Westwood, Massachusetts
town in Massachusetts, USA
Westwood is a town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 16,266 at the 2020 United States census.
History
Westwood was first settled in 1641 and was part of the town of Dedham, originally called 'West Dedham', until it was officially incorporated in 1897. It was the last town to split from the original town of Dedham. From early in the settlement of Dedham, the people of the Clapboard Trees Precinct were "a wealthy, sophisticated lot, familiar with the bigwigs of provincial politics and prone to the religious liberalism that was à la mode in Boston." Residents did not care for the politically more powerful Calvinist views of those who lived in the village of Dedham and asked to separate.
It was originally to have been named the "Town of Nahatan:"a bill to incorporate the Town of Nahatan was reported in the Senate on March 8, 1897, by Senator Charles F. Woodward, Chairman of the Committee on Towns. No opposition to the passage of the bill appeared until it reached the House, when the representative from Nahant objected to the name "Nahatan," owing to its alleged similarity to the name Nahant.
It was desirable for the old, as well as the new town, to have the question of incorporation settled, if possible, before April 5, when appropriations for the coming year were going to be made. Therefore, in order to remove every trace of friction, however trivial, and thus expedite matters, the name was changed to Westwood.
Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 11.1 square miles (29 km2), of which 11.0 square miles (28 km2) is land and 0.2 square miles (0.52 km2) (1.35%) is water.
“Westwood, Massachusetts” enters the record as town in Massachusetts, USA. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Westwood, Massachusetts and town can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2304357. VIAF identifies the subject as 267750385. The Library of Congress control number is n81126889. Authority coordinates are 42.214, -71.225. 4 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2020, 1641 and 1897.
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This entry incorporates text from “Westwood, Massachusetts” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.