[p. 35]
Parson Smith's farm.
It was an easy transition from these latter marshes to the consideration of Parson Smith's farm and barn which was close by one of them.
Mr. Hooper located it by his remembrance as near the now disused Cummings schoolhouse and present North street.
Rev. William Smith, the father of Abigail, wife of
President John Adams, inherited a part of this farm, and at his mother's death ‘bought a farm in
Medford.’
Such is his entry in his interleaved almanac, the usual manner of keeping a diary in those days.
Several of those he kept we have examined, and extracts were read in the above connection.
We find in
Nast's
Sketch of Weymouth that
in August 1634 [it should be 1734] a call was extended to Mr. William Smith of Charlestown to become the minister at a salary of one hundred and sixty pounds and three hundred pounds settlement, the latter to be paid one hundred pounds annually for three years, all in bills of credit.
This invitation was accepted, and on the first Wednesday in December [1734] he was ordained as pastor of the First Church and Parish in Weymouth, which office he retained until his death, Sep 17, 1783, in his seventy-seventh year.
He was a graduate of Harvard in 1725.
In reading of
Charlestown it is well to remember that at one time
Charlestown entirely surrounded
Medford, and that in 1754
Medford acquired considerable of
Charlestown territory in two parcels.
This
Rev. William Smith (who until his ordination was
Mister William) was the son of
Thomas and Abigail (
Fowle)
Smith.
Thomas Smith was styled ‘merchant’ and had a farm of eighty acres (and house), bounded north by
Mystic river, south and southwest by
J. Dickson, and east by
James Tufts and
C. Crosswell.
It was situated, as will be thus seen, at the bend of the river and at the end of the old rangeway, now North street.
In the division of the estate, nineteen and three-quarters acres fell to the son
William, which he seems to have improved by fencing, building a barn and planting an orchard.
