Billerica, MA
Billerica (, ) is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 42,119 according to the 2020 census. It takes its name from the town of Billericay in Essex, England. History In the early 1630s, a Praying Indian village named Shawshin was at the current site of Billerica, commonly spelled Shawsheen today, as in the Shawsheen River. In 1638, Massachusetts Bay Governor John Winthrop and Lt. Governor Thomas Dudley were granted land along the Concord River in the area, and roughly a dozen families from Cambridge and Charlestown Village had begun to occupy Shawshin by 1652. The settlers chose the name Billerica because some of the families originally came from the town of Billericay in Essex, England. The town was incorporated as Billerica in 1655, on the same day as neighboring Chelmsford and nearby Groton. The original plantation of Billerica was divided during the colonial period into the towns of Billerica, Bedford, Wilmington, and Tewksbury. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Billerica Public Library
__NOTOC__ The Billerica Public Library is a public library in Billerica, Massachusetts. Since 2000 it has been located on Concord Road. History In the late 19th century, "Billerica's free library, known as the Bennett Public Library, was founded by Mrs. Joshua Bennett, who erected, at a cost of $9,000, a suitable building for the purpose, and deeded it to the Bennett Library Association in 1880. ... The town contributes nothing for the support of the library." The architects of the Bennett building were Boston architects Rotch & Tilden. Initially, subscribers were charged an annual fee for use of the library. By 1899, "the membership fee to the associates, to whom a few special privileges are allowed, is one dollar, but all citizens are given the free use of the library." In fiscal year 2008, the town of Billerica spent 1.09% of its budget on the library—some $29 per person. The library's total budget was $1,209,203.July 1, 2007 through June 30, 2008; cf. The FY2008 Munici ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Praying Indian
Praying Indian is a 17th-century term referring to Native Americans of New England, New York, Ontario, and Quebec who converted to Christianity either voluntarily or involuntarily. Many groups are referred to by the term, but it is more commonly used for tribes that were organized into villages. The villages were known as praying towns and were established by missionaries such as the Puritan leader John Eliot and Jesuit missionaries who established the St. Regis and Kahnawake (formerly known as Caughnawaga) and the missions among the Huron in western Ontario. Early history In 1646, the General Court of Massachusetts passed an "Act for the Propagation of the Gospel amongst the Indians." It and the success of Reverend John Eliot and other missionaries preaching Christianity to the New England tribes raised interest in England. In 1649, the Long Parliament passed an ordination forming "A Corporation for the Promoting and Propagating the Gospel of Jesus Christ in New England," ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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William Manning (author)
William Manning (1747 – 1814) was an American author, farmer, and soldier. After fighting in the Revolutionary War, he began to believe that his military service meant little to the American ruling class. Manning soon became a member of the Democratic-Republican Party in opposition to the ruling Federalist Party. As the years passed and his distrust towards the federal government grew, he wrote multiple papers on what he deemed was the corruption of the "Few" and what the "Many" endured as a result of it. In 1798, Manning wrote his most famous work, ''The Key of Liberty'', in which he wrote that the goal of the "Few" was to distress and force the "Many" into being financially dependent on them, creating a continued cycle of dependence. He argued that the only hope of the "Many" was to vote for leaders that would fight for those with lesser political power and support a smaller government. His work, however, would not be published for more than a century, mostly due to its contro ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Manning Manse
The Manning Manse is a historic house at 56 Chelmsford Road in North Billerica, Massachusetts. Built about 1696, it is one of the oldest surviving buildings in Billerica. It has further associations with local and nationally prominent members of the Manning family, and is a significant early example of historic preservation in the United States. Since the mid-20th century it has typically housed a restaurant, under lease from a family association. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. Description and history The Manning Manse stands in an isolated setting of northern Billerica, on the south side of Chelmsford Road (Massachusetts Route 129) east of Executive Park Drive. It is set on about of land, which is surrounded on three sides by Warren H. Manning State Forest. The building now consists of three sections, organized in an L shape. The eastern part of the L is the original main house, to which modern additions have been made to the west. T ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tewksbury, Massachusetts
Tewksbury is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. Its population was 31,342 as of the 2020 United States Census. History Tewksbury was first settled in 1637 and was officially incorporated on December 17, 1734, from Billerica. There is no evidence that the town was named after Tewkesbury, England. Still, Tewksbury, Massachusetts and Tewkesbury, England kept connected through a local committee called the Twinning Committee. One of the oldest sections of town is the area around the Shawsheen River. This is where the Shawshin tribe settled, allowing them access to a food source through fishing in the river. Tewksbury was also known for a historic visit by President Andrew Jackson, who stopped at local watering hole, Brown's Tavern. On July 24, 1857, a powerful tornado swept through Tewksbury. The storm began at Round Pond as a small water spout, and traveled west and then southeast to the Shawsheen River. It dissipated at North Wilmington. Several corn fie ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Wilmington, Massachusetts
Wilmington is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. Its population was 23,349 at the 2020 United States census. History Wilmington was first settled in 1665 and was officially incorporated in 1730, from parts of Woburn, Reading, and Billerica. The first settlers are believed to have been Will Butter, Richard Harnden or Abraham Jaquith. Butter was brought to Woburn as an indentured captive. Once he attained his freedom, he fled to the opposite side of a large swamp, in what is now Wilmington. Harnden settled in Reading, in an area that is now part of Wilmington. Jaquith settled in an area of Billerica that became part of Wilmington in 1740. Minutemen from Wilmington responded to the alarm on April 19, 1775, and fought at Merriam's Corner in Concord. The Middlesex Canal passed through Wilmington. Chartered in 1792, opened in 1803, it provided freight and passenger transport between the Merrimack River and Boston. One important cargo on the canal was hops. From ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bedford, Massachusetts
Bedford is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population of Bedford was 14,383 at the time of the 2020 United States Census. History ''The following compilation comes from Ellen Abrams (1999) based on information from Abram English Brown's ''History of the Town of Bedford'' (1891), as well as other sources such as ''The Bedford Sampler Bicentennial Edition'' containing Daisy Pickman Oakley's articles, Bedford Vital Records, New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Town Directories, and other publications from the Bedford Historical Society.'' The land now within the boundaries of Bedford was first settled by Europeans around 1640. In 1729 it was incorporated from a portion of Concord (about 2/5 of Bedford) and a portion of Billerica (about 3/5 of Bedford). In 1630, John Winthrop and Thomas Dudley of the Massachusetts Bay Company arrived aboard the ''Arabella'' from Yarmouth, England. After a difficult ten-week voyage, they landed on th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Groton, Massachusetts
Groton is a town in northwestern Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, within the Greater Boston metropolitan area. The population was 11,315 at the 2020 census. It is home to two prep schools: Lawrence Academy at Groton, founded in 1792 and the third-oldest private school in Massachusetts; and Groton School, founded in 1884. The town was a battlefield in King Philip's War and Queen Anne's War, as England and France competed through their North American colonies from the 17th century well into the 18th century. It was the birthplace of William Prescott, who commanded the colonial forces at the Battle of Bunker Hill during the American Revolution. In postwar years, it had incidents of insurrection during Shays' Rebellion (1786–1787). History The area surrounding modern-day Groton has, for thousands of years, been the territory of various cultures of indigenous peoples. They settled along the rivers, which they used for domestic tasks, fishing and transportation. His ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Chelmsford, Massachusetts
Chelmsford () is a town in Massachusetts that was established in 1655. It is located northwest of Boston. The Chelmsford militia played a role in the American Revolution at the Battle of Lexington and Concord and the Battle of Bunker Hill. Chelmsford was incorporated in May 1655 by an act of the Massachusetts General Court. When Chelmsford was incorporated, its local economy was fueled by lumber mills, limestone quarries and kilns. The farming community of East Chelmsford was incorporated as Lowell in the 1820s; over the next decades it would go on to become one of the first large-scale factory towns in the United States because of its early role in the country's Industrial Revolution. Chelmsford experienced a drastic increase in population between 1950 and 1970, coinciding with the connection of U.S. Route 3 in Lowell to Massachusetts Route 128 in the 1950s and the extension of U.S. Route 3 from Chelmsford to New Hampshire in the 1960s. Chelmsford has a representative to ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Woburn, Massachusetts
Woburn ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 40,876 at the 2020 census. Woburn is located north of Boston. Woburn uses Massachusetts' mayor-council form of government, in which an elected mayor is the executive and a partly district-based, partly at-large city council is the legislature. It is the only one of Massachusetts' 351 municipalities to refer to members of its City Council as "Aldermen." History Woburn was first settled in 1640 near Horn Pond, a primary source of the Mystic River, and was officially incorporated in 1642. At that time the area included present day towns of Woburn, Winchester, Burlington, and parts of Stoneham, Massachusetts, Stoneham and Wilmington. In 1740 Wilmington, Massachusetts, Wilmington separated from Woburn. In 1799 Burlington, Massachusetts, Burlington separated from Woburn; in 1850 Winchester, Massachusetts, Winchester did so, too. Woburn got its name from Wobu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, Worcester, and Springfield. It is one of two de jure county seats of Middlesex County, although the county's executive government was abolished in 1997. Situated directly north of Boston, across the Charles River, it was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, once also an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Lesley University, and Hult International Business School are in Cambridge, as was Radcliffe College before it merged with Harvard. Kendall Square in Cambridge has been called "the most innovative square mile on the planet" owing to the high concentration of successful startups that have emerged in the vicinity ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Concord River
The Concord River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed October 3, 2011 tributary of the Merrimack River in eastern Massachusetts in the United States. The river drains a small rural and suburban region northwest of Boston. One of the most famous small rivers in U.S. history, it was the scene of an important early battle of the American Revolutionary War and was the subject of a famous 19th-century book by Henry David Thoreau. Description and early history The river begins in Middlesex County, formed by the confluence of the Sudbury and Assabet rivers at Egg Rock, near the Concord town center. It flows generally north, from eastern Concord (along the northwestern edge of the Boston metropolitan area), joining the Merrimack River from the south on the eastern side of Lowell. It is a gently flowing stream with little variation in topography along most of its route. Its drainage basin stretches into Wo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |