Today's walk takes me from the fire barn east of town into the heart of downtown, though on US-20 I'm bypassing central Main Street. As you can see from the below map, US-20 takes a kind of looping path through the town of Marlborough.
 |
| Marlborough Fire Station 3 to Marlboro House of Pizza |
One of the first features I notice in my walk is a nice park off to the right,
Ghiloni Park, also part of a state forest, which has a number of hiking and nature trails as well as the usual park features such as a ball diamond and playground equipment. Below is a photo someone took of one of the nature trails.
An interesting piece of Marlborough history is close to my route: Spring Hill Cemetery, located at High Street, just off US-20.
Find-a-Grave has a little write-up on this very old graveyard:
"In spite of its proximity to the Spring Hill Meeting House, which was not sited nearby until 1806, the Spring Hill Cemetery predates the church by nearly 150 years. It is the oldest of the many burial grounds in Marlborough, commonly understood to have been established at the time the town was founded in 1660. Unfortunately, any early town records of the laying out of the first burial ground have been lost. Local historians, noting the fact that the location of the cemetery a half-mile away from the first meeting house was somewhat unusual for a New England town, have speculated that the settlers cautiously placed it some distance from the "Indian Planting Field." They had, in fact, built their original meeting house on a corner of that land, angering the native people, to whom the planting field had been granted by the government.
"The earliest graves here were apparently unmarked, or had wooden markers. The first marked with a stone was that of Capt. Edward Hutchinson, who died in August of 1675 as a result of wounds received in the ambush near Brookfield during King Philip's War. He was not a native of Marlborough, but was brought here after he was shot, and died several days later. The cemetery sits on 2.62 acres. The earliest (marked) death date is 1675 and latest ca. 1909. There are approximately 700 headstones."
I'm glad it's on the map, because otherwise I would not find it; it seems hidden away behind houses and trees.
One last historical note of interest: Marlborough has the bell that was at Harper's Ferry on that fateful day of John Brown's raid. It's called John Brown's Bell, and it's housed in a little stone building on Main Street, just off where US-20 and Main Street part ways. There's a long history which you can read if you care to at the Marlborough Historical Society site:
John Brown's Bell. It also tells the origin of the Civil War Monument that stands in the center of town, honoring the 91 citizens of Marlborough who died in that war. I can see it before me as I come to the end of my two-mile journey and take a break at the
Marlboro House of Pizza. It's quite a grand statue, as is the rather ornate looking Baptist church that it stands near. You can see both off to the left at the top of the below photo, and in the close up, below that.
