Historic leaves, volume 7, April, 1908 - January, 1909

It will thus be seen that all the present Arlington Heights, also the well-known Turkey Hill (which is half an inch lower), was included in what was anciently known as the Cambridge Rocks.

Of the seventy-two-acre grant to Thomas1 Brigham, it may be said, in modern terms, that it is now in a northwest part of Arlington. While originally bounded on the north by Charlestown Line, a change in the line at the incorporation of Winchester (originally Woburn) in 1850 left a trianglar piece in the northwest corner lying in Winchester. Turkey Hill is near the centre of the grant. Forest Street runs across the property, less than a mile from Massachusetts Avenue, where one leaves the electric car.

The forty-eight-acre grant of Nicholas Wyeth, which adjoined that of Thomas1 Brigham on the northwest, later passed into possession of Henry Dunster, first president of Harvard College, and was held by his descendants many years. In a bill of sale of the Dunster piece given by John Steadman, county treasurer, to Thomas Danforth, in 1674, the lot is described as bounded ‘n. (n. e.) by Woburn line. . . e. (s. e.) by a small farm layed out to Thomas Brigham.’ The Brigham grant also adjoined, on the Charlestown Line, a 300-acre farm of Increase Nowell, and also the 480 acres of ‘Squa Sachem,’ which the colony reserved to her when settlement was made with the Indians for the territory comprising Charlestown and Cambridge. The familiar Indian monument on the Peter C. Brooks place in West Medford was erected by Mr. Brooks in memory of the son of Squa Sachem, Sagamore John.

Thomas1 Brigham died December 8, 1653, leaving this seventy-two-acre grant, with all his other property, to his widow and five children. In 1656 the General Court gave the overseers of his will the right to sell all his real estate. It would appear that this ‘Brigham Farm,’ as many ancient deeds refer to it, was bought for £ 16 by Hon. Thomas Danforth, an executor