Bogus history.
The Register has at various times alluded to
Medford Myths, some of which, oft repeated, have been popularly and quite extensively accepted as veritable history.
We have hesitated a little in using the adjective of our caption, as its etymology is said, in the dictionary, to be ‘doubtful’; defined as ‘sham,’ ‘counterfeit,’ and applied to ‘anything spurious.’
One of these ‘myths,’ relating to a substantial brick house on old Ship street, was (so far as we know) unchallenged in
Medford, and believed for forty years. Even though disputed and its fallacy clearly shown over twenty years ago, it is still in circulation, even repeated by our chief executive in public hearing of official character.
More recently it appeared in a column of a Boston daily, which is a special feature of the paper.
There, it did not pass unnoticed, as various letters to the ‘Nomad’ proved.
After reviewing several such in his column, he made this observation:
It is very easy to start a legend in any place concerning a point in its ancient and uncertain history.
Make a pleasant and plausible assumption about a place, weave a little story about it, put it into print, and you have ‘history.’
Thus. apparently, Rev. Charles Brooks wrote the history of the ‘old Cradock house.’
Up to that time it had been locally known as ‘the old Fort,’ from its solid construction and the loop holes in the attic.
It took only a few years to transform the ‘old Fort’ into the ‘Cradock mansion.’
All subsequent writers, until the students of the Historical Society began to look into the matter, simply repeated Mr. Brooks' assertion.
What are ‘historians’ for, except to follow one another's tracks and repeat one another's errors?
But there is no use in real historical research unless you tell the truth; and though the gentlemen of the Medford Historical Society greatly regretted to dispel a treasured local illusion, they had to do it.
In the above quotation, the ‘Nomad’ asks a pertinent
[p. 30] query, and his somewhat conditional reply is well illustrated by
Mr. Brooks' successor,
Mr. Usher, in his work of 1886, a practical reprint of the ‘History’ of 1855.
But who were the gentlemen of the Historical Society, the iconoclasts who assailed the bogus history, and established beyond doubt the identity of the house in question?
In reply we name three:
Hon. William Cushing Wait, in his article on ‘Maps of
Medford,’
Mr. Walter H. Cushing, in ‘The
Cradock Farm,’ both read at Society meetings and published in the Register.
Then,
Mr. John H. Hooper took up the ‘burden of proof,’ by a careful search in the
Middlesex Registry.
The result of his work, read before the Society, preserved on our pages (Vol.
VII, pp. 49-64), fixes the erection of the so-called ‘Cradock house’ as at about 1680 (not 1634) at the instance of Peter Tufts (commonly called
Captain Peter), a leading citizen of
Medford at that time.
Both gentlemen before named agree that
Mr. Hooper's work fully establishes as a fact what they only made as assertion regarding the house.
But the question may be asked, ‘Why do people still continue to call it the
Cradock house?’
We can only reply that because of long continued habit by the many, and because comparatively few, even after twenty years, know the facts before stated.
The Register (which of course has a limited circulation) Vol.
XVIII, p. 60, on ‘Tufts Family Residences,’ by the editor, deals with this subject, supplementing
Mr. Hooper's work, referring to the same for authoritative statement, and showing the fallacy of some newspaper criticism of his work.
Recently the same author has in a local paper dealt with the same subject, which latter evidently is the cause of the article quoted from above, and in which it is stated that prior to the publication of the History of
Medford in 1855, the name of
Cradock was not attached to that house.
But since the publication of the above quoted extract,
[p. 31] we have found the following on page 144, Vol. 48, of
New England Historical—Genealogical Register
The oldest house in the country
Is there any proof, above mere conjecture, that the Cradock house, so-called, in Medford, Mass., is the oldest in the country— or indeed that it was built by Gov. Cradock?
If so, what and where is it?
The above was in 1867, but there was no reply to it in any way that we know of, probably for the best of reasons, viz.,
there was no proof to be produced by any.
And so the ‘pleasant and plausible assumption’ was repeated over and over until it became commonly accepted.
We have no thought that the historian had the least intent of writing a misleading, incorrect or bogus history, nor is the present writing to detract anything from the historic interest of the substantial old house, which stands preserved today because of its reputed ‘history.’
