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is a town in Chenango County, New York, United States. The town contains a village named Oxford. Oxford is an interior town in the south-central part of the county, southwest of the City of Norwich. At the 2000 census the town population was 3,992. The name derives from that of the native town of an early landowner from New England.
The town is within the former realm of the Oneida and Tuscarora.
A tract of land in the town was purchased by Benjamin Hovey, from Oxford, Massachusetts. The first settlers in Oxford arrived in the spring of 1789. Elijah Blackman, his son Jabez Blackman and eleven year-old adopted daughter Polly Knapp built a primitive log cabin on an island in the Chenango River. The little island on which the Blackman family had squatted had been previously been bought by Benjamin Hovey, who when he came on later to take possession, gave them in consideration of the improvements made, a piece of land, a mile and a half up the river. On this Blackman resided till his death, which occurred about the year 1825.
The Town of Oxford was made up in 1793 from territory divided from the Town of Bainbridge and the Town of Union ( now in Broome County ). Oxford lost some of its territory when the Town of Guilford was created in 1813, and the Town of Coventry was formed in 1843.
The former Chenango Canal (1837) passed through the town. Railroad service began in 1870.