Cambridge sketches
Estelle M. H. Merrill, Ed.

“ [67] the way appointed for Russell to see to [Russell's directions are worn off from the record and cannot be read] and the highway going from the meeting house into the neck.” All Dana Hill was part of the Neck, and the meeting house was about where Dane Hall now is. The record continues-“My brother Oakes all on the other side the river.” Is not this a rudimentary school committee? They cannot be mere truant officers.

In after years we have regular annual appointments of reverends and honorables, with bills from the Anchor Tavern or other inn for the dinner with which their labors were invariably alleviated. At these dinners, liquors of different kinds were served, according to the custom of the times.

Having thus established our school system on a permanent basis, before leaping over a period of a century and a half to alight upon personal reminiscences, let us pause for a moment to think of the incredulous distaste with which Madame Dunster and other ladies of her day would have regarded any true prophecy of the present age of bicyles, electric cars, and collegiate education of women. It is not quite a hundred years since it was ordered that a grammar school should be maintained all the year round, and a school for girls for four months in a year.

It was near the beginning of the century that the first public school was established in Cambridge Port, on School street near Winsor. A second, dating from 1809, was on Franklin street about midway between Magazine and Pearl streets.

There was another school, spoken of seventy years ago as the C. P. P. G., which, being interpreted, is the Cambridge Port Private Grammar,