NATICK  , a township of S.E .

Middlesex county, Massachusetts, U.S.A., on the S.E. end of Cochituate Lake . Pop . (1890) 9118; (1900) 9488, of whom 1788 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 9866 . The area of the township is 12.375 sq. m . The township's largest village, also named Natick, lying 18 m . W.S.W. of Boston, is served by the Boston & Albany railroad; it has the Walnut Hill preparatory school, the Leonard Morse hospital, and a public library, the Morse institute, which was given by Mary Ann Morse (1825–1862) and was built in 1873 . In the village of South Natick is the Bacon Free Library (188o), in which is housed the Historical, Natural History and Library Society . In 1905 the factory product was valued at $3,453,094; the boots and shoes manufactured in 1905 were valued at $2,896,110 or 83.g% of the town's total, the output of brogans being especially important . Other distinctive manufactures are shirts and base-balls . Natick is the Indian name, signifying " our land," or " hilly land," of the site (originally part of Dedham) granted in 165o to John Eliot, for the " praying " Indians . There was an Indian church in Natick, at what is now called South Natick or " Oldtown," from 166o to 1716; and for some years the community was governed, in accordance with the eighteenth chapter of Exodus, by " rulers of tens," " rulers of fifties," and " rulers of hundreds." Until 1719 the Indians held the land in common .

In 1735 the few Indians remaining were put under guardianship . The township owns a copy of Eliot's Indian

Bible . An Eliot monument was erected in 1847 on the Indian burying-ground near the site of the Indian church, now occupied by a Unitarian church . Of the Eliot oaks, made famous by Longfellow's sonnet, one was cut down in 1842, the other still stands . Henry Wilson learned to make shoes here, and in the presidential campaign in 184o gained the sobriquet of the " Natick cobbler." By the colonial authorities Natick was considered as a " plantation " until the establishment of the church; in 1762 the parish (erected in 1745) became a district, and in 1781 this was incorporated as a town . See " Natick," by S . D . Hosmer, Daniel Wight and Austin Bacon, in vol . 2 of S . A . Drake's History of Middlesex County (Boston, 188o) ; and Oliver N . Bacon, History of the Town of Natick (Boston, 1856) .