A Short History of Oxford

The Huguenots, and the Name

The first families to settle the grant were French Protestants. In 1686 and 1687 about thirty Huguenot families arrived, financed by Gabriel Bernon, a merchant born in La Rochelle who had fled France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and who paid for a grist mill, a saw mill, a wash leather mill and a church on Mayo's Hill. Bernon himself settled in Boston. The place was named Oxford after the city of that name in England.

The settlement did not hold. It was abandoned in 1696 and permanently in 1704, and the fort the settlers built on what is now Fort Hill Road was left. English settlers came in 1713, and that is the year the town takes as its founding. In 1881 a group of women organised the Huguenot Memorial Society of Oxford, which bought the fort site, erected a cross and pedestal monument there in 1884, and in 1979 deeded eight and one half acres to the town on a charitable trust: the town shall forever retain and use the premises as a memorial to the early Huguenot settlers, for the benefit, enjoyment and historical enrichment of the citizens. The Historical Commission holds it. The Massachusetts State Register of Historic Places accepted the fort in 1985 and the National Register in 1988.

A Town With No Act of Incorporation

Here is a fact the town states about itself, in writing, without flinching: no formal act of incorporation of Oxford has been found. The earliest mention is May 31, 1693, when Daniel Allen of Oxford was chosen representative to the General Court. For three centuries the town simply operated as a town, with a founding year everyone used and no paper behind it. In 2013, for the tercentenary, the Great and General Court of Massachusetts established 1713 as the date of incorporation for Oxford. The seal on the town's own letterhead says Incorporated 1713, and the vote that made that official is younger than most of the people reading this page.

Three People Oxford Sent Out

• Ebenezer Learned was born here in 1728 and served as a Selectman from 1758 to 1794. In 1775 he led his Minutemen to Boston, took command of Dorchester Heights under General Washington, and was the first to enter Boston after the British evacuated in 1776. He was named Brigadier General, fought at Saratoga, and commanded a brigade of Massachusetts troops at Valley Forge. He represented Oxford at the Massachusetts Convention in 1779 and died here in 1801.
• Clara Barton was born here in 1821 and taught at District School No. 9. She became the first woman to work in the Patent Office in Washington in 1854, organised the search for missing soldiers at her own expense after the Civil War, and served as the first president of the American Red Cross from 1881 to 1904. She wrote the American Amendment, which extended Red Cross relief beyond wars to famines, floods and earthquakes. Her birthplace at 66 Clara Barton Road in North Oxford is a museum.
• Elliot P. Joslin, M.D. was born here in 1869 and became the first doctor in the United States to specialise in diabetes, founding what is now the Joslin Diabetes Center. He was the first to argue that patients should be taught to manage their own condition. He also challenged the federal government to study diabetes in the town where he was born, and the Oxford study began in 1946 and ran for twenty years.

The Charter, and What It Changed

The piece of Oxford history that most directly affects you is recent. Oxford adopted a town charter in 1972 and has amended it since, most recently in the text dated March 16, 2022. The charter created the Town Manager form the town runs on today, and it settled which offices Oxford voters fill and which they do not.

Under charter section 4-1-1 the town elects a Moderator, a Board of Library Trustees, a Board of Selectmen, a Housing Authority, a School Committee and two members of the Southern Worcester County Regional Vocational School District Committee. It does not elect a Town Clerk: section 4-6-1 makes that a Town Manager appointment approved by a majority of the full Board of Selectmen. The treasurer, the collector, the assessors, the Planning Board and the Board of Health are appointments too. The trade the charter made was fewer offices on the ballot in exchange for one professional administrator answerable to a board you do elect, and it is the kind of trade Town Meeting can reopen, because a charter is amended the same way it was adopted.

Town Meeting itself has kept changing. In 2024 the town bought a handheld electronic voting system and first used it at the Special Town Meeting of October 2, so the count on a close article is now visible in the room within seconds.

The History the Town Keeps Itself

The Oxford Historical Commission maintains the town's historic timeline, runs Let's Talk Oxford History sessions at the Senior Center, leads walking tours through Greenbriar and along the French River, and cares for the 1872 North Gore District 8 Schoolhouse, which was moved to Joslin Park in 1996. The Huguenot Memorial Society still holds its annual picnic and concert at the fort. Both are volunteer bodies, and both take new members.