Westford, Massachusetts
A Short History of Westford
A village that argued its way out of Chelmsford in 1729, five mill and farm settlements that still have their own names, and a town that rewrote its own government by act of the Legislature in 1989.
1729, and the Village That Left
Westford did not begin as a town. It began as the western end of Chelmsford, far enough from the meetinghouse that getting to a Sunday service was a day’s problem, and by the 1720s the settlement out there had grown large enough to run its own affairs. On September 23, 1729, it was incorporated as the Town of Westford. The town says so itself on the first line of its own About page, and its Russian Cemetery history records the same year and the same route out of Chelmsford. That is the pattern for most of eastern Massachusetts: a town is usually a piece of an older town that got big enough to want its own vote.
Five Names on One Map
Ask someone where in Westford they live and you may not get an address. You may get Forge Village, or Nabnasset, or Graniteville, or Parker Village, or just the Center. Those are not neighborhoods in the modern sense. They are the settlements the town grew out of, each built around water power, a quarry or a crossroads, and they outlasted every reason they existed. Graniteville is named for what came out of the ground there. Forge Village is named for what was made there. Nabnasset carries a name older than the town itself. You can still find all five on the town’s own department pages and road names.
Farms, Wool and What Replaced Them
The town’s own description of its history is one sentence long and it is honest: originally Westford was noted for its farms and woolen mills, and today it is mostly a bedroom community with an emphasis on high tech. That covers about two hundred years of change in twenty-eight words. The mills that ran on the town’s ponds and brooks employed the villages that grew around them. When the mills went, the villages stayed, and the orchards that gave the town its Apple Blossom Festival every May are still on the ground.
1989: The Town Rewrote Its Own Government
Here is the piece of Westford history that most directly affects you. Until 1989, Westford elected its Town Clerk, its Treasurer-Collector, its Tree Warden, its Board of Assessors, its Water Commission and its Cemetery Commission. Then the Legislature enacted a home rule charter for the town establishing a Select Board and Town Manager form of administration, and the voters accepted it at the next annual election. Those six offices stopped being elected and became appointments of the new Town Manager, one by one as each sitting officeholder’s term ran out. The town amended the charter again in 2020.
The trade was deliberate: fewer offices on the ballot, and one professional administrator accountable to a board you do elect. Whether that was the right trade is a real question, and it is the kind of question Town Meeting can reopen, because a charter can be amended the same way it was adopted.
The History the Town Keeps Itself
The Westford Historical Society and Museum holds the town’s manuscripts and artifacts and runs the Westford Museum. It is not a passive collection. It applies to the town’s own Community Preservation Committee for money to restore what it holds, and Town Meeting votes those applications one at a time, which means the preservation of Westford’s history is itself decided in the room where every registered voter can stand up.
Sources: Town of Westford, About Westford (westfordma.gov/712); Town of Westford, Home Rule Charter Act 1989 as amended 2020 (westfordma.gov DocumentCenter 3029); Town of Westford Community Preservation Committee applications; Westford Historical Society and Museum; U.S. Census Bureau.