Less than twenty years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, a group of intrepid pioneers set out for the Shawsheen Wilderness, named by the Native American population inhabiting its woods and rivers. By 1655, the group incorporated the settlement, naming it Billerica, after Billericay, England, the home of many of the Pilgrims. With images from glass-plate negative collections unseen for generations, Billerica takes a pictorial journey through the past of this Yankee Doodle town. Stories are captured as Billerica progresses from a small farming village to an Industrial Revolution capital with mills, railyards, and the Middlesex Canal (the first of its kind in the country). Billerica introduces some of the most influential people in the history of Billerica and showcases its heyday as a summer resort, when tourists traveled by trolley to enjoy a wealth of river and lake recreation.

Opened on May 1, 1854, the State Almshouse at Tewksbury was a venture by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to provide economical care for state paupers. Originally intended to accommodate 500 residents, by the end of 1854 the almshouse had admitted well over 2,200 paupers, thus necessitating future expansion. Although the virtue of the institution was called into question in 1883 by Gov. Benjamin Butler, who decried Supt. Thomas J. Marsh, the almshouse would continue to serve the destitute of the commonwealth for years to come. The name would later be changed to Tewksbury State Hospital to reflect the inclusion of the mentally ill, the sick, and those suffering from infectious disease as patients. Today, the hospital remains operational in providing specialized care in the Thomas J. Saunders Building while also serving as host to various governmental agencies and community organizations like the Public Health Museum on its historic campus. Although many of the early structures were demolished in the 1970s, the Tewksbury State Hospital remains an active institution brimming with architectural beauty and a rich public health history.

Pulitzer Prize Winner: “A meticulous and remarkably detailed account of the early government and social organization of the town of Sudbury, Massachusetts.” —Time In addition to drawing on local records from Sudbury, Massachusetts, the author of this classic work, which won the Pulitzer Prize in History, traced the town’s early families back to England to create an outstanding portrait of a colonial settlement in the seventeenth century. He looks at the various individuals who formed this new society; how institutions and government took shape; what changed—or didn’t—in the movement from the Old World to the New; and how those from different local cultures adjusted, adapted, competed, and cooperated to plant the seeds of what would become, in the century to follow, a commonwealth of the United States of America. “An important and interesting book . . . to the student of institutions, even to the sociologist, as well as to the historian.” —The New England Quarterly