The "Medford Band" was very popular, its services were sought from every part of the country, and it gained a wide and honorable reputation.

In March, 1882, the band removed its headquarters to Boston, and since that time it has borne the name of the "Boston City Band."

IMPROVEMENT SOCIETIES.

The Village Improvement Society of West Medford was organized in 1882. Its objects are the improvement of the place in sanitary regulations, tree-planting, architecture, gardening, streets and sidewalks. It instituted a course of lectures in 1882-83-84, which were well attended and highly appreciated.

Similar societies have since been organized in the centre of the town, and in Glenwood, having the same objects in view; and all are working together harmoniously for the general good.

CHAPTER XXII.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES.

REV. CHARLES BROOKS.

CHARLES BROOKS, the author of the History of Medford, was born in this town, Oct. 30, 1795. His parents were Jonathan and Elizabeth (Albree) Brooks. He entered Harvard College in 1812, and was graduated in 1816. For a short time he was a reader in the Episcopal Church, to which his tastes and sentiments had drawn him; but a conviction that Christianity as expounded by Ware and Channing was more conformable to truth led him to adopt the views of the Unitarians.

He terminated his professional studies in the theological school of Harvard College in 1819; and preached his first sermon in Medford, in the meeting-house in which he was baptized in infancy. He was ordained as pastor of the Third Congregational Society in Hingham in 1821, and had a very active and successful pastorate there. He was an earnest worker in various good ways. He took an active interest in the cause of peace, and in the temperance reform, and was an early and constant friend of popular education. He was the first person to introduce the burning of anthracite coal into Hingham, and is entitled to the honor of starting the project of a line of steamboats between Boston and that place.

In 1833 Mr. Brooks visited Europe, and made the acquaintance of many distinguished persons there. He gave much attention to the Prussian system of education, and on his return home lectured extensively on the importance of education in our own country. The results of his labor were the establishment of boards of education and normal schools. In 1838 he was elected professor of natural history in the University of the City of New York, and the next year closed his pastorate at Hing

ham. He subsequently spent four years in Europe, and on his return devoted himself to scientific studies, and such as he deemed of importance to him in his professorship, until the failure of his sight compelled him to leave his profession, and retire to private life.

Mr. Brooks was quite a voluminous writer. In his early ministry he published a prayer-book, which had a very extensive circulation. His "History of the Town of Medford" was published in 1855, and is a work of careful research, evincing a rare knowledge of life and manners in the old Colonial times. His enthusiastic love for his native town, and his familiarity with local traditions, many of which had come down to him through ancestral channels, especially fitted him for such a task. The book was one of the earliest contributions to a knowledge of NewEngland municipal history, and has been followed by a long line of similar works. Later in life, he turned his attention to the condition of aged and destitute clergymen, and was instrumental in the foundation of a society. for their relief.

He was twice married; in 1827, to Miss Celia Williams of Brooklyn, Conn., who died in Hingham in 1837; and. in 1839, to Mrs. Charlotte Ann H. Lord of Portsmouth, N. H., who died in that city in November, 1869. Mr.. Brooks died in Medford, July 7, 1872, at the age of seventy-. six years. He was a studious, scholarly, and high-minded man, clear in his judgment, genial and affable in disposition; and, to a life of practical benevolence, he added the. graces of a Christian character.

LIEUT.-GOV. JOHN USHER.

In Drake's "History of Middlesex County," Mr. John Usher is spoken of as the most noted citizen of Medford, in the early part of the eighteenth century. He inherited some property from his father, and increased it by successful business, first as a bookseller in Cornhill, Boston (on the very spot afterwards long occupied for the same purpose by the writer of this history), and afterwards in foreign trade. He was a councillor under Gov. Dudley, and councillor and treasurer under Gov. Andros. He was sonin-law of Samuel Allen, a London merchant, who bought out the claims of the Mason heirs to the proprietorship of New Hampshire. He was made lieutenant-governor there