Medford Historical Society Papers, Volume 26.

I do declare it to be my mind and will that in case the church do not accept the commons on ye terms xpressed, then the Deacons shall receive of my Estate thirty pounds in goods out of the shop or in Cattle, to be employed for the church's use as they shall see meet.

His wife survived him six years, but in her will is no mention of cow commons or fence.

Note now. This contract made two hundred and sixty-two years ago valued the fence at thirty pounds, with possibility of appreciation, the sum named in the will. Ninety years later, portions of both farm and common were annexed to Medford; the fence entirely in Medford limits. It was one hundred and forty years before the canal, and one hundred and seventy-three before the railroad came through farm and pasture; and one hundred and eighty-eight when Tufts College ‘set a light on the bleak hill,’ no longer wooded. Just two centuries later, within our own remembrance, came the embanked reservoir beside the college. Since then the entire West Somerville and Medford Hillside sections of two cities have been built, whose limits are now reached, beyond which they may not pass. Where Lieutenant Sprague began his fence, the Mystic Valley parkway crosses Main street, and follows the river through Medford, Somerville and Arlington beside the lower lake, then in Charlestown. On this barrier, but fifteen years old, we see no reasonable Cattle, but modern automobiles, one hundred and thirty-five in five minutes on Sunday afternoon pass by, and no ‘gate mayntayned.’ In the intervening reservation the birds, pheasant and quail, find sanctuary.

Lieutenant Sprague may have seen such, and perhaps larger game, while the fence was building along the border of the cow pasture, where stands the broadcasting tower of Amrad, W. G. I.