her in the Old Ladies' Home and as an active worker in most of the benevolent associations in the district.

The Austin family, from first to last, have been the owners of a great deal of real-estate in the old town. The homes of the earlier members of the family were in Charlestown Square. The Bunker Hill National Bank building covers a lot on which one of their houses formerly stood, and Abbotsford Hall, with a part of the Waverley House, another. Tudor's Wharf was formerly Austin's Wharf, and another wharf bearing the same name and belonging to General Nathaniel Austin was on the creek which formerly ran up from the river in the rear of the State Prison nearly to Main Street. entrance to this wharf was from Austin Street. Austins had estates at the Neck, near the Mill Pond, and along Main Street. A large portion of, the Bunker Hill Monument grounds was purchased of them by the association, and on the Mystic-river shore their land-holding was very considerable.

The

The

Within the writer's recollection, a good deal of the territory between Cross, High, Elm, and Bartlett streets was Squire Austin's pasture. The boys of that day remember it as a place on which they were allowed to assemble as a playground, where foot-ball, base-ball, high and low rickets, kite-flying, bird-trapping, and so forth, each had its season. There was a pond in the lowest part of this pasture, on which in the winter large gatherings of young people enjoyed the healthful exercise of skating. Sometimes, late in the summer, marsh birds on their way south from their breeding-places in the north would drop down and make a halt here. Flocks of yellow-shanks running along the margin of

this little pond, within a hundred feet of Elm Street, are remembered to have been seen, and some of them were wickedly shot.

These facts doubtless seem strange and incredible to the young people of to-day, but there are a few of us left who remember when, from High Street to the river, there were no buildings save a small barn half-way down Elm Street, and, well on towards the shore, in a lane which is now included in Everett Street, a little one-story house, painted yellow, occupied by John Cavill, twinemaker, and another, never painted, the home of old Mr. Rice, the glue-manufacturer. Very near these houses was the "old cellar," where clams, dug on the beach, and vegetables, taken from the almshouse garden near by, sometimes with leave, but oftener, I fear, without, were baked and eaten with great gusto by roguish boys on vacation-days.

The laying out of Green and Bartlett streets, and the cutting up of the pastures into house-lots, will do to tell about in some other chapter.

APRIL 12, 1890.

T

HE first chapter in this collection contained a

description of the Dexter estate, a portion of

which is now the headquarters of Abraham Lincoln Post of the Grand Army of the Republic. A good deal was said in it about Nathan Bridge, one of its former occupants, who took great interest in the garden connected with it and made it famous. He was the son of Matthew Bridge, who came to Charlestown from Lexington in 1785, and who lived here from that time until his death, November 24, 1814, when he was sixtysix years old. In September, 1882, Samuel J. Bridge, who also was for some years a resident of Charlestown, presented to the City of Cambridge the statue of his ancestor, John Bridge, the Pilgrim, which was unveiled. with imposing ceremonies November 28, 1882, and now stands on Cambridge Common. Matthew Bridge was a descendant of this Pilgrim pioneer who settled in Cambridge, then called Newtown, in 1632, and whose record as a citizen of that town for thirty years shows him to be fully worthy of the memorial statue which has been set up in his honor.

In 1884 a book of one hundred and twenty pages, "An Account of the Descendants of John Bridge," was published, which shows the high standing of the family in New England and in the country. A summing up of the record appears in a letter of Samuel J. Bridge to another of the descendants, which I have seen in print. In it is given a long list of public offices, national and State, which have been held by members of this family, including a president of the United States (Garfield) and other high officials, and concludes with the remark which would seem to be fully warranted, "No family in New England can show a better record."

Matthew Bridge, of Charlestown, was a merchant and ship-owner. The firm of which he was the head are said to have sent out the first copper-bottomed vessels from the port of Boston and Charlestown. He was prominent in the affairs of the town, holding important public offices. He was in the Legislature as representative from Charlestown in 1803 and 1808, and in the Senate in 1809 and 1812. He was a large holder of real-estate and a man of much property for his time. His residence was on Town Hill, now Harvard Street, in the large and handsome wooden house which, with its grounds, was purchased by Moses A. Dow and taken down to give place to several brick buildings erected by him on Harvard Street and Harvard Place.

The grounds connected with the Bridge estate formerly extended nearly to the Square, and were used for a garden and kept in attractive order. They were higher than the street and protected by a stone wall running along it. In the garden were many fine trees - among them several English walnuts, the only trees of this kind

I have ever heard of in town.* The boys of the neighborhood, it is believed, were somewhat troublesome to the family when the fruit of these trees was nearly ready for picking.

Before Matthew Bridge died in 1814, the brick house now generally known as the home of the late Francis Childs was built by him in the lower part of this garden, and was occupied by his son-in-law, Seth Knowles. Mr. Bridge left three children - Alice, the wife of Eben Baker; Nathan, mentioned at the beginning of this article; and Sallie - Mrs. Knowles. By his will he gave his mansion-house estate to Mrs. Baker, the new brick house on Town Hill to Mrs. Knowles, and to the children of his son Nathan the estate on Green Street occupied by their father. He had other estates, which were given to the children, but these were specially mentioned and given to them as homes. Mrs. Baker remained in her father's mansion as long as she lived — until January, 1858; and Mr. Dow got his title to the estate from her heirs. Mrs. Baker had two sons Matthew, who was a physician in Springfield, Massachusetts, and Ebenezer, before referred to as a student in the civil-engineering office of Samuel M. Felton.

The office of The Charlestown Enterprise is in a building which belonged to the estate of Mrs. Baker

* After the above was first printed I received a pleasant note from my friend, I. P. T. Edmands, in which he informed me that there was a large English walnut-tree in the garden of the estate on Salem Street owned and occupied by him some years ago, which he supposed was the only one in this region. He gave it especial care on this account, and at the time of its last bearing kept some of the nuts in memory of the tree. The land on which it grew was, I think, originally a part of the Harrison or Baldwin estate.