1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Southbridge

SOUTHBRIDGE, a township of Worcester county, Massachusetts, U.S.A., on the Quinabaug river (which here falls 165 ft.), about 20 m. S.S.W. of Worcester. Pop. (1900), 10,025, of whom 3468 were foreign-born; (1910 census), 12,592. Area, about 20 sq. m. The township is served by the New York, New Haven & Hartford railway, and by inter-urban (electric) lines to Worcester and Springfield. The Southbridge public library (1870) contained 22,000 volumes in 1910. Optical goods, cotton, woollen and print goods, cutlery and shuttles are the principal manufactures; in 1905 the value of the total factory product was $4,201,853. The factory of the American Optical Company here is probably the largest of its kind in the world.

In 1801 a poll parish, named the Second Religious Society of Charlton, and popularly called Honest Town, was formed from the west part of Dudley, the south-west part of Charlton and the south-east part of Sturbridge; and in 1816 this parish became the township of Southbridge.

See the Leaflets published (1901 sqq.) by the Quinabaug Historical Society of Southbridge.