HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF MEDFORD, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, FROM ITS FIRST SETTLEMENT, IN 1630, TO THE PRESENT TIME, 1855.
Charles Brooks, Ed.

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[17] as grains; peas and beans yielded abundantly; while turnips, beets, onions, and parsnips gradually grew into favor. Potatoes were not known to our first settlers; although among the articles, “to send for New England,” from London, March 16, 1628, “potatoes” are named. The potato is a native of Chili and Peru. We think there is no satisfactory record of potatoes being in England before they were carried from Santa Fe, in America, by Sir John Hawkins, in 1653. They are often mentioned as late as 1692. Their first culture in Ireland is referred to Sir Walter Raleigh, who had large estates there. A very valuable kind of potato was first carried from America by “that patriot of every clime,” Mr. Howard, who cultivated it at Cardington, near Bedford, 1765. Its culture then had become general. Its first introduction to this neighborhood is said to have been by those emigrants, called the “Scotch Irish,” who first entered Londonderry, New Hampshire, April 11, 1719. As they passed through Andover, Mass., they left some potatoes as seed to be planted that spring. They were planted according to the directions; and their balls, when ripened, were supposed to be the edible fruit. The balls, therefore, were carefully cooked and eaten, but the conclusion was that the Andover people did not like potatoes! An early snow-storm covered the potato-field, and kept the tubers safely till the plough of the next spring hove them into sight. Some of the largest were then boiled; whereupon the Andover critics changed their opinion, and have patronized them from that day. When the potato was first known in Scotland, it suffered a religious persecution, like some other innocent things. The Scots thought it to be a most unholy esculent, blasphemous to raise, and sacrilegious to eat. They therefore made its cultivation an illegal act; and why? “Because,” as they say, “it is not mentioned in the Bible” ! The prejudice against this unoffending vegetable was so great at Naples, in Italy, that the people refused to eat it during a famine! We do not find that any epidemic has attacked this healthy plant until the potato cholera, which, of late, has nearly ruined it. The soil in Medford has been found particularly fitted for this plant, owing to a substratum of clay which keeps it moist. The early mode of preserving potatoes through the winter was to bury them below the reach of the frost, and shelter them from rain.

The barns of our pilgrim fathers were very small, because