[
161]
A preliminary celebration of the change in the name of the town, was made on May 1, 1867, by a salute of one hundred guns, the ringing of bells and a general display of the national colors.
A mass meeting was held in the evening at the
Town Hall, where music was furnished by the
Arlington Band, and addresses by prominent citizens were made.
A more formal demonstration was held on June 17, 1867, carried out in fine style, and in most respects according to a published programme.
Appropriate decorations were placed throughout the town, the bells were rung at sunrise, and flags on the public staffs and private residences were unfurled for the day. A cavalcade of citizens received the invited guests, including the governor of the
State and other functionaries, escorted by the
National Lancers, at eleven o'clock, at the entrance of the town a few rods beyond
Alewife Brook, and piloted them to the centre of the town, where a salute was fired by a section of a State battery.
A procession, under the marshalship of
Addison Gage,
Esq., was formed, comprising mounted police, bands, the
National Lancers,
civil officers of the town and state, the legislature, masonic organizations, soldiers of 1812 and the late war, children of the public schools, representation of trades, citizens in carriages, and a cavalcade, in all over a mile and a half in length.
It passed through the principal streets, and a collation was afterward partaken of by the school children in a large tent on the common near the Unitarian Church, and by the invited guests in a mammoth tent on the grounds of
J. R. Bailey,
Esq., on Pleasant Street. Dinner was prepared by
J. B. Smith, and speeches were made by
Governor Bullock,
the Hon. Charles Sumner,
Richard H. Dana, Jr.,
Generals Foster and
Osborne, and
Commodore Rodgers and
General Banks of the late war. A poem, written by
Mr. J. T. Trowbridge of
Arlington for the occasion, was read by
Prof. M. T. Brown.
The celebration closed with a regatta of
Harvard students on the lake.
