The Boylston
Centennial March

By Jack Valleli

 

We hope you enjoy Boylston’s Centennial March originally composed by a Boylston resident, H.T. Bray, 
and played 140 years ago in 1886 for the Celebration of Boylston’s 100^th Anniversary.
 Today’s rendition including both the melody and base have been sequenced
 for electric piano by Boylstonian, Jack Valleli. -Nancy Filgate

 

The Boylston Centennial March was written for the occasion of Boylston’s one hundredth anniversary
in 1886, where notable residents, their relations, and guests gathered to celebrate the thriving community
they had built. From the North Precinct of Shrewsbury to a town unto itself, Boylston had grown steadily
over its first century, but there were events just over the horizon that would prove far more tumultuous.

Just a few years following the Centennial, Boylston residents were informed that the Town would be home
to Boston’s new water supply; the Wachusett Reservoir. Several landowners were displaced and compensated,
and over a decade many workers demolished the structures and scoured the earth under what is today one of Boylston’s
most prominent natural features. As the Nashua River filled in the valley below the Scar Hill bluffs and the
Diamond Hill promontory, a new hydroelectric dam spun up in Clinton, and water coursed down a modern tunnel to the city.

Boylston remained a vibrant rural farming community, though over the following years more and more commuters
made up the working population, both as farming increased in efficiency and transportation improved. Home to
some 350 families by the end of the Second World War, Boylston is home to nearly two thousand families today.

As we prepare to celebrate the United States’ semi quincentennial, we can remember the ways in which residents
of Boylston chose to celebrate in the past.

Let music, togetherness, and the spirit of commitment to our community mark the occasion today.