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HERE is a picture in my memory, with its details softened by the lapse of years, full of that dreamy mystery with which childhood invests those objects of the natural world which most appeal to its imagination. Standing upon the rocky crest of Wayte's Mount in the early morn, I looked upon a sea of mist that filled, almost to its brim, the valley below. Southward it spread a wide bay of shining light, its surface unbroken, save where in the nearer distance the long, smooth outlines of Sagamore and Powder Horn, in Chelsea, rising above the cloud, showed as green islands in the midst of a silver sea. Still farther away in the south, dimmed by their remoteness, arose the placid summits of the Blue Hills of Milton, a distant shore, on the extremest verge. Westward a broad river flowed at my feet, confined on the farther side by the rocky walls of the Middlesex Fells, whose bosky tops rose green above the intervening flood; while northward, hill upon hill, a wilderness of tangled forest stretched unbroken to the farthest horizon. As the day grew, the warmer rays of the sun and a gentle breeze dissolved the cloud of mist which had lain heavily upon the

lower lands. The wide sea and the flowing river rose in thin eddies of waving vapors; the green islands rested their broad bases on the dry land; and the distant shores, their azure summits growing rosy in the morning light, became more real as they joined the lower horizon, which carried in its extended circle a wide vision of land and sea. It was to my childish imagination as if the Spirit moving upon the waters had called from the depths the dry land, and it had arisen perfected and fitted for the uses of man.

Unknowing, I had seen as in a vision the story of the land which lay below. I had looked upon that sea which in some far-away geologic age joined the Mystic and the Bay of Nahant, covering the places of the marshes and swamps that intervene with deep waters. I had seen the rapid river, which, flowing down the valley of the Three Mile Brook, had

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From Barber's Historical Collection.

MALDEN IN 1837.

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BELL ROCK, THE SITE OF THE FIRST MEETING-HOUSE.

brought the waste of distant lands and deposited it in sheets and banks upon the shores and in the depths of the more quiet bay. It was a far cry from the arm of the salt sea and the rushing river to the pleasant valley of Mystic Side; but I had seen fertile fields and green groves rise in an hour out of the waters, as God had slowly brought them into being by mighty forces and the long lapse of years. It was the simulation of a creation.

So the land became fitted for man and awaited the time when "a chosen seed," selected in the vineyard of the church, should take possession of the Promised Land, which the first comers sought on the rocky shores and in the wildernesses of New England. It was a pleasant country which lay upon the eastern shore of the Mystic and which owned as its farthest habitable bounds, as the early comers thought, the line of rocky hills which stretch eastward from Wayte's Mount into Revere and Saugus. Pleasant it was,

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though the Spragues, who were the first white men who are known to have entered therein, represented it in 1629 to be "an uncouth wilderness."

They came from Naumkeag by the Saugus Plains and the Abousett, and apparently entered the present territory of Malden near Black Ann's Corner, by an Indian trail which was long known as the Salem Path. Passing through a valley in the Scadan Hills, they skirted Wayte's Mount and, crossing the Three Mile Brook, reached the ford at Mystic. Thence, continuing along the western bank of the river, they rested their tired feet at Mishawum. They found the country "full of stately timber"; and little

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THE OLD PARSONAGE. The Birthplace of Adoniram Judson.

else is reported of their observations. Perhaps the annoyances of "creeping beasts," or rattlesnakes, of wolves and mosquitoes, which later adventurers mention, prevented that careful survey of the country which otherwise might have been made; or a desire to be at the end of a weary way may have caused them to see little beyond the limits of their path.

They might have seen a land less a wilderness than that through which they directly passed. In the midst of primeval forests they would have found fresh meadows, in which grew luxuriant crops of native grasses, and broad salt marshes which yielded a plentiful product, which was long esteemed by the farmers. On the higher land towards the rivers and along the marshes were fertile fields, with a sunny southern exposure, almost bare of trees, which offered a soil ready for the plough and the seed. Wild fruits and game were abundant; and the country, to the eager eyes and imaginations of later comers, seemed indeed "a land of milk and honey."

It was towards the sea-lands that the attention of the settlers at Charlestown was first directed; and a narrow strip running from the old Boston line near Powder Horn Hill to the head of the North River was laid out along the head of the salt marshes in 1634, and divided in lots of five acres among the seventy-five householders of Charlestown. It was in this division that the name of Mystic Side, as applied to the territory now covered by the cities of Malden, Melrose and Everett, first appeared.

Soon after, a second division was made, by which the hay-lots on the salt marshes and in the fresh meadows above Wayte's Mount were granted; and in 1638, "the Greate Allotment" was completed. This division, with a reservation of about two hundred and sixty acres for later comers, covered all the land on the east side of the North River to the Scadan Fells and the Long Meadow by Pemberton's Creek, with a single range west of

Three Mile Brook, between the Salem Path and the marshes below Pleasant Street, and two lots in the vicinity of Middlesex Street.

On the west, the colonial grants of the Rev. John Wilson and Increase Nowell separated the Mystic Side lands from the Cradock or Medford grant until 1726, when they were annexed to Malden. On the east of Three Mile Brook, the special grants of Thomas Coytmore and Joseph Hills and a portion of the allotment of Walter Palmer occupied the larger part of the present fifth ward to Cross Street and the hills of Faulkner. Two years later, the reserved land was al

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lotted to newcomers in the town of Charlestown, and all the territory of the present cities of Malden and Everett, save a few scattered places retained for public purposes, became proprietary land, with the exception of the wild, rough hills of Tyot on the west and those of Scadan on the east.

There was little trouble with the Indians here, and the ownership of the lands of Mystic Side was most secure. The Rumney Marsh or Mystic Indians were open friends or secret and inactive enemies. An early deed of the lands from Mystic to "neere Salem," given by the Squa Sachem, was a warrant for possession; and unmeaning promises or artful delays se

cured it against the claims and petitions of Wenepoykin-old George No Nose-of Rumney Marsh, and his progeny. Aboriginal rights were those of the wild beasts to the forests in which they prowled, and little else than that was really considered by the settlers of Massachusetts Bay.

Ownership implied an early improvement of the lands above the Mystic; and in 1640 may be found the first definite record of an actual settlement. Then John Greenland built

THE GRAVE OF MICHAEL WIGGLESWORTH.

and Philip Drinker began to keep “a sufficient boat" at Penny Ferry, a service which was continued by his successors for one hundred and fortyseven years, until it was superseded by Malden Bridge. Later, Thomas Call began, by authority, to sell "bread and beare"; and with houses and a mill, a ferry and an inn, the beginnings of a settlement were complete.

Others came over the river and, pushing by those who had already planted upon the uplands of the Mystic, built at the head of the North River, near Sandy Bank and not far from Bell Rock; others passed down

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SANDY BANK BURYING GROUND.

upon his lot at the present easterly corner of Ferry and Chelsea Streets in Everett, near to the great South Spring; and others accompanied or followed him, building near by. An earlier settlement may have been made by Thomas Moulton at Island End or Moulton's Island, and, perhaps, some one had built upon Sweetser's Point near by. At this time, Thomas Coytmore built a dam and a corn-mill on Three Mile Brook,

into the valley of Pemberton's Creek,

Harvell's Brook; while others ventured up the valley of the Three Mile Brook and improved the lands above Wayte's Wayte's Mount. Farther north, at the Charlestown head-line, the Greens and others rested, coming in, perhaps, with their neighbors of Lynn, who around Lake Quanapowitt laid the foundations of the town of Reading.

Among those who came into the

THE DEXTER ELMS.

valley of Pemberton's Creek were Joseph Hills and his son-in-law, John Wayte. The one, settling on the northerly side of Salem Street, brought the name of Maldon, his English home, into the forests of New England; while the latter built on his grant at the foot of the great rock which bears his name. A leader in church and state was Joseph Hills, to whom posterity still owes a debt as the compiler of the Massachusetts Laws of 1648, the first code of enacted laws printed in New England. These men were the fathers of the town, bearing together its heaviest burdens. The elder, as a representative of the town of Charlestown, was speaker of the House of Deputies, while the younger closed a long series of public duties in the same honorable office, after having been denounced to the British government by the infamous Randolph as one of "a faction in the Generall Court."

Separated from the parent town by the wide river, and with a little community of farmers scattered over a territory which extended about seven miles into the country, the foundation of a town seemed most desirable.

Apparently it had been contemplated from the first, as a necessity when a sufficient number of inhabitants should be gathered to form a church, the first requisite to the establishment of a town government. Some attempts towards the gathering of a church appear to have been made in 1648; and the Word was preached at times by William Sargeant, who was afterwards a ruling elder of the church, and by students from Cambridge. The next year the church was instituted, and an agreement of separation, which was entered into with the inhabitants of Charlestown, was ratified by the General Court, May 11, 1649, O. S.; and the men of Mystic Side were "granted to be a distinct towne, & the name thereof to be called Mauldon."

This division left to Charlestown about one-half of the territory of the present city of Everett, which under the old name of Mystic Side continued to be a part of the mother town until 1726, when it was annexed to Malden.

The early years of the new town were years of discouragements and heartburnings. Hindered by the neighboring churches in their attempts to obtain a pastor, the brethren took the matter into their own hands and ordained, as their first pastor, Marmaduke Matthews by the earlier and disused practice of lay or

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THE OLD HILL TAVERN.

On the site of City Hall.

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