MJ Wright Finds Facts and Fun in Stearns Farm History

MJ Wright speaks on Stearns Farm at The Waltham Historical Society. Photo by Wayne McCarthy

Some surprises showed up in a deep dive taken on Stearns Farm by Kingston Terrace neighbor MJ Wright, the Wayland librarian turned genealogy gumshoe discovering stories of a runaway slave tunnel, a haunted portrait and a dance floor flowing in a barn out back.

Wright's Farm Findings highlighted The Waltham Historical Society's recent quarterly meeting, her hardy research weaving a well tracked tapestry finished up in gold threads, local lore that made the project shimmer.

Wright's extra big dig, appreciated in President Wayne McCarthy's introduction, found first Stearns roots sunk into Bow Street, the nearby paper road a favorite short cut after Mass between the old Our Lady's Church and the caretaker's cottage at The Middlesex County Hospital.

Signs of the Stearns stone foundation and apple orchard still stand behind Falzone Field.

Jonathan and wife Mary Stearns raised nine children, sons Amos and Joshua buying up single parcels of North Walthsm land soon stretching Stearns property from College Farm Road to the later Star Market and Lexington line..

Jonathan Stearns bought 60 acres for farming in 1833 for $8,000, paying half in silver, half in paper money for property on a road with no name.

The thoroughfare would become Town Road and North Street before turning "Trapelo" translated as both “Traps below," and "A second set of horses helping a wagon up a hill," with the peak eight feet higher at the time.

Wright's work featured Stearns Farm having hay and hens, corn and potatoes, miltch cow milking, wagon making and ice cutting done at Hardys Point on Meads Pond, 6 to 8 inch sections loaded and lugged by horse drawn sleigh to a storage behind Star Market.

Jonathan Stearns service in The Revolutionary War as part of a regimen received remark by British General Gage who said,"I've never seen so many cannon hauled up a hill in one night, a whole army couldn't do that," having discovered Dorchester Heights fully munitioned the morning of March 17, 1775 causing The British to evacuate Boston.

The last Stearns parcel sold was 26 1l3 acres in 1972, the towering water tower topped forest of Stearns Hill razed for Windsor Village, referred to as “The Eyesore” by neighbors who wept at the destruction and the end of an era of fields and farms filling North Waltham and Liza Reed's jams and jellies selling at the local Christmas bazaar.