Medway, Massachusetts
A Short History of Medway
A town incorporated in 1713, a family that farmed one Oak Street field for four generations, mills on a brook called Chicken Brook, an eastern half that walked out and became Millis, and a history book the town commissioned about itself and then very nearly lost.
The Farm That Became a Public Building
Start with a single field, because Medway keeps unusually good records of it. One of the first settlers in the area was a Mr. Partridge, who came from Medfield in 1653, cleared land on Oak Street, built a house and raised a family there. His grandson Jonathan sold the farm to his brother James in 1742. James’s grandson Joel bought more land and pushed the family holding north of Oak Street and west of Chicken Brook. When Joel died in October 1852 the property went to his widow Joanna and their five children, who sold their shares to a neighbour named Addison Thayer, and Addison had married Joel’s youngest daughter Lydia. Four generations, one field, and the deeds to prove it.
Then, in 2006, Medway’s Town Meeting voted to buy the house with Community Preservation Act money, to preserve it and to add to the town’s open space. Between 2008 and 2010 the barn was stabilized and the grounds were cleared and planted. The Thayer Homestead at 2B Oak Street is now a public building the town rents for weddings and events, and it is public because a room full of voters said it should be.
Chicken Brook, and What It Powered
Addison’s father Cephas Thayer is the reason the landscape looks the way it does. By 1830 Cephas owned the land north and south of Main Street along Chicken Brook, with the right to use the water to power mills. He built a dam that made Thayer Pond, which Medway now calls Choate Pond, and that water drove the Thayer Box Board Mill. A second dam on the south side of Main Street powered a second mill. Medway was a mill and farm town for the whole of the nineteenth century, and the ponds, the parks and half the street names are what the mills left behind. Choate Park sits on that pond today, and the Medway Parks Association bought the pond and the ground around it so that the public could use it.
1885: The Eastern Half Becomes Millis
Medway used to be bigger. The eastern part of the town, known as East Medway, was set off and incorporated as the Town of Millis in 1885. That is the ordinary way a Massachusetts town gets made: a settlement grows far enough from the meetinghouse, and its own affairs get large enough, that it asks the Legislature for a town of its own. Medway had done the same thing itself, incorporating in 1713.
The Book the Town Commissioned About Itself
In 1881 the Town of Medway commissioned its own history. The Rev. E. O. Jameson wrote it, and The History of Medway, Mass., 1713 to 1885 was copyrighted in 1886, just as East Medway was leaving. Very few of the original copies still exist. In 2026 the historian Tom Ellis digitized and reprinted the book, and the Medway Historical Commission had a new cover designed, scanned the volume and made it a searchable file on the town’s own website. On August 4, 2026 the Commission handed the first printed copy to the Medway Public Library at the Library Trustees’ meeting, alongside a reprint of Orion T. Mason’s 1913 history of Medway, funded by the Kennedy family in memory of Mary Kennedy and presented by her grandson Michael Kennedy. Both books went into circulation, and both are searchable on the town’s own site.
The Medway Historical Society, founded in 1902 and still working from 223 Main Street, sells the reprints and keeps the house histories, the genealogy files and the maps. The Historical Commission meets on the fourth Wednesday of the month at the Senior Center on Oakland Street, and it is a board a resident can be appointed to.
2001 and 2020: Two Votes That Still Decide Things
Two recent decisions shape what Medway can do now. In 2001 the town adopted the Community Preservation Act, a state law that lets a municipality add a surcharge to its own property tax and spend the proceeds on open space, historic preservation, recreation and community housing. That is the money that bought the Thayer Homestead, bought fourteen acres on Winthrop Street and leased seven of them to the Medway Community Farm, bought a parcel on Adams Street for the farm, and rebuilt Choate Park and Oakland Park. Every one of those projects was voted, project by project, at Town Meeting.
In 2020 the Legislature enacted Chapter 61 of the Acts of 2020, a new charter for Medway, repealing the town’s previous charter of 2008. That is the document that makes the Select Board the chief executive office, gives the Town Manager the appointment of every department head, sets the annual town election on the third Tuesday in May and the Annual Town Meeting on the second Monday, and keeps every legislative power in a room open to all voters. It can be amended the same way it was adopted, which is why the town keeps a standing Charter Review board.
Sources: Town of Medway, Thayer Homestead History (medwayma.gov/thayer-homestead-history); Town of Medway, Town Manager welcome statement (medwayma.gov/departments/town-manager); Town of Medway, Historical Commission presents digitized edition of Jameson’s History of Medway to the Medway Public Library, August 2026; Medway town charter, Chapter 61 of the Acts of 2020; Medway Historical Society.