1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Newton (Massachusetts)

NEWTON, a city of Middlesex county, Massachusetts, U.S.A., 10 m. W. of Boston, on the S. bank of the Charles river, which borders it for 16 m. Pop. (1880) 16,995; (1890) 24,379; (1900) 33,587, of whom 10,068 were foreign-born, 19,006 of foreign parentage and 505 were negroes; (1910, census) 39,806. Newton is served by the Boston & Albany railway. The city, with an area of 17·98 sq. m., contains 15 villages. In Newton, the most prominent of these villages, is a stone terrace monument to John Eliot, erected on the site of Waban’s wigwam near Nonantum Hill, where Eliot founded the first Indian Church on the 28th of October 1646—the Nonantum Indians, under their chief Waban, removed to Natick in 1651. On Institution Hill, Newton Centre, is the first Baptist theological seminary in America, Newton Theological Institution, founded in 1825. Here also is the residence of Samuel Francis Smith (1808–1895), author of “America” and several missionary hymns, and pastor here in 1842–1854. In Newton Upper Falls, Echo Bridge (of the Boston Aqueduct) crosses the Charles near the falls in Hemlock Gorge Reservation of the Metropolitan Park system. Auburndale is the seat of Lasell Seminary for Young Women, founded in 1851 by Edward Lasell (1809–1852). Other of the villages are Newtonville, West Newton and Newton Highlands. The city of Newton is primarily a residential suburb of Boston; along the Charles is a part (191·12 acres) of the Charles River Reservation of the Metropolitan Park system, and the city has several attractive public parks, including Norumbega Park, on the banks of the river, with a large open-air theatre; boating, especially canoeing, on the river is very popular. The city has a public library, a high school and a technical high school. Among its manufactures are foundry and machine shop products, worsted goods and electrical apparatus; the factories utilize the water power of the falls. The value of the manufactured product in 1905 was $4,140,996. The region was settled as a part of Cambridge in 1630 and was called South Side (i.e. of the Charles), Nonantum (the Indian name), Cambridge Village, Little Cambridge or New Cambridge; in 1688 it was incorporated as a separate town and in 1691 received its present name; it annexed an island in the Charles in 1803; parts of it were annexed to Roxbury (1838) and Waltham (1849); it became a city in 1873; and in 1875 it annexed a part of Boston, with which there have been several more recent boundary adjustments.