Boylston, Massachusetts
A Short History of Boylston
From a farming precinct of Shrewsbury, to a town of its own in 1786, to a reservoir that flooded some of its best farmland so that Boston could drink.
Before the Town
European settlement of this ground began early in the eighteenth century: the Massachusetts Historical Commission dates the first homes, near Sawyer’s Mills on the Nashua River, to about 1705, and the town dates its settlement to 1722. For most of the eighteenth century the settlement here was not a town at all but the Second Precinct of Shrewsbury, set off in 1742, a farming community with its own meetinghouse at the center of the precinct.
1786, a Town of Its Own
In 1786 the precinct became a town. Boylston was incorporated that year from part of Shrewsbury, and it has governed itself by town meeting ever since. The same instinct that made a precinct into a town is the one that still fills the seats at the annual meeting: the people who live here decide the business here.
The Stone Town Hall
The two-story stone town hall north of the common went up in 1830, paid for with funds from a bequest. It still stands at 7 Central Street, where the Boylston Historical Society keeps its museum.
The Reservoir That Changed the Map
In the early twentieth century the Commonwealth built the Wachusett Reservoir, and Boylston gave up a large piece of itself to it. The reservoir now covers much of the town’s northwestern corner, part of the water supply that reaches Greater Boston, and its construction ended the mills that the Nashua River had once powered. A town that had run on farming and small industry became, in part, a protected watershed, and that is still one of the first things a map of Boylston shows you.
Two Towns, One School
Boylston has long educated its children alongside neighboring Berlin. The two towns run a regional school district together, and its middle and high school carries the name Tahanto. When Boylston voters approve a school budget at Town Meeting, they are voting on a system they share with the town next door, which is why the School Committee answers to both.
A Garden of National Note
The Worcester County Horticultural Society, founded in 1842, moved its home to Boylston and opened Tower Hill Botanic Garden in 1986. Today it is the New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill, about 200 acres of display gardens on French Drive that draw visitors from across the region, and it is one of the reasons a small town north of Worcester turns up on lists it is easy to overlook.
Sources: Massachusetts Historical Commission, Reconnaissance Survey Town Report, Boylston (1983); Town of Boylston, About Boylston; the Boylston Historical Society; the New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill (nebg.org); U.S. Census Bureau.
MassCivics last checked this page on September 24, 2026.
Sources
- Town records: Town of Boylston, About Boylston, as of May 11, 2026.
- History and incorporation: Secretary of the Commonwealth, MHC Reconnaissance Survey Town Report, Boylston (1983), as of January 1983.
- School district records: Berlin-Boylston Regional School District, Press release regarding the 2024 School Committee election, as of November 5, 2024.