where is now the street that was named for this family.
He and two sisters were baptized in the First Parish meeting-house, June 18, 1820.
He lived here about eight years, then went to work in a printing office in Boston.
He married at Billerica, Mass., Rebecca Bennett of that town, October 17, 1837.
At that time he was living in West Cambridge, or was registered there.
In 1830 he engaged in the West India trade, living in St. Thomas (one of the Danish islands recently acquired by the Unn Boston, January 23, 1890.
A pamphlet published after his death testified to the esteem in which he was held.
Words written by officers of churches, savings banks, the Washingtonian Home, Bostonian Society, directors of the public library of Billerica, corporation of the South End Industrial School, and others, formed a fine testimonial and gave proof of good stewardship.
Mrs. Warren died at Hotel Bristol, where she had lived for thirty-seven years, July 31, 1916, at the age of ninety-sev
as dreamed of when this boy came to his grandfather's to live.
He described his grandparents as very pious, and kind and affectionate to him, his grandmother especially so. Because of old associations they worshipped in the old meeting-house at Menotomy, but when his mother (and sister) came to Medford and lived in the old Bucknam house, she was taken into the Medford church and all her children baptized by Dr. Osgood who was a friend and contemporary of her grandfather, Dr. Cummings of Billerica.
Thereafter William's Sunday school days were divided between Menotomy and Medford, where such an institution was then something new. Miss Lucy Osgood directed it and Miss Elizabeth Brooks was his teacher.
Another innovation in William Warren's boyhood was the first stove in the Medford meeting-house in the winter of 1820.
As his mother did not come till two years later, chances are that he went to Menotomy with grandsire Warren, and so did not witness the novel installation, and just h
he serious obstruction it was then.
So, contrary to the thought of the Medford promoters, the waterway was continued five miles further to Charlestown mill-pond, requiring the Branch canal, constructed by another corporation, to connect with the river below Main street.
Ten years had elapsed since Governor Hancock signed its charter (so much of an undertaking was it) when the thirty-foot ditch, up-hill from the Merrimack at Chelmsford (Chumpsford they called it then) and down-hill from Billerica to the Charles, was completed.
Then the water of Concord river was turned into it, and for fifty years laden boats passed to and fro. Rafts of timber from the forests of New Hampshire, oak timber to the Medford ship-yards, granite from Chelmsford and Tyngsboro, the great columns of the long market in Boston, with country produce of various kinds, floated quietly onward to their destination on its placid waters, which, like a silver ribbon, glinted in the sunshine as seen from the hill-top
t coming down from the north country on the canal, and the same was true of other commodities.
Third, it was claimed that the management was not of the best, and that the canal was deficient in one important requisite, viz., water.
It was also said that its extension to Charlestown had been unwise, and perhaps the Medford Branch canal proprietors anticipated this to be a remedy.
The shortage of water was later relieved by placing ten-inch flashboards on the dam across Concord river at Billerica.
The canal proprietors had to fight in the courts for what they got, and the reports thereof are interesting reading today.
Benjamin Hall, the principal corporator, left on record his views of the matter, plainly expressed.
See register, Vol.
III, p. 87.
Itt is Very Evident that the Corporation has not Fullfill'd there Part of the Act Untill they have Lockt the same in Medford River.
The legislative record states that permission had been obtained for connecting with the Middl
d Square.
In Vol.
XXVI, No. 1, under caption Views of Medford, we made special note of its illustrations in the histories by Brooks, also by Usher.
In this issue we reproduce an earlier view given our Society by Mr. Edward T. Bigelow, as per this letter:—
Plainville, Mass., October 7, 1924. Mr. E. T. Bigelow, 32 Forest St., Medford, Mass.
Dear Mr. Bigelow:—
Yours of the 4th inst. at hand.
I am glad you were interested in the picture.
I bought this picture from a man in Billerica.
It was in with a lot of pictures of various kinds.
The man who had these pictures is E. S. Hascom, and he lives in a little cottage on the Lowell Turnpike, about eight or ten miles north of Winchester.
His present wife's former husband made the collection many years ago, and they found them among other antiques in their attic.
He knew nothing about them as to where they came from. . . . I am glad to know it is of some interest to the Medford Historical Society.
Have you looked on t
use, but probably to his second, or possibly his third, wife, Prudence by name.
In this case the stepson and his family in one half, were cautioned from infringing on the new wife's share, and perhaps a young wife, in the other half.
Probably the fourteen children never lived in the house together as they were thirty years apart from oldest to youngest, and the oldest were married and out of the house.
This same method of division I know was in another old home—the Manning homestead at Billerica.
To revert a moment from hard facts to my creative imagination, in its proper limits, that old house must have been very charming when new, with its view from its knoll by the road south over the flooded marshes or the winding river, with Wellington and its old house and one or two other houses lying to the east; behind, the ploughed land and the wood lots, and westward the little settlement of Medford.
Undoubtedly there was work in the clay pits close by the house, and a subdued hamme
