Lucius R. Paige, History of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1630-1877, with a genealogical register

[373] was, might be expected to stand much more than twenty years; but the record shows that on the 4th of October, 1669, ‘at a meeting of the selectmen, Mr. William Manning and Petter Towne was appointed to agree with workmen to take down the school-house and set it up again; and to carry the stones in the cellar to the place where the house for the ministry is to be built.’ The town voted, June 24, 1700, to build a new schoolhouse, twenty-six feet in length and twenty feet wide; and in 1769 it was ordered, that the old grammar school-house then standing on this lot, be demolished, and that a new house be erected on the southerly side of Garden Street, about a hundred feet westerly from Appian Way. This house was removed to Brighton Street, converted into a dwelling-house, and succeeded by a larger and more convenient edifice in 1832, in which the Grammar School was taught until, after a transitional state of a few years duration, it was merged into the High School.

Besides the Grammar School, others of a lower grade were established; but their scanty patronage affords slight ground for boasting. In March, 1680, when it was certified that Master Corlett had only nine scholars, it was added, ‘For English, our schooldame is goodwife Healy; at present but nine scholars.— Edward Hall, English schoolmaster; at present but three scholars.’ A school was also established at an' early date in Menotomy, now Arlington: Jan. 16, 1692-3. ‘It was voted whether the town would give to Menotomie people a quarter of an acre of land, upon our common, near Jasson Russell's house, near the highway, for the accommodation of a school-house; and it was voted on the affirmative, so long as it was improved for that use, and no longer.’ The earliest trace which I have seen of a school-house on the south side of the river, afterwards Brighton, is in 1769, in which year new houses were erected in three sections of the town. At a meeting of the Selectmen, May 7, 1770,

Voted, To give an order on the Treasurer to pay for the new school-houses erected in the town the last year, viz.—

In the body of the town,	£ 107.	2.	4.	1
In the northwest part,	50.	14.	6.	2
In the south part,	42.	3.	1.	1
	———	———	———	———
	200.	0.	0.	0

Dr. Holmes, writing in 1800, says, ‘A little to the westward of the Episcopal Church is the grammar school-house; where a ’