Medford Historical Society Papers, Volume 6.

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[p. 41] the rise was voted ‘inexpedient.’ When, many years later, the writer rallied one of those masters on his extreme modesty in making the above request, though receiving at that time three or four thousand dollars as school supervisor in Boston, he replied that no later salary had ever seemed to him as large as the $575 he received in Medford.

The two grammar masters, A. K. Hathaway and S. R. Townsend, resigned in the spring of 1846, and lady teachers were put in their places. The experiment, however, not proving successful, Paul H. Sweetser and Stephen Gilman were put in charge of the schools in 1848, with a salary of $600.

Prior to 1847 the schools had eleven three hour sessions each week, and for vacations, fast week, Thanksgiving week, and two weeks in August. But in the summer of that year the Wednesday afternoon sessions began to be omitted, and, in compliment to the new teacher, the high school was allowed two weeks extra vacation in August. Two years later all the schools were allowed three weeks respite in August. The entire board of school committee was chosen annually, and their first printed report was made in 1847.

Notwithstanding the few blots here shown upon its record, Medford in its educational appointments stood in the front row. Its high school, organized for the free co-education of the sexes, and then twelve years old, had but one senior (that in Lowell), and not a baker's dozen of juniors in the entire state. Cambridge organized one in October, 1847, Charlestown one in 1848, and it was then several years before Newton, Somerville, Malden, Woburn, or any other of the neighboring towns provided that luxury for their children. In 1846 the State Board of Education reported Medford as number four among the 322 towns and cities in the Commonwealth in regard to the amount appropriated for each scholar between the ages of four and sixteen. In Brookline it was $7.33, in Nantucket, $5.74, in Watertown, $5.52, and in Medford,