Oxford, Massachusetts

43 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1889 and the latest in 1989. It stands in Oxford town. It lies in ZIP code area 01540. It lies near Camp Hill. The Survey maps it on the Oxford quadrangle. 5,928 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 505 feet above sea level.

Research this city

Oxford within Worcester County

Then and now

1889 to 1989

The same ground, surveyed 100 years apart. Drag the handle to wipe between them. Both sheets are United States Geological Survey originals; neither has been altered.

Topographic sheet of Oxford, surveyed 1989

Topographic sheet of Oxford, surveyed 1889

On record in Oxford

Buildings and businesses the archive holds for this place. Each opens its own page, with the source record it came from.

On the National Register 5 records

Bartlett's Bridgelisted 2000
Clara Barton Homesteadlisted 1977
Hudson Houselisted 1978
Huguenot Fortlisted 1988
Oxford Main Street Historic Districtlisted 2011

Surveyed buildings and structures 1 record

Bartlett's Bridge, Spanning French River on Clara Barton Road, Oxfordfederal building survey, 4 photographs

Population over time

2 figures

Oxford fell from 6,103 to 5,928 between 2010 and 2020. These are the recorded population figures Wikidata holds for this place, reached through the Geographic Names Information System number this page is keyed on rather than by name, so they belong to this place and not to another of the same name. Most are census counts, but not all are: an early figure may be a founding or settlement estimate, and an estimate published within five years of a census is left out. The change column is computed, and is left blank where more than 20 years separate a figure from the one before it, because a gap that long is not a change between two counts.

Year	People	Change
2010	6,103
2020	5,928	-175 (-3%)

Topographic sheets covering this place

19 surveys from 43 printed 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.

1889 USGS Webster quadrangle1:62500
1892 USGS Webster quadrangle1:62500, 9 printings
1908 USGS Quinsigamond quadrangle1:125000, 3 printings
1921 USGS Webster quadrangle1:62500
1943 USGS Quinsigamond quadrangle1:125000
1946 USGS Oxford quadrangle1:31680, 2 printings
1948 USGS Boston quadrangle1:250000, 2 printings
1953 USGS Oxford quadrangle1:24000
1953 USGS Oxford quadrangle1:31680, 2 printings
1956 USGS Boston quadrangle1:250000, 6 printings
1958 USGS Boston quadrangle1:250000, 2 printings
1961 USGS Boston quadrangle1:250000, 2 printings
1964 USGS Oxford quadrangle1:24000
1969 USGS Oxford quadrangle1:24000, 3 printings
1969 USGS Oxford quadrangle1:25000
1975 USGS Oxford quadrangle1:25000
1982 USGS Webster quadrangle1:25000, 2 printings
1985 USGS Boston quadrangle1:100000
1989 USGS Boston quadrangle1:100000, 2 printings

In the county-history sources

9,358 words on this township

History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with Biographical Sketches of Many of Its Pioneers and Prominent Men., published 1889 names this settlement in its chapter on Oxford Town. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.

The town of Oxford lies in the southerly part of Worcester County, only separated from the State of Connecticut by the town of Webster. The central village is built on an extensive plain, surrounded here and there by hills, and its main street is a mile long, nearly one hundred and fifty feet wide and lined by rows of thrifty trees. This avenue, perfectly straight and level, gives to the town a generous and wholesome expression - especially attractive to the stranger. The merchant or professional man, weary with work and enfeebled in constitution, could find no spot within the limits of our State where he could rest his body and brain with so much certainty of recuperation as in one of the many cheerful homesteads along this stately thoroughfare. The territory of which the town is composed was originally within the jurisdiction of the Nipmuck tribe of Indians. On the 16th of March, 1682, the Massachusetts Colony Court passed the following order:

Passage source: History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with Biographical Sketches of Many of Its Pioneers and Prominent Men., published 1889.

When-a^, The General Court of the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay, in the year one thousand six Inindred and sixty-two, granted to said .Toseph Dudley, William Stoughton and their associates, a certain tract of land in the Nipmuck country eight miles square for a township, as may be seen more at large by the recoi'ds of the General Court, pursuant whereuuto, and for the uses aforesaid, the said Joseph Dudley, William Stoughton and their associates, in the year one thousand six hundred and eighty-six, brought over thirty families of French Protestants into this country and settled them upon the eastern part of the said tract of land, and reserved, granted and set apart 11,2.50 acres for a village called Oxford for the said families, and bouuded it as by a plat upon record will more fully appear ; but forasmuch as the said French families have many years since wholly left and deserted their settlements in said village and the said lands, as well by their deserting the same and refusing to return upon proclamation made for that end. as by the voluntary surrender of most of them, are now reinvested in and restored to and become the estate and at the disposition of the original proprietors, their heirs and successors for the ends aforesaid.

Passage source: History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with Biographical Sketches of Many of Its Pioneers and Prominent Men., published 1889.

Oxford to send a Representative to the General Court. It may be fair to assume, on a full consideration of all the facts in the case, that this act was intended as a formal act of incorporation, and that the year 1693 should be adopted as the year of the birth of the town. Oxford was at that time in Suffolk County, and it is said by Peter Whitney, in his bistory published in 1793, that the early records of the town were kept in Boston, and burned in the State House there.

Passage source: History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with Biographical Sketches of Many of Its Pioneers and Prominent Men., published 1889.

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 Oxford Town - it names this place 45 more 45 times.

Fires near this place

57 since 2007

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 57 fires within 5 miles of Oxford between 2007 and 2020, burning about 28 acres in total. None started naturally. 4 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	21
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	10
Recreation and ceremony	9
Railroad operations and maintenance	6
Arson/incendiarism	4
Equipment and vehicle use	3
Smoking	3
Power generation/transmission/distribution	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
25 September 2015	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
15 September 2020	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
15 September 2020	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
4 August 2020	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
22 August 2020	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
9 July 2015	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
25 July 2007	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Massachussetts State Fire Marshal's Office	not named
24 July 2016	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

Every fire recorded in Worcester County

Specimens collected near this place

12 of 1,180 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. Museums hold 1,180 specimens collected within 10 miles of Oxford between 1839 and 1974: 676 Plantae, 314 Animalia, 161 Fungi, 13 Unrecorded, 12 Protozoa, 4 Chromista. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by A. A. Eaton, A. B. Seymour, A. B. Seymour et al. 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
Chilonectria coryli (Fuckel) Ellis & Everh.	1896	Henderson
Coryneum pulvinatum Kunze	1897	D. Murray
Ochrolechia tartarea (L.) A.Massal.	1839	E. Tuckerman
Carex laxiflora Lam.	1840	Thomas Nuttall	Cambridge.
Carex vestita Willd.	1840	Thomas Nuttall	Cambridge.
Mycobilimbia hypnorum (Lib.) Kalb & Hafellner	1848	E. Tuckerman
Cladonia cornucopioides F.Wilson	1850	J. L. Russell	Leicester
Carex aperta Boott	1853	W. Boott	Massachusetts
Cladrastis tinctoria Raf.	1856	Anonymous	Cambridge.
Opegrapha varia Pers.	1856	E. Tuckerman
Hyla versicolor LeConte, 1825	1857	Weinland, David Friedrich
Elymus repens (L.) Gould	1892	Arthur B. Seymour	Cambridge.

All 1,180 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Mines and quarries near this place

10 of 17 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 17 workings within 5 miles of Oxford: 14 past producers, 3 producers. 3 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
Charlton Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Crossover Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Donald P Graves Sand and Gravel	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer	Sedimentary
Highway Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Lind Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Old Webster Road Plant	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
Oxford Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Oxford Quarry Plant #8	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
Ricciardi Asphalt Co	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer	Sedimentary
Robbins Sand and Gravel	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer	Sedimentary

Every working recorded in Worcester County

Storms near this place

20 since 1998

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Oxford in 20 storm reports between 1998 and 2023: 8 thunderstorm wind, 8 flood, 3 hail, 1 funnel cloud. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
June 2002	Thunderstorm Wind	Oxford	$20,000	Microburst
August 2018	Flood	Oxford	$15,000	At 9:29 AM EST, several cars were reported trapped in flood waters on Sutton Avenue in Oxford.
August 2016	Flood	Oxford	$15,000	Several cars were stuck in flood waters on Sutton Avenue near the McDonald's and Cahill Tire.
August 2016	Thunderstorm Wind	Oxford	$15,000	Trees and wires were downed on Worcester Road and Old Southbridge Road by thunderstorm winds.
July 2008	Thunderstorm Wind	Oxford	$10,000	Six inch diameter branches and several large trees were downed by thunderstorm winds in the Hodgesville Dam area of Oxford. Also, two utility poles were damaged. In East Charlton, trees were downed by thunderstorm winds.
July 2006	Thunderstorm Wind	Oxford	$5,000	no account filed
October 2020	Thunderstorm Wind	Oxford	$4,000	In Oxford, multiple trees and wires were down across town.
July 2006	Flood	Oxford	$2,000	no account filed
July 2023	Thunderstorm Wind	Oxford	$1,500	In Oxford, a tree fell on a house on Main St.
June 2020	Thunderstorm Wind	Oxford	$600	In Oxford, a power pole was down and leaning on wire on Oak Street.
August 2023	Flood	Oxford	-	In Oxford, there was significant street flooding at Orchard Hill Rd and Sutton Ave.
September 2022	Flood	Oxford	-	In Oxford, street flooding was reported on an unspecified road.
July 2019	Flood	Oxford	-	Flooding was reported on Sutton Ave in Oxford.
August 2019	Flood	Oxford	-	In Oxford, the Sutton Avenue Exit (4B) off of I-395 was flooded with one foot of water and impassable.
September 2018	Flood	West Oxford	-	At 12:51 AM, State Route 12 (Main Street) in Oxford was flooded and impassable near the Rite Aid pharmacy.
July 2012	Hail	Oxford	-	Pea to nickel size hail fell on the Oxford/Webster line.
June 2007	Thunderstorm Wind	Oxford	-	Numerous trees and wires down.
July 2008	Hail	Oxford	-	no account filed
July 2001	Hail	Oxford	-	no account filed
May 1998	Funnel Cloud	Oxford	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Worcester 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
Hodges Village	0.9 miles	42
West Oxford	1.6 miles	42
Orchard Hills Estates	1.6 miles	43
Buffumville	1.8 miles	42
Community Park (historical)	2.3 miles	42
North Oxford	2.3 miles	44
Grand View Estates	2.5 miles	42
Camp Barton	3.1 miles	42

Elsewhere

Matched on this settlement's Geographic Names Information System number rather than its name, so it cannot be a different place of the same name in another state.

Wikipedia article on Oxford	An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied.
Wikidata item Q7115221	The structured record the population and elevation above come from. Public domain (CC0).

Provenance

This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 610666. 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.

Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.