Decorative drawing: a small American settlement seen from a low hill. Not a photograph of this place.

Lower Village, Massachusetts

43 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1886 and the latest in 1989. It stands in Stow town. It lies in ZIP code area 01775. It stands on Summer Hill. The Survey maps it on the Maynard quadrangle.

Lower Village within Middlesex County

Then and now

1886 to 1989

The same ground, surveyed 103 years apart. Drag the handle to wipe between them. Both sheets are United States Geological Survey originals; neither has been altered.

Topographic sheet of Lower Village, surveyed 1989

Topographic sheet of Lower Village, surveyed 1886

Topographic sheets covering this place

43 sheets

Matched by testing this settlement's coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet in the United States Geological Survey's historical collection. Each opens the scanned sheet at the Survey.

In the county-history sources

9,652 words on this township

History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : Containing Carefully Prepared Histories of Every City and Town in the County, published 1880 names this settlement in its chapter on Stow Town. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.

The town, thus constituted, was of very irregular shape, extending from the ancient bounds of Sudbury to what is now Lunenburg. But portions of it have been taken from time to time to form the towns of Harvard, Boxborough, Shirley, Hudson, and Maynard. It now comprises only about one third of its original area, and is bounded north by Boxborough aiul Acton, east by Maynard, south by Hudson, and west by Bolton and Harvard. It has three villages, - the Lower Yillngc, where the first meeting-house M'as erected, about a iiiilc easterly of the Centre, and Rock Bottom, in the southerly part. The principal stream is the Assabet River, in the southeasterly part. Assabet Brook is the next largest stream. The two noted hills, Pompiisittacutt and Shabbukin, are now respectively within the limits of Maynard and Harvard. But there are beautiful views from Sj)indle, Birch, and Marble hills. In 1875 the jiopulation was 1,022.

Passage source: History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : Containing Carefully Prepared Histories of Every City and Town in the County, published 1880.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Stow Town.

Fires near this place

58 since 2003

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 58 fires within 5 miles of Lower Village between 2003 and 2020, burning about 68 acres in total. None started naturally. 5 were recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Debris and open burning	34
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	10
Arson/incendiarism	5
Power generation/transmission/distribution	2
Recreation and ceremony	2
Railroad operations and maintenance	2
Fireworks	1
Smoking	1
Equipment and vehicle use	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
28 August 2017	Fireworks	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	HUDSON
27 August 2017	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	HUDSON
26 August 2020	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
24 August 2018	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
21 August 2018	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
13 August 2017	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	STOW
9 July 2018	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
27 July 2017	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	MARLBORO

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

Every fire recorded in Middlesex County

Specimens collected near this place

12 of 709 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. Museums hold 709 specimens collected within 10 miles of Lower Village between 1898 and 1975: 436 Animalia, 211 Plantae, 58 Fungi, 2 Protozoa, 1 Chromista, 1 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by A. B. Seymour, A. B. Seymour & M. D. Feigley, A. C. Gibson and others. Each is a physical object with a catalogue number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be concluded from a species being absent.

Species	Year	Collected by	Where, as recorded
Corvus brachyrhynchos brachyrhynchos C.L.Brehm, 1822	1900	not recorded	Wayland
Boletus griseus Frost	1898	H. Webster
Dumetella carolinensis (Linnaeus, 1766)	1898	Collector(s): Will C. Colt	Lincoln
Lophodermium pinastri (Schrad.) Chevall.	1898	Hubbard F. T.; Hall G. G.	Lincoln
Pipilo erythrophthalmus erythrophthalmus (Linnaeus, 1758)	1898	not recorded	Lincoln
Riparia riparia riparia (Linnaeus, 1758)	1898	not recorded	Berlin
Salix eriocephala Michx.	1898	E. F. Williams
Viola brittoniana Pollard	1898	Henry A. Purdie
Aythya marila nearctica Stejneger, 1885	1899	Schiøler, Eiler Theodor Lehn	Massachusetts
Boletus auriporus Peck	1900	G. E. Morris
Boletus rubropunctus Peck	1900	G. E. Morris
Cephalanthus occidentalis L.	1900	M. Rodman	Concord.

All 709 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Mines and quarries near this place

10 of 15 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 15 workings within 5 miles of Lower Village: 8 past producers, 5 producers, 2 unknowns. 5 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Site	Commodity	Status	Recorded
Acton Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
Acton Pit--Assabet S & G	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
Acton Plant	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Assabet Sand and Gravel Co	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer	Sedimentary
Boxborough Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
D. B. Raymond Sand and Gravel Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Hudson Plant	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Unknown
Kane Corporation Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
Lexington Sand and Gravel Co	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer	Sedimentary
Melone Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer

Every working recorded in Middlesex County

Nearest settlements

The eight closest, with where each one stands in the county. Distances are straight-line, computed from the Geographic Names Information System coordinates.

Place	Distance	Sheets
Stow	1.1 miles	43
Maynard	1.9 miles	43
South Acton	2.4 miles	43
Gleasondale	2.9 miles	43
West Acton	2.9 miles	43
Pine Lake	3.1 miles	43
Kelly Corner	3.3 miles	43
Gleasondale Station	3.3 miles	43

Provenance

This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 611469. The sheet list is computed by point-in-boundary test against the United States Geological Survey's historical topographic inventory. Both are works of the United States government and carry no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.

Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.

Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.

Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.