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is a town located in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, eight miles north of Boston. With its agricultural roots having mostly disappeared, it is now an affluent "bedroom community". The population was 20,500 at the 2000 census.
The land on which Winchester now sits was purchased from Native Americans by representatives of the settlement of Charlestown in 1639, and the area was first settled in 1640. In the early years of the settlement, the area was known informally as Waterfield, a reference to its many ponds and to the river which bisected the central village. In its second century, the area was referred to as Black Horse Village, after the busy tavern and hostelry in its center.
Until the middle of the 19th century, present day Winchester comprised parts of Medford, Cambridge, and Woburn. The movement toward incorporation of what, by this time, was called South Woburn was likely precipitated by the rise of the Whig Party in Massachusetts.* The Whigs sought to split a new jurisdiction away from heavily Democratic Woburn and found enough supporters in the burgeoning village to organize a movement toward incorporation. Representatives of the planned new town selected the name Winchester in recognition of Colonel William P. Winchester of nearby Watertown, who pledged $3,000 toward the construction of the first town hall. Upon the signature of then Governor Briggs, the town of Winchester was officially incorporated on April 30, 1850. Curiously, Colonel Winchester did not live to visit the town that had honored his family name. He succumbed to typhoid fever within months of its incorporation.
The town's early growth paralleled improvements in transportation. Prior to incorporation, the Middlesex Canal, linking the Merrimack River to Boston, was completed through then Waterfield. It flourished from 1803–36, until the Boston and Lowell Railroad completed a line which neatly bisected the town and provided it with two stations. Able to deliver passengers as well as goods, the railroad soon bankrupted the canal and spurred more people to move to the area. The first church was built in 1840, the Post Office followed in 1841, and soon after incorporation town schools were started. Industries small and large followed, including the Beggs and Cobb tannery and the Winn Watch Hand factory which would operate well into the 20th century.
By the time of the Civil War, to which Winchester lent many citizens, the need for a municipal water supply became apparent. Engineers convinced a skeptical public to fund a dam in the highlands to the east of town. The structure blocked the creek which flowed from the Middlesex Fells and produced the first of three reservoirs which continue to provide clear water today.
In the early 20th century, growth continued apace as Winchester evolved from its agri-industrial roots into the bedroom community it is today. A rich mix of immigrants — first the Irish in the northern and eastern neighborhoods, then a smattering of African-Americans who flocked to the New Hope Baptist Church in the highlands, and finally Italians who came to work in the westside farms and live in the "Plains" to the east — complemented Winchester's Yankee forbears. The constant in these times of change and up to the present day has been the public spirited efforts of all to continue to maintain the innate physical charm of the town.