This thirty-six-acre historic New England farm offers an expansive landscape providing the community of Boxborough, Massachusetts with commanding views, historic structures, recreational opportunities, and wildlife habitat for many species.

In 1775, Silas Wetherbee (1727–1811) gave three acres of land in present day Boxborough to be used for a meetinghouse and burial ground site for the new town. The old meetinghouse in the nearby town of Harvard, Massachusetts was acquired, dismantled, and reconstructed on the land donated by Wetherbee. In 1783, the Town of Boxborough was officially incorporated, with the meetinghouse at its approximate center.

That next year, Wetherbee sold his son, Levi, “60 acres of land, half of a building referred to as the ‘old house,’ and half of a barn,” all located just east of the townhouse. The farm was run by Levi until his death in 1829. Burpee Clark Steele purchased the property in 1908 and became known over the following seventeen years for his expansive apple orchards. Conveyed to his son Burpee Franklin Steele in 1925, the farm would suffer the loss of the barn to the Great Hurricane of 1938. A new barn was constructed, which is the one standing today. A later addition, the Richardson Farm Ice House was moved to the site by the Boxborough Historical Society in the 1990s.

Owned by the Town, the farm is permanently protected with both historic and conservation restrictions held by the Town and The Trustees, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Photo courtesy of Liz West