For most of the 1700’s and 1800’s Town Meetings were recorded in a series of Volumes dubbed “Town Records”. In Southborought’s formative years these volumes were catch-alls for recording most local matters. In addition to including records of questions raised and decisions reached at town meetings, they document everything from land grants and property disputes to the election of town officers, and laying-out of new roads. Town Record Books from the late 19th century also include itemized listings of dog licenses and permits that were issued by the town.

The origins of these kinds of records is described in “Early Town Records of New England as Historical Sources”, which was published in the American Archivist vol. 25, no. 2 (1962):

“From the very day on which a new township was founded the townsmen kept written records of their official transactions. The legal and other reasons for doing so were compelling, and English precedent was deeply ingrained. Just as in our day every newly founded club [...] begins to keep a series of minutes, the newly formed town would purchase one or more skin-bound volumes of blank pages and begin to keep its own official records.” “Where else but in town records can we watch so closely the day-to-day functioning of local government as it deals with all the routine matters of community life? Here we find the titles of the various town officers, from selectmen down to hog reeves, and read the instructions given them by their fellow citizens at town meetings. Town finances are often laid before us in these yellowed pages. We can learn how taxes were decided upon, apportioned, and collected, and for what purposes the money was disbursed. In short, the whole functioning machinery of New England town government—simple, direct, relatively democratic, eminently practical— is seen at work.”

In Southborough, the Town Record Books and Meeting Minutes provide us with some insight about why the townspeople desired to separate from Marlborough and form their own town in May of 1727 — it was too far a distance to travel to church and they needed a school that was more accessible. We learn that in August, 1774 after Parliament passed the “Intolerable Acts” 108 Southborough men signed an agreement not to purchase or use any goods imported from Great Britain. A few pages later it is recorded that the town organized a committee for the purposes of providing support to the people of Boston after the British blockade of the Harbor. Still later, Town Records chronicled the commissioning of a War Memorial in 1865 meant to commemorate Southborough’s dead who had served in the Civil War. These volumes provide extraordinary insight into the lives of everyday people in Southborough’s past and the challenges that they faced.