Contact Information

The land in what is now Bolton was formerly part of the town of Lancaster until Bolton seceded along the Still River, where the current boundary line still stands. The town of Bolton was incorporated on June 24, 1738, following an influx of settlers and was named after the Duke of Bolton.

Prior to its incorporation, the area was settled by English farmers in the 1600s near where the Nashaway tribe fished along the Nashua River. Town historian Esther Whitcomb, descendant of one of Bolton’s earliest documented settlers, cites the recorded birth of a son, Hezekiah, to Josiah Whitcomb in 1681 as one of the earliest recorded births in the area. By 1711, according to Whitcomb, more than 150 people were living on Bolton soil, despite a local history of Indian uprisings and one massacre. Many early houses were protected by flankers, and were designated as garrisons. Bolton’s history is largely reflective of early settlement patterns in the central Massachusetts area and the conflicts with King Philip (Metacom) and his Indian soldiers.

During the American Revolution Bolton farmers erected a liberty pole at the town center and largely supported the revolutionary cause. General John Whitcomb of Bolton was elected the first Major-General of the Massachusetts Army at the third Provincial Congress in 1775. He was a minuteman leader at the Battles of Lexington and Concord and the Battle of Bunker Hill. By the Civil War in the 1860s Bolton residents had formed an abolitionist society, and twenty-one Bolton residents died fighting for the Union. The Bolton Fair was founded in Bolton in 1874 as an agricultural fair, but the fairgrounds were later moved to nearby Lancaster in 2004 where it is still held annually.