By the mid-1800s, however, came the railroad
and small factories were springing up along the town's two branches
of the Sudbury River and its tributaries. Best remembered, perhaps,
is the Cordaville Cotton and Woolen Mill that made blankets
for the Civil War and left its name to one of the four villages.
And with the passing years came straw bonnet, plaster, brush,
and boot and shoe factories, thriving now in Fayville as well
as Cordaville.
But then, as the end of the 19th Century approached, Boston
and its burgeoning population, now becoming accustomed to
indoor plumbing, was searching for water beyond Chestnut Hill
and Cochituate. The Water Works looked to Wachusett in Boylston,
to the northwest of Southborough, for its next supply-and
built a dam to create storage for the water on its way to
the city. The dam was across the upper branch of the Sudbury
coming into Southborough from Marlboro.
Thus it was that the 1898 building of the Fayville Dam assured
that Southborough's prospering industry would lose much of
its water power and, rather than gaining its livelihood from
manufacturing, Southborough would remain a rural community,
growing substantially only much later with the post-World
War II housing boom and the advent of the "high tech"
industry and Route 495. The huge waterworks project also added
to the growing Irish population of the town and brought the
first wave of Italians. They were the ancestors of many who
remain to this day.
But the reservoirs were actually the second turning point.
The first had come just a bit earlier through the endeavors
of several residents destined to leave their mark on the town
just as significant as being the home of the watershed.
While there are dozens of names to be found in the annals
of our past, there has to be one family that, among its contributions,
created the town center that we still know today. For it was
members of the Burnett family who founded St. Mark's Church,
St. Mark's School, and the Fay School, as well as Deerfoot
Farm, the premier establishment of the town from the mid-1800s
until well into the 1900s.
Add the Choate family who donated the Community House to
the Village Society and Francis Fay's donation of the first
$500 for a town library, and you see that much of the center
of town, with the lawns and characteristic buildings of the
schools and the English-style stone church, is what it is
because of families prominent two centuries ago.
It goes without saying that there are hundreds of more names
who have added-and continue to add-their contributions, large
and small, to making Southborough what it is in the 21st Century.
There were the first settlers and the town's own company of
Minutemen, the preachers and teachers who guided their flocks
in matters of education and the spirit, the town "fathers"
and, rather late, town "mothers," who have cared
for its government and public life since the first Selectmen
were elected in 1727 and the first Town Meetings met (at that
time, nearly continuously), and as the "modern times"
came along, the developers who have built far more houses
than the founders could ever have imagined and the businessmen
who have found the town an attractive and convenient location
for their facilities. And there were, throughout the years,
the men and women who left the town, some forever, to fight-first
for independence, for the union, and for peace in the world.
As our town fully enters the "world of the web"
with this site, we look forward to how this electronic still-miracle
can contribute to our community. Yet we look back, too, to
realize that for all of its nearly 275 years (yes, we'll be
celebrating in 2002), the people who have walked these ways
before us gave us the Southborough that we call home. As did
they, we struggle with allocating town funds, with electing
officials in whom we can be confident, and with preserving
the special flavor that drew us here and makes so many of
us want to stay. It continues to be a worthwhile pursuit,
this taking care of our town.
Read all this and much more for yourself in the town's history,
Fences of Stone, published in 1990 under the auspices of the
Southborough Historic Commission and written by Southborough
resident and Fay School teacher Richard E. Noble. See some
history for yourself in the Historical Society's new museum
in the old one-room schoolhouse behind the Town House. See
Historical Society's web site at
http://home.attbi.com/~southboroughhistoricalsociety
