Benjamin Cutter, William R. Cutter, History of the town of Arlington, Massachusetts, ormerly the second precinct in Cambridge, or District of Menotomy, afterward the town of West Cambridge. 1635-1879 with a genealogical register of the inhabitants of the precinct.

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[152] The expense of its erection was $460.67, toward which the voluntary contributions of inhabitants of West Cambridge were $360.67, and the donation of Hon. P. C. Brooks, of Medford, was $100.

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1849

Dogs first licensed by the town. A school-house in the East District erected, on the plan of other large schoolhouses in the town.

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1850

A suitable safe purchased for the use of the town. The Union School District is divided.

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1851

New almshouse built. Old school-house in Wyman District sold.

Tornado of Aug. 22, 1851.—A little work of 72 pages, entitled ‘The Tornado of 1851, in Medford, West Cambridge and Waltham, Middlesex County, Mass., being a report by Rev. Charles Brooks, and reports by other committees,’ contains an extended account of this destructive tempest, its general characteristics and particular incidents, relating principally to Medford. The proceedings at a meeting of the citizens of West Cambridge, holden at the vestry of the Unitarian Church, on the evening of August 25, three days after the tornado, at the request of the selectmen, are given in the work. Mansur W. Marsh, chairman of that board, was appointed president, and Moses Proctor, secretary. After remarks by the Hon. James Russell, resolutions appropriate to the occasion were adopted, and a committee was chosen to solicit subscriptions in aid of sufferers, and another committee to make an appraisement of the damages sustained. A committee was also appointed to make a distribution of the moneys collected by subscription, ‘not in proportion to losses sustained, but in proportion to the necessities of the respective sufferers.’ The report on appraisement, a copy of the subscription paper circulated, and the amount distributed in the town, appear in full in the work. Mr. Marsh, president of the meeting in West Cambridge, contributed a brief account of the storm in relation to Waltham.

The destruction by this tornado began at the foot of Prospect Hill, in Waltham. The course of the storm was from west to east. The section of its course through West Cambridge was marked with the