Weston, Massachusetts
A Short History of Weston
A farming corner of Watertown that became its own town in 1713, a post road that carried Henry Knox’s cannons toward Cambridge, and a town that rewrote its own government by act of the Legislature in 2001.
1713, and the Two Dates on the Seal
Weston did not begin as a town. It began as farmland belonging to the settlement of Watertown, far enough out that the people working it eventually wanted their own meeting, and in 1713 it was incorporated as a separate town. Look at the town seal, though, and you will see the date written 1712-13. That is not a mistake and it is not a hedge. England and its colonies were still on the Julian calendar, which started the year in March, so the month we call January 1713 was written January 1712 at the time. When the calendar changed, the town kept both. That is the pattern for most of eastern Massachusetts: a town is usually a piece of an older town that grew big enough to want its own vote, and the paperwork carries the seams.
The Post Road
The great road from Boston to the west ran through Weston, and for most of a century the town’s history is the history of who was travelling on it. Josiah Smith built a tavern beside it in 1757, and it served travellers until 1838. Isaac Jones built the Golden Ball Tavern between 1765 and 1768; in 1774 a crowd ransacked it, because Jones was suspected of Tory sympathies and had kept serving tea. On April 19, 1775, one hundred men and three officers of the Weston militia marched to Concord and met the British column on its way back to Boston. In the winter of 1776 Henry Knox’s soldiers hauled the guns from Fort Ticonderoga along this same road toward General Washington in Cambridge. And after the American victory at Saratoga in 1777, General Burgoyne’s surrendered army walked the road as prisoners and camped in Weston. The elm that marked the spot became the town’s own symbol of liberty and stood until the late 1960s.
Water, and the Shape of the Town
Between 1901 and 1903 the Weston Aqueduct and Reservoir were built here as part of the regional plan to carry water into metropolitan Boston, which is a useful thing to know about a suburb: some of what is built in your town is built for the region, and the town negotiates the terms. Then Weston reorganised its own centre. The Town Improvement Plan of 1912 turned swampland into the Town Green, enclosed it with a new Town House Road, and led to the Colonial Revival Town Hall that Bigelow and Wadsworth designed in 1917. The road that plan drew is still the town’s address: Town Hall is at 11 Town House Road.
2001, and the Government the Town Rewrote
Here is the piece of Weston history that most directly affects you. In 2001 the Legislature passed Chapter 80 of the Acts of 2001, an act establishing the position of Town Manager in the Town of Weston, and the town gained a professional chief administrator appointed by the Select Board. Chapter 390 of the Acts of 2006 amended the act for school buildings. Chapter 6 of the Acts of 2009, accepted by the voters, abolished the elected Town Clerk and made it an appointed office. Then in 2026 the town changed the shape again, from the other direction: a special act signed on October 8, 2025 grew the Select Board from three members to five, the voters ratified it 553 to 294 on January 13, 2026, and the May election filled three seats at once.
Every one of those changes went through the voters, and every one of them changed what a Weston ballot looks like. Whether the balance between elected offices and appointed ones is right is a real question, and it is exactly the kind of question Town Meeting can reopen, because a special act can be amended the same way it was passed.
The History the Town Keeps Itself
Town Meeting created Weston’s Historical Commission in 1968, and the town now counts one Local Historic District on Crescent Street, ten National Register districts, twenty-six historic areas, and seven properties listed individually on the National Register. That work is shared with residents who hold no town office at all. The Weston Historical Society is a private nonprofit that keeps the town’s own collection, the Golden Ball Tavern Museum runs the 1768 tavern, and the Friends of Josiah Smith Tavern look after the 1757 one. Preservation money in Weston runs through the Community Preservation Committee and is voted, project by project, at Town Meeting, which means the town’s history is decided in the room where every registered voter can stand up.
Sources: Town of Weston, About Weston’s History (westonma.gov/564) and Weston Timelines (westonma.gov/1303), with the town-hosted timeline volumes at DocumentCenter View/16151 and View/16153; Chapter 80 of the Acts of 2001 and Chapter 6 of the Acts of 2009 (DocumentCenter View/429 and View/428); the Town Clerk’s Special Town Election summary of January 13, 2026 (DocumentCenter View/41450); U.S. Census Bureau.