Littleton, Massachusetts
A Short History of Littleton
From a Praying Indian village called Nashoba, to apple orchards that drew a juice company from the city, to a town that has owned its own power company for more than a century.
Nashoba
This land’s first recorded name is Nashoba. In 1645 it became the sixth of the Praying Indian villages established under the missionary John Eliot, a settlement of Massachusett people who had converted to Christianity, on the land between Lake Nagog and Fort Pond. Daniel Gookin, writing in 1674, counted about ten families there. King Philip’s War destroyed it: the colonial General Court ordered the Nashoba interned in Concord and then confined on Deer Island in Boston Harbor, where many died of starvation and disease. Some survivors returned, but the village never recovered, and Sarah Doublet, the last of the Nashoba Praying Indians, died in 1736. The names on Littleton’s map still carry that history: Nagog, Nashoba, Tahattawan, the name of a Nashoba leader whose twelve-year-old son was killed by colonists from Chelmsford during the war.
A Town by Act of the General Court
English settlers arrived in 1686, and the community was officially incorporated by act of the Massachusetts General Court on November 2, 1715, with limits that then included what is now Boxborough. The name is said to honor George Lyttleton, a British member of Parliament and treasury commissioner, and the story runs that he acknowledged the compliment by sending a church bell from England. One more piece of local lore survives from the Revolution: the town kept a contingent of Loyalists afterward, and neighboring towns ribbed Littleton for it while attempts to rename King Street as Main, Washington, or Adams Street all failed. King Street is still King Street.
Apples, a Lyceum, and a Railroad
Through the 1800s Littleton grew slowly and became known for its apple orchards and cider. On December 21, 1829, residents voted, in their own words, to promote mutual improvement, and founded the Littleton Lyceum, a public lecture series that is still running today. The Fitchburg Railroad arrived in 1844 and commuter service to Boston began in the 1880s, a connection the town has never lost: the MBTA Fitchburg Line still stops at Littleton/Route 495. The orchards eventually drew industry to the town. Arthur Rowse moved his New England Vinegar Works, maker of the Veryfine juice brand, from Somerville to Littleton in 1930 to be closer to the apple crop.
The Town That Bought Its Own Power
In 1911 the Legislature authorized Littleton to supply its own water, and the Littleton Electric Light and Water Departments celebrated their 100th anniversary in 2012. That century-old decision still shapes daily life: the utility is owned by the town, governed by five commissioners Littleton voters elect to three-year terms, and it supplies electricity to both Littleton and Boxborough at rates it says are among the lowest residential rates in the state. A teenager flipping a light switch in Littleton is using a public utility whose board answers to the town ballot.
Reuben Hoar’s Library
The town library carries a story about gratitude. William S. Houghton, a Littleton native who became one of Boston’s wealthiest merchants, made a bequest in 1884 to establish a library collection honoring Reuben Hoar, the man who had financially assisted his father in a difficult time. Elizabeth and Clement S. Houghton then gave the town the Houghton Memorial Building, built in 1894 and 1895 to house it. The library is still named the Reuben Hoar Library, and in 2022 it moved into a new building at 35 Shattuck Street, directly behind Town Hall.
From Orchards to the Tech Corridor
The arrival of Digital Equipment Corporation in the 1970s connected Littleton to the Boston area’s high-technology corridor, with a very large facility on King Street near the Common. In 2007 IBM purchased the King Street facility and announced it would become the company’s main New England location. In 2014 the town spent a year celebrating its 300th anniversary, and today’s Littleton holds both halves of its story at once: conservation land and working farms on one side, and a stop on a major technology corridor on the other.
Sources: Wikipedia, Littleton, Massachusetts, citing Daniel Gookin’s Historical Collections (1674) and Herbert Joseph Harwood’s An Historical Sketch of the Town of Littleton (1890); the Littleton Electric Light and Water Departments (lelwd.com); the Reuben Hoar Library; the Littleton Lyceum; U.S. Census Bureau.