Christmas Light Installation in Boxborough, MA

The area which became the town of Boxborough was first inhabited by the Native Americans of the Nipmuc and Pennacook tribes. It was probably visited by colonists as early as the mid seventeenth century, before the neighboring towns of Stow (1683) and Acton (1735) were founded. However, the land in Boxborough was not settled until the beginning of the eighteenth century by farmers looking for fertile land to establish farms. Over the next decades, this area would become one of the most productive agricultural farming areas in the county. Several men from the area served in the Seven Years’ War.

On April 19, 1775, 21 men from Boxborough met at the Boaz Brown house on Hill road before marching with the companies of Littleton and Acton to the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Most of these men, previously farmers, would go on to serve the colonial militia for the remainder of the war.

Sons of Simon Blanchard, descendant of some of the earliest settlers of Boxborough (and killed during the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759 during the Seven Years’ War), Calvin and Luther Blanchard, are two prominent revolutionary veterans. Luther marched with Captain Isaac Davis’s company of Acton to the Battle of Concord, serving as a fifer. At the North Bridge, several minute-men companies engaged with the British troops in a conflict remembered as the shot heard round the world, eventually forcing the redcoats to retreat. Blanchard is remembered by some historians as the first man wounded, but it is hard to confirm considering the nature of the battle. He received a musket-shot to the chest. Historian Lucie Hager documents Luther’s witty interaction with a Concord woman who was tending his wound: