lingham are missing. I am
sorry; for I could believe the most extravagant, feeling with Plutarch,
that fortune, in the history of any town, often shows herself a poet.
The Delphian Pythoness advised Theseus to found a city wherever in a
strange land he was most sorrowful and afflicted. There at length he
would find repose and happiness. Thus it happened when the wanderers
from Braintree settled on the shores of the upper Charles. They brought
their unhappy fortunes so far, and there, in due time, found comfort and
contentment.

The traveller, journeying through the highways of Bellingham, would see
nothing to attract his attention or interest. It has no monuments, ruins
nor historic associations; no mountain, nor hill even. The Charles river
has travelled so little way from its source as hardly yet to be a river.
The soil is stony and pays back not much more than is put into it. The
fine forests of white oak have been mostly reduced to ashes in the
stoves of Milford, and their oracles have ceased. My father, who could
cut as clean a scarf as any man of his day, helped to fell them. Scrub
oak and gray birch have taken their places, but do not fill them. One
great elm remains; it seemed to me the largest and oldest tree in the
world. My mother nursed her children in its shade; under it my world
began. In its top lived the wind and from the longest spray of its
longest limb the oriole hung her artistic basket and brooded her golden
babies. Like many another ancient dooryard tree it carried back its
traditional origin to a staff stuck in the ground and left to its fate.

Bellingham was incorporated in 1719 by yeoman farmers, and later settled
largely by Revolutionary soldiers from neighboring communities on the
east, particularly from old Braintree. On the Mendon tablet placed in
memory of the founders of the town appears the name of my earliest
ancestor. He was a surveyor and plotted the land and built the first
mill, being called from Braintree for that purpose. Permit me to take
pride in my learned ancestor, especially in his talent for figures--the
distress of my life. The most interesting periods in the annals of the
New England people are when they began to organize themselves into
communities for the promotion of law, learning and piety. Their efforts
were primitive yet affecting. Their language halted, but they knew what
they wanted and meant to have.

Such are the records of Bellingham. And other history it has l