In bringing these papers to a close, I desire to make my grateful acknowledgment to the friends and pupils of many years who united in celebrating the seventieth anniversary of my birth by presenting me with a beautiful silver loving-cup, which I fondly cherish as an evidence of affectionate regard, and which will be ever filled and overflowing with loving memories, not alone of those who united in the gift, but of the many others whom I have known in the course of an unusually long professional career. To one and all I offer my heartfelt thanks. APPENDIX PART I EARLY LIFE OF LOWELL MASON ADDRESS OF WILLIAM S. TILDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE MEDFIELD HISTORICAL SOCIETY, AT CHENERY HALL, MEDFIELD, FRIDAY, JANUARY 8, 1892, THE CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF DR. LOWELL MASON FELLOW-CITIZENS: Most that has been hitherto said and written has been rather concerning the public and professional career of Dr. Mason; and we shall doubtless have presented many interesting mementos to-day, in letter and address, relating to those things in which he is most generally known. What I have to present in this paper will refer particularly to his birth, parentage, and early surroundings, of which comparatively little has been said. [Illustration: LOWELL MASON FROM A DAGUERREOTYPE] Lowell Mason was of English descent, being in the sixth generation from Thomas Mason and Margery Partridge. Thomas, born in England, was the son of Robert, who settled in Dedham, from whence he, with his brother Robert, came to Medfield in the second year of its settlement. The marriage of Thomas Mason and Margery Partridge, April 23, 1653, is the first recorded marriage in this old town. He received his house-lot by original grant from the town. It was upon North street, where Amos E. Mason now lives, the homestead having never been out of the possession of the Mason family. Thomas Mason and two of his sons were killed by the Indians on that fateful morning in February, 1676, when the town was burned. His eldest son was killed the following year, while fighting the Indians at the "Eastward" (now Maine), leaving one boy, Ebenezer, who was seven years of age only when his father was killed, and who, therefore, became the progenitor of the line from which Lowell Mason sprang. The son of this Ebenezer, Thomas Mason, left the homestead on North street, and settled in the extreme northeast corner of the town, at what is now known as the Charles Newell place. He married the daughter-in-law of Samuel Sady, who kept a tavern on North street, where the Pfaff mansion now stands; and his son Barachias, grandfather of Lowell, inherited, through his mother, that place, and settled upon it, where he lived with his son Johnson, father of Lowell. There the man whose nativity we celebrate to-day was born. The building has been preserved, and is, no doubt, the "farm-house," so called, on Adams Avenue.