[p. 10] Willis were the committee appointed to build the house.
It had been twelve years since the first recorded attempt to build, forty-one years at least since the subject was first broached by
Major Wade; and after the location and plan had been reported it still took three years with eight town meetings to secure this simple wooden structure, twenty-four feet long, twenty feet wide, ten feet high, on land already owned by the town.
The house was doubtless completed on time or very nearly so, because we find next to the last entry for the year in the
Treasurer's Book:
Pd Benj. Willis on account of the School House £ 10; and in 1733:
The school house cost up to this time £ 32, but in 1734-5, month impossible of determination:
To Cash pd to Deacn Willis for the School house materials £ 20-2s. –6d.
Cash pd John Bradshaw for materials for ye school, 6s,
making the total £ 52-8/6d.
There had probably been a school for three or four months every winter for the thirteen years from the establishment of the first school to the building of the first school-house, but the names of only five of the men who taught the children of
Medford during this time have been found.
Those known are
1719,
Henry Davison.
1720,
Henry Davison,
Caleb Brooks.
1728, [Ammi R.] Cutter,
Harvard, class of 1725(?)
1729, [Henry]
Gibbs, Harvard, class of 1726 (?)
Samuel Brooks, Jr.
Only the surnames of Masters
Cutter and
Gibbs appear in the
Treasurer's record, but as it was a common practice for young graduates of Harvard College to teach such schools in the surrounding towns, and as we know that later some of our teachers were graduates, it seems but natural to look to Harvard for the record of