[p. 56]
Local history in a barber's shop.
‘In hell there are no barber's shops.’
Such is a remark attributed by historian
Brooks to the
Medford minister of a century ago. We fancy the assertion to be the result of a course of reasoning as to ‘human depravity,’ rather than of any personal search, by
Doctor Osgood.
Per contra, it would be of interest had the good doctor made note of the number of such shops then in
Medford.
As the town's minister for fifty years, he had been something of an autocrat, and was not particularly noted for soft speeches.
We wonder a little what would have happened had he been in his prime when
Rev. Josiah Bracket came up from
Charlestown to preach to some people, not of ‘the standing order,’ in a building called ‘the college.’
Considering his sermon against the
Malden Baptists, we fear it would have been ‘Let him be anathema, and the house that they shall build come to naught.’
Meeting in various places for over five years, those people succeeded, in 1828, in erecting a house of worship on the ‘lane leading from Malden road to the ship yard.’
In 1922 their successors, the First Methodist Episcopal Church, will observe its centennial and in its
fourth house of worship, while the
first still remains— dwelling-house, and now contains a ‘barber's shop.’
Changes made to fit it for such use revealed features of construction, and started search into its history.
Prior to this, the only allusions to it we have seen in print are in the Register, Vol.
XII, p. 2, and an
occasional paper (1878) called
The Half Century. Neither of these contain any account of the dedication, though the same was unique in its features and a novelty in
Medford.
People are wont to think of the predecessor of the
Mystic Church as the
Second Church of
Medford.
It
was the Second
Congregational, but the First Methodist Episcopal is the
second church in Medford, its beginning was fifteen months the earlier.
To the edifice built by
Galen James and his associates, Second (or First Trinitarian) Congregational, must be accorded the record of
