History of Westborough, Massachusetts, USA

Westborough, Massachusetts
Worcester county. This town lies on the route of the Boston and Worcester rail road, 32 miles W. from Boston, 10 E. from Worcester, and 3 1/ 2 N.W. from Hopkinton Springs. It was taken from Marlborough in 1717. Population, 1830, 1,438; in 1837, 1,612.

As several persons were engaged in a field spreading flax, in 1704, the Indians rushed upon them from the woods, and seized 4 boys, and killed one, named Nahor Rice, about 5 years of age, who was the first white person buried in the town. The men made their escape to the house. One of the boys was redeemed, the others remained and mixed their posterity with the French and Indians. Timothy Rice, the youngest, 7 years of age, when taken, became a chief of the Cognawaga Indians. He visited Westborough in 1740, and remembered the house where he had lived, and the field where he was captured, and some aged people. He had lost the English language, and was accompanied by an interpreter. He was sent for and visited ...

Westborough was probably so named because, when taken from Marlborough, in Middlesex county, it formed the west part of that town. Northborough was taken from Westborough afterwards.

The soil is good, and well watered by Sudbury and Concord rivers.

The chief manufactures are boots and shoes.

Eli Whitney, the inventer of the Cotton-Gin, a machine for cleaning the seeds from cotton, by which one man can do the work of a thousand, was born here.

Distance from Worcester, 12 miles ; from Boston, 32.

This town was taken from Marlborough, and lying the whole length of that town on the west side at the time of its incorporation, in Nov. 1717, it was called Westborough. This part of Marlborough being a frontier, having no town between it and Brookfield on the west, about 40 miles distant, the settlement did not progress very rapidly. Several families, however, before 1700 were settled near where the Congregational meeting house stands, of which were Messrs. Thomas and Edmund Rice’s. The church was gathered here in 1724, and Rev. Ebenezer Parkman was ordained their pastor; his successor, Rev. John Robinson, was ordained in 1789. The next minister. Rev. Elisha Rockwood, was ordained in 1808. Rev. Hosea Hildreth was installed pastor of the parish church in 1834; his successors were Rev. Barnabas Phinney, installed in 1836, and Rev. Charles B. Kittredge, in 1837. There is a pleasant and well built village in the central part of the town, consisting of about 50 dwelling houses, a...

Westborough, a post-township of Worcester co., Massachusetts, intersected by the Boston and Worcester railroad, 32 miles W. by S. from Boston. The village is pleasantly situated on the railroad, and contains 3 churches and several stores. It is noted for the manufacture of sleighs ; boots and shoes are also manufactured to some extent. A State Reform School is located in the town ship, on the borders of a beautiful sheet of water, about 2 miles west from the village. The institution occupies a spacious brick edifice, standing in the midst of extensive and highly cultivated grounds. The garden comprises the slope between the building and the water's edge. During the year 1852, the capacity of the institution was greatly increased by extensive additions made to the main building. A capacious water-cure establishment is at present being fitted up about half a mile E. of the Reform School, between it and the village. A handsome building for a high-school is now in course of erection here. ...

Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin; born at Westborough, Massachusetts, 1765; died 1825; went to Georgia in 1792 as teacher; in 1793 invents the cotton gin, prior to which a full day's work of one person to clean by hand one pound of cotton; one machine performs the labor of five thousand persons; in 1800 founds Whitneyville, makes firearms by the interchangeable system of the parts.

Westborough is an active farming and manufacturing town of 4,880 inhabitants, situated in the southeastern part of Worcester County, 32 miles from Boston on the Boston and Albany Railroad. It has Northborough on the northwest and north, Southborough on the northeast, Hopkinton on the southeast, Upton and Grafton on the south, and the latter and Shrewsbury on the west.

The assessed area is 11,678 acres, including 2,472 acres of wood-land. Its foundation rock is calcareous gneiss and sienite. The elevation of the surface is variable; the highest points being Pay's Mountain, 707 feet high, in the southern, and Boston Hill in the northwestern part. Chauncy Pond, of about 185 acres, lies in the north, near Crane Swamp; and Cedar Swamp Pond, of 15 acres, in a swamp of the same name in the southeastern part. In the western section is Hobomoco Pond, a beautiful sheet of water well stocked with fish. Sudbury River, flowing from Whitehall Pond, in Hopkinton, near the southern border, flows...