Christmas Light Installation in Marlborough, MA

John Howe in 1656 was a fur trader and built a house at the intersection of two Indian trails, Nashua Trail and Connecticut path. He could speak the language of the Algonquian Indians though the local tribe referred to themselves as the Pennacooks. The settlers were welcomed by the Indians because they protected them from other tribes they were at war with. In the 1650s, several families left the nearby town of Sudbury, 18 miles west of Boston, to start a new town. The village was named after Marlborough, the market town in Wiltshire, England. It was first settled in 1657 by 14 men led by Edmund Rice, John Ruddock, John Howe and a third John named John Bent ; in 1656 Rice and his colleagues petitioned the Massachusetts General Court to create the town of Marlborough and it was officially incorporated in 1660. Rice was elected a selectman at Marlborough in 1657. Sumner Chilton Powell wrote, in Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town, “Not only did Rice become the largest individual landholder in Sudbury, but he represented his new town in the Massachusetts legislature for five years and devoted at least eleven of his last fifteen years to serving as selectman and judge of small causes.”

The Puritan minister Reverend William Brimstead became the first minister of First Church in Marlborough, William Ward the first deacon and Johnathan Johnson was the first blacksmith.

Marlborough was one of the seven “Praying Indian Towns” because they were converted to Christianity by the Rev. John Eliot of Roxbury. In 1674, a deed was drawn up dividing the land between the settlers and the natives. This is the only record of names of the natives. The settlement was almost destroyed by Native Americans in 1676 during King Philip’s War.