Medford Historical Society Papers, Volume 8.

Purchase street (now Winthrop), had been open some twenty-five years, and Woburn street, once the main road to Boston, was but little used, as the northern travel came not up Marm Simond's Hill. Sugar Loaf Hill had not been cut out so widely, nor yet by the action of the stone-crusher granulated and spread on Medford streets, to sweeten the experiences of travel. Purchase street was Medford's ‘Via Dolorosa’—the way to the almshouse and the silent city of the dead. Mystic Hill, rocky and bare at its top, was beginning to be invaded by dwellers, but they were few and far apart. Nestled in a little hollow on its western slope was a pond, whose denizens in ‘the good old summer time’ made night melodious, informing the listener that ‘Paddy got drunk—got drunk.’ Shaded by willows, and surrounded by a tangled growth (possibly suggesting the name of Brierville), its waters found a way into Whitmore Brook. The stone tower on Hastings Heights, as we call the hill now, overlooks the place; while the site of the pond is surrounded with houses, the homes of recent comers and residents.

In 1870, water was introduced into Medford from Spot Pond, and building operations commenced upon the long vacant Smith estate, which for some years was called by some of the hill dwellers the ‘Flats.’ Possibly they had forgotten, or, perhaps, never knew, that years before, their ___location was rather contemptuously called by some of their townsmen the ‘Fag-end.’

Of the residents of the West End in 1870 a few words will not be out of place. I shall speak only of such as came more particularly under my notice. Coming to the village with the intention of there making my home, the Sabbath gathering of the people attracted my attention. This was held in Mystic Hall (in the old seminary building), and was under the auspices of the West Medford Christian Union (a non-sectarian organization), as no church of any order then existed in West Medford.