Medford Historical Society Papers, Volume 6.

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[p. 10] is still touching, even if it is packed away in a lot of genealogical material. It is the story of the two children, a boy and a girl, made orphans by the Spaniards. The Spaniards and the English were in continual strife in the Bahamas, and in 1699, at Nassau, the Spaniards gained control, and beginning a course of plunder and slaughter, killed, among others, the parents of these children. Mr. Brooks relates how the orphans in some unknown way escaped and fled to the wharves and found a friend in the captain of a Boston vessel. He took pity on the helpless little folks and assured them that he would take them to Boston. Before sailing, the captain went to the plundered home and found a clock, which he brought to the ship; so, with the sister in one hand, and the clock in the other, John Albree, at the age of twelve, began life in Medford, and the tradition is that this is the clock.

An investigation into this tradition will give us an insight into the Medford homes of two centuries ago. Brooks, in his history, used about all the existing material concerning John Albree. The first record of him is in a list of those assessed September 2, 1701, on a ‘country rate,’ the amount being three shillings. His name appears on the lists each succeeding year. In 1711, he married Elizabeth Green, who was daughter of Samuel Green (John 2, Percival 1), and his wife, Elizabeth Sill, who was daughter of Joseph Sill and his wife, Jemima Belcher, the latter being the daughter of Andrew Belcher and Elizabeth Danforth. He bought first the property afterwards known as the Thatcher Magoun estate, on the banks of the Mystic, and later, selling it, acquired the estate through which Meeting House Brook runs, on which the second meeting-house was built. He used the brook for power for his mill. It seems probable that Rural avenue was a road to his house. His grandson told how the road used to be blocked with snow in the winter. There his children and his son's children were born.