MEDFORD, a city of Middlesex county, Massachusetts, U.S.A., on the Mystic river, 5 m. N. by W. of Boston. It is served by the Boston and Maine railroad. The population was 39.038 in 192o (22% foreign-born white), 47,627 in 1925 (state census), and was 59,714 in 1930 (by Federal census). The city occupies 8 sq.m., N. of Somerville, between Everett on the east and Arlington on the west. On its north-west border are the Mystic lakes, skirted by broad parkways of the Metropolitan Park sys tem ; and part of the Middlesex Fells reservation and most of the Mystic River reservation fall within its limits. On "the hill," partly in Medford and partly in Somerville, is the 8o ac. campus of Tufts college (founded by Universalists in 1852), which has an endowment of about $7,500,000 and an enrollment of 2,194 in 1926-27, including 1,266 at the medical and dental schools con ducted in Boston. Medford has some of the oldest and most in teresting examples of domestic colonial architecture in New Eng land, including the so-called "Cradock house" (1677-80), the "Wellington house" (1657), and the "Royall house," part of which is older than either of the others. The public library is housed in the reconstructed residence of Thatcher Magoun (famous as a shipbuilder from 1802), and the Medford Historical society occu pies the house where Lydia Maria Child was born in 1802. The city is largely a residential suburb of Boston, but it has a number of manufacturing industries, with an output in 1925 valued at $7,014,465. The assessed valuation for 1928 was
The plantation of Mathew Cradock, first governor of the Massa chusetts Bay Colony, covered a large part of the present area of Medford. In 1630 he sent out agents to settle his lands, and Governor Winthrop's "Ten Hills farm" (partly within the city's present limits) was occupied soon afterwards. The manufacture of brick and tile was an important industry in the 17th century; shipbuilding in the 18th and first half of the i9th; and the dis tilling of rum throughout the 18th and 19th. The last keel was laid in 1873 and the last distillery was discontinued in 1905. Many of the famous privateers of the War of 1812 were built here. Over the Cradock bridge across the Mystic (built in 5638) ran the principal thoroughfare from Boston to the north for i5o years. The course of Paul Revere's ride lay through Medford square, and within half an hour after he had passed the Medford minute men were on their way to Lexington and Concord. After the battle of Saratoga many of Burgoyne's officers were quartered here for the winter. The Middlesex canal was opened through Medford in 1803 and the first railroad in 1831. Medford was chartered as a city in 1892.