Boggestow – Sherborn

Before it was called Sherborn, the area was known as Boggestow, a native place name that likely described the landscape, interpreted as “rocky” or “hilly” land. The region was inhabited by the Massachusett people, specifically bands connected to the Nipmuc and other Algonquian-speaking tribes of central Massachusetts.  

The Massachusett were part of a larger network of Native communities living throughout eastern and central Massachusetts. They moved seasonally, fishing along rivers like Charles, planting corn and other crops, and hunting in wooded uplands. Place names such as Boggestow preserve traces of the earlier presence, even after English settlers incorporated the town as Sherborn in 1674.

In the mid-17th century, disease, land sales, missionary efforts, and increasing English settlement reshaped Native life in the region. Like many towns in Massachusetts, Sherborn’s colonial story rests on land that had been stewarded by Native peoples whose names remain embedded in its earliest identity.