Medford Historical Society Papers, Volume 8.

[p. 18] being stationed here eight months. Young Henry Dearborn of your state stopped here with his men on the night of June 16th, and early the next morning marched to Winter Hill. Benedict Arnold, of less pleasant memory, from Connecticut, on September 13th, 1775, encamped here for the night with a detachment of men from Cambridge. In Arnold's famous expedition through the wilderness Dearborn accompanied him.

What an exciting time there must have been in this little town until after the evacuation of Boston and the withdrawal of the army from Cambridge! It was on the direct route to Cambridge, and scores of men and soldiers were constantly passing through back and forth.

Over these New Hampshire men John Stark was made colonel by a hand vote (ardent partisans, it is said, holding up both hands) in a tavern hall called afterwards New Hampshire hall. This was probably in the Admiral Vernon Tavern, a few rods over the bridge on the east as you go toward Charlestown, the site of which will later be pointed out to you.

In this tavern, the Admiral Vernon, Colonel Stark for awhile had his headquarters, and later removed to the elegant and roomy mansion of Colonel Isaac Royall, who precipitately left his fine estate three days before the battle of Lexington. Charles Lee called this mansion Hobgoblin Hall and found it so luxurious that Washington ordered him to remove from it.

There are no records telling where these soldiers camped, but tradition has it, to which we loyally hold, that the place of their encampment was in this immediate vicinity. Medford, the ‘peculiar town’ of the early days of the plantation was at this period but a small town, its inhabitants being not many over nine hundred.

The lands, in truly English fashion, as even to still later times, were in large holdings controlled by few, and at this time without doubt, here in front of us the land stretched out far away in green pastures. Here they could have pitched their tents or built barracks which