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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May 4, 1801: “Voted, that the selectmen, with Benj. Hall, Esq., and John Brooks, Esq., be a Committee to attend at the General Court on the first Tuesday of the next session, to prevent, if possible, the erection of another bridge across Mystic River.” Nevertheless, Chelsea Bridge was built in 1804. The town directed the selectmen to petition the General Court to have the bridges over Mystic River widened; and that no one should be less than forty-six feet in width.

March 12, 1713: John Clark & Co. petition for a bridge across Charles River. Many in Medford strenuously opposed it; and the wits had some playful ridicule of the project. The press, in 1714, has the following: “One great thing proposed hath been the building of a bridge over Charles River, and that it would be a service to us. This I look at to be next to building castles in the air. For, if we could sink forty or fifty thousand pounds in building such a bridge, the matter is uncertain whether it would answer the end; for, I can't learn of a fast bridge, over such a river, where there is such a stream, in the whole world.”

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Indians.

When or where the Indians first appeared, ethnologists do not inform us. They have always awakened a strange and poetic interest, and have called out a deep and Christian sympathy. They who connected themselves with the first settlers of Medford, and continued their alliance through so many years, were too numerous and influential to be omitted in this history.

Two large and powerful tribes held sway in this region when our fathers landed; the Massachusetts and the Pawtuckets. Their chief enemies were the Tarratines, on the Penobscot, who, at harvest, would come in their canoes, and reap the fields in this neighborhood. One hundred of them attacked Sagamores John and James, Aug. 8, 1631, by night, and wounded them and killed seven men. The renowned Sachem of the Pawtuckets was Nanepashemit, who removed from Lynn, 1615, and took up his abode on Mystic River, where he was killed in 1619. During his short and eventful residence in Medford, his house was placed on “Rock Hill,” where he could best watch canoes in the river. Winslow gives the following account:--