In 1845, Boxborough residents in support of reading placed a small bookcase in Lyman Bigelow’s store on the corner of Middle and Hill Roads. A private Magazine Club was organized in September 1879 and offered periodicals for a yearly membership fee of $1.50. The Juvenile Club was formed in 1900, and for 25 cents a year, young people enjoyed access to the very best juvenile literature, as overseen by Miss Burroughs, one of the club’s founders.

Massachusetts passed the Act of 1890 which provided $100 worth of books to each town establishing a public library. The following year Boxborough formed its first Board of Library Trustees. J. Harry Orendorff, one of the Trustees, offered “the free use of a large front room in his house,” and his wife agreed to serve as librarian without pay. The Boxborough Free Public Library opened on June 6, 1891, in the small fireplaced parlor of the Orendorff’s home.

The library continued to move to the parlors of other private homes until space in the former Universalist meetinghouse and Town Hall was secured. In 1908, with repairs completed, 1,849 books, and the bookcase from Lyman Bigelow’s store, were in place and Library Hall opened to the public for the first time. An immensely popular place for reading, gathering and special events, a devasting fire destroyed the library and most of its contents on January 9, 1953. Three days later, a new site in Wallace Robinson’s vacant one-room schoolhouse on Picnic Street was offered. Donations to help rebuild the book collection poured in and over the years the library would again outgrow its space. Several times warrants for a new building failed to pass.

When Boxborough resident Albert J. Sargent died in 1963, he bequeathed $50,000 to the town for “the purchase and erection of a public library, which shall be known as the Albert J. Sargent Memorial Library.” A clause stipulated that the town would provide the books. The architecture firm Morehouse, Chesley and Thomas of Lexington, Massachusetts, designed the new building at 575 Middle Road, which opened in February 1966—a fitting replacement to the old “Library Hall,” which today is the site of the town herb garden.

Over the years few changes were made beyond the creation of the Ella Whitcomb Room in 1977, which housed the children’s collection, and the removal of the cupola for safety reasons. In May 2000, with assistance through a Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners grant opportunity, the town approved the new library building project. The new Sargent Memorial Library opened its doors to the public at its new location on Massachusetts Avenue in March 2005.

Photo courtesy of Wicked Local