sawyer, D. D., of New York, was elected, by the trustees, president of the college; but, he declining to accept the office on the terms proposed,