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The Town of Northborough
Massachusetts , originally part of the Towns of Marlborough -- then Westborough,
was incorporated in 1766 and became a full-fledged town with the right
of representation at the Great and General Court of Boston in 1775. The
early churches of Massachusetts, called "meeting houses," were the center
of all town activity. Built on land given by Capt. James Eager, Northborough's
first Meeting House stood about where the First Congregational Unitarian
Church is today, on Church Street.
Town meetings were held there, as
were church services -- at which attendance was compulsory. The only religion
tolerated within the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony was that of the Congregational
Church, which, at that time, had strong Calvinist tenets. The church "tithing
men" were the legally elected officers of the town, while town ministers
were the arbiters of both town and family life. Customarily, they had strong
influence in the conduct of the schools, which were not nearly as important
to the founding fathers as was the church, and had no formal setup until
well after everything else in town was established. Northborough's open
town meeting "grass roots" government now operates under its own home rule
charter.
The governing body of the town are
the five elected members of the town's select board and the town meeting
membership of registered voters. In the days of unheated meeting houses,
town meetings were often adjourned to the warmth of the famous Post Road
state stop, Monroe's Tavern. This tavern now stands on the spot to which
it was removed in 1867, at the corner of Blake and Pierce streets. The
meeting locale of the select board as well as the "official" offices of
the town have moved from the first church to the second church vestry to
the Old Town House to the "old" Town Hall (which merited a listing from
the National Park Service Department as an Historical Architectural Monument,
having the longest roof span of any known French Mansard roof style building)
to the "new" Town Hall, which is the old Northborough High School -- built
in the early 1930s.
Northborough Mass is located in Central
eastern Massachusetts, bordered by Berlin on the north, Westborough on
the south, Marlborough on the east, Southborough on the southeast, and
Boylston and Shrewsbury on the west. Northborough is 10 miles northeast
of Worcester, 30 miles west of Boston, amd 190 miles from New York City. |