NARRATIVE HISTORY of SOUTHBOROUGH --Written in Conjunction with the Historic Properties Survey of Southborough, June, 2000
NARRATIVE HISTORY OF SOUTHBOROUGH --written in conjunction with the Historic Properties Survey of Southborough, June, 2000 INTRODUCTION Political Boundaries The town of Southborough is located at the eastern edge of Worcester County, about sixteen miles east of Worcester and twenty-eight miles from Boston. Only the western portion of its generally fan-shaped area is bounded by Worcester County towns (Westborough and Northborough). The rest of the community borders on Middlesex County. Progressing clockwise from the north, its Middlesex neighbors are Marlborough, Framingham, Ashland, and Hopkinton. Most of Southborough began as the south part of the town of Marlborough (1660), referred to for decades as Stony (Stoney) Brook. It was incorporated as an independent town in 1727. A narrow, 300- acre strip at the south edge of town along the Sudbury River, originally part of Framingham called the Fiddleneck, was annexed in 1786. The border with Westborough was realigned in 1835; and a small section of eighty-two acres at the north was annexed to Marlborough in 1843. Topography The territory within Southborough covers 9,024 acres, or fourteen square miles, of rolling land. It lies within the drainage basin of the Sudbury River, which forms the town's southern boundary. Just as important to the town's history, however, has been the west-to-east water system of Stony Brook, which enters the town at the northwest corner, and until the end of the nineteenth century meandered southwest through the center of town, turned northeast, where it received the flow of Angle Brook, and flowed southeast again into Framingham.
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