ond water came later with the stone water trough now gone.
The railway station and some store fronts have been changed a little, the Bigelow building and Tufts hall have replaced those named.
Otherwise the surroundings of the old Medford market-place are the same today.
The near future will witness a marked change; indeed it has already begun.
The Withington bakery, for several years disused, has been demolished and a theater and business block is there building.
Tufts hall, built by Dr. Weymouth in ‘72, the brick building adjoining and the Seccomb house of 1756 (recently known as the City Hall Annex) have all been sold and are all to be removed and a modern business building erected.
It is to be hoped that the good taste manifested so long ago by the builders between Salem and old Ship street, and more recently at the opposite corner of Forest street, in reducing the street corners to easy curves, may be there displayed.
A similar opportunity will offer itself in the propose
e old house which was successively the home of the elder and younger Drs. Simon, and Turell Tufts, Esq., at Medford square. This, decrepit with age, was demolished in 1867 and succeeded by the present and soon to be removed building erected by Dr. Weymouth in 1872.
When Dr. Weymouth at its completion addressed a company gathered there, he submitted the question of a name for the hall it contained, and suggested that of Tufts as appropriate.
Adopted by acclamation, as Tufts hall it has ever beeuse which was successively the home of the elder and younger Drs. Simon, and Turell Tufts, Esq., at Medford square. This, decrepit with age, was demolished in 1867 and succeeded by the present and soon to be removed building erected by Dr. Weymouth in 1872.
When Dr. Weymouth at its completion addressed a company gathered there, he submitted the question of a name for the hall it contained, and suggested that of Tufts as appropriate.
Adopted by acclamation, as Tufts hall it has ever been known.
hem.
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, 178
he sunlight on this.
Destroyed by fire, the classic edifice of the Unitarians has been replaced by a more modern one of stone, whose tower has a castellated coping, and on whose low spire is perched a cock, said to be a scriptural emblem.
This is the third church edifice to stand on this spot.
Another fire left the Congregationalists of West Medford homeless: not friendless, however, as while the flames were raging came offers of open doors from their neighbors.
A new church home of Weymouth granite was ere long erected on High street. Its tower of modest height contains the public clock and the re-cast bell that went through fire and water.
No lofty spire surmounts it, but four graceful turrets of stone at its corners give it an attractive finish, which is enhanced by the stairway tower of the chapel.
At South Medford, the first and second homes of the Union Congregational embodied the same feature of the corner tower, though not in so marked a degree.
Even the little ch
ed with the colonizing fever between the years 1630 and 1640.
According to an order passed by the Massachusetts Bay Company in England in the year 1629, anyone was allowed fifty acres of land wherever he chose it, if he would cross the Atlantic at his own expense.
Bear Cove in Hingham was the place selected by my ancestors.
The Massachusetts Bay Company owned all the land as far south as Plymouth Company.
Accordingly the Colonial Government granted twenty thousand acres, as far back as Weymouth, to these settlers.
The land was divided between them.
All cedar and pine swamp land was reserved on account of the timber and no man could sell his land without offering it first to the town.
They soon learned how to raise Indian corn and planted grain and vegetables from foreign seed.
Apple trees were set out and currant bushes planted.
Their clothing was badly worn and their supply of money about exhausted, according to an old diary of the family.
A grist mill at Weymouth was t
s and citizens in it, but with no success.
They had no use for the plaything.
One day Macy told him there was a fire up there and George rushed across Main street to the police station with the message, but it fell on incredulous ears—and there was nothing doing.
About a half hour later Cunningham's omnibus came down on its regular trip, and the driver told people of the fire and inquired where the fire department was.
The old Dr. Tufts residence was torn down in 1867, and in 1872 Dr. Weymouth built a substantial wooden building, with Tufts hall on the third floor.
This, with the three-story brick Hall house and the modernly called City Hall annex, all gave way eight years ago to the socalled Medford building.
This annex is worthy of more than passing notice.
It was the home of Thomas Seccomb, built for him about 1750.
In later years it was used as a tavern, and David Simpson was the popular landlord in more recent days.
There used to be a covered porch in front, with a ba
Execution of a Murderer.
--Geo. C. Hersey, of Hingham, Mass, was hung in the rotunda of the Dedham county jail, near Boston, on the 8th inst. He was convicted of poisoning Betsey Frances Tirrell, a young lady of good family, in Weymouth, about a year since.
He was engaged to be married to his victim, and a post mortem examination showed that she was enciente. A sister of Miss Tirrell, with whom Hersey was intimate, had also died suddenly and mysteriously, as had Hersey's wife.
He signed a confession before his death acknowledging the crime for which he suffered, but denying that he poisoned his wife or the other sister.
His age was twenty-nine years. Hersey was executed on the same gallows on which Washington Goode, McGee, and Dr. Webster were hung.--The rope was a small cord of Italian flax, which had been tested with a weight of three thousand four hundred pounds.
