Medford Historical Society Papers, Volume 22.

[p. 26] one natural and two artificial. Efforts to reproduce the same for the Register's pages have as yet been unsuccessful. It bears this legend, ‘Junction of River, Canal and Rail-road in Medford, 1835.’ This locality is one specific point referred to in a recent address before the Historical Society, entitled ‘The Story of An Ancient Cow-Pasture.’ Request was then and there made for its publication. As the speaker compiled his story largely from the Register's pages, the reader is referred to them, and the present article will concern but the border of the ‘ancient cow-pasture,’ which is destined to become the scene of busy industry as well as of modern pleasure taking.

As the ‘corner’ previously described was not in the original Medford (i.e., Mr. Cradock's farm), so was this likewise a part of ancient Charlestown. That old town, once extensive and once entirely surrounding Medford, is now absorbed by Boston. Its cow-commons have been well defined by our townsman Hooper in his story of the ‘Stinted Pasture.’ Not until 1754 did Medford acquire this ‘corner,’ and even then not all the Charlestown proprietors became Medfordites. An examination of the map will show a serrated boundary line extending over and around College hill to a bend in the river, which was north of the railroad. Thence the boundary between Charlestown and Medford continued, as of old, by ‘the thread of the river’ onward into Mystic lake. In 1850 all of old Charlestown lying outside the ‘Neck’ (at Sullivan square) as far west as the Menotomy river was incorporated as the town of Somerville. Thus it occurs that the old riverside cow-stints of that long-ago time are sandwiched in between precincts one and two of the sixth ward of Medford. To be strictly correct our caption should be, ‘In Another Corner of Medford and Somerville.’ Perhaps ‘In Somerville's Appendix’ might not be inappropriate, and in the interest of the local history of both we may well look into the development of this section. Primarily it was the Indians' dwelling