Middleborough, Massachusetts
A Short History of Middleborough
A place called Nemasket before it was called anything else, a village burned in King Philip’s War, a town that gave up its western half in 1853, and a government written in a single act of the Legislature in 1920 that is still the law here.
Nemasket, and the River Full of Fish
Before it was Middleborough it was Nemasket, the name of a Wampanoag settlement on a small river. The town’s own history page says the name may have meant place of fish, and if you stand on the Nemasket River in the spring you can see why: alewife and blueback herring still run up it from the sea toward the Assawompset Ponds to spawn, in numbers you can watch from the bank. Europeans settled there in 1661, called the place Middlebury after somewhere in England, and the General Court incorporated it as Middleborough in 1669. Excavation near the mouth of the Nemasket has turned up an Archaic village site radiocarbon dated to at least 2300 BC, which makes the herring the oldest continuous fact about this town.
1675: The Village That Burned
During King Philip’s War in 1675 and 1676 the townspeople took shelter in a fort built along the Nemasket River, on ground that sits behind what is now a kindergarten. Before long they abandoned the fort and withdrew to Plymouth Colony for safety. While they were gone the entire village was burned to the ground, and it was several years before the town was refounded. The town publishes this on its own history page, plainly, with no softening, and it belongs in a civics guide for the same reason: the town you live in has been started twice.
1853: Middleborough Gave Away Its Western Half
In 1853 western Middleborough broke away and became the Town of Lakeville, and it took with it the main access to the big freshwater lakes, Assawompset Pond among them. Middleborough is still the second largest community in Massachusetts by land area, behind Plymouth alone, which tells you how much ground it had to begin with. Splitting a town is a real thing the Legislature can do, and it is worth knowing that the map of Massachusetts is not permanent.
Shoes, Then Cranberries
Middleborough was once called the shoe capital of the world, and the Alden Shoe Company, one of the last shoe manufacturers left in America, is still here. The town now calls itself the cranberry capital of the world and hosts the corporate headquarters of Ocean Spray Cranberries. Both descriptions are the town’s own. The 1870s town hall and the Greek revival library are still standing downtown, which is a useful thing to notice about a town whose government moved into a new form in 1920 without moving out of its buildings.
1920: The Town Rewrote Its Own Government
Here is the piece of Middleborough history that most directly affects you. In 1920 the Legislature passed Chapter 592 of the Acts of 1920, an act written for this town alone, and it is still Middleborough’s charter today. It created the office of Town Manager and gave the Select Board the power to appoint one. It abolished the elected offices of Water Commissioner, Board of Health and Auditor outright and moved their powers onto the Select Board, which is why five people you elect also sit as the Board of Health. Later amendments did the same to two more elected offices: the Town Clerk and the Town Treasurer and Collector of Taxes are now appointed by the Select Board, and the charter says each elected office continued only until the first appointee qualified.
The trade was deliberate: fewer offices on the ballot, and a professional administrator accountable to a board you do elect. The act has been amended many times since, most recently by Chapter 94 of the Acts of 2022, and a Charter Study Committee posts its agendas alongside every other public body in town. A charter can be changed the same way it was made, which is to say through Town Meeting and the Legislature, and that is a door rather than a wall.
The History the Town Keeps Itself
The Soule Homestead Education Center works a piece of that history as a farm, running field trips, workshops and a summer camp on the grounds, and its programs for 2026 include one on Middleborough and the Revolutionary War. It is a nonprofit, it takes volunteers, and it is the kind of place a student can walk into without an appointment.
Sources: Town of Middleborough, History (middleboroughma.gov/304) and About / Statistics (middleboroughma.gov/303); Charter of the Town of Middleborough, Chapter 592 of the Acts of 1920 as amended, published at ecode360.com/30455948; U.S. Census Bureau 2025 Gazetteer land area file; Soule Homestead Education Center.