WAKEFIELD  , a township of

Middlesex county, Massachusetts, U.S.A., about 10 m . N. of Boston . Pop . (189o) 6982; (1900) 9290, of whom 2347 were foreign-born; (1910, census) 11,404 . Wakefield is served by three branches of the Boston & Maine railway and by electric interurban railway to neighbouring towns and cities . It contains the outlying villages of Greenwcod, Montrose and Boyntonville; and, larger than these, Wakefield, near the centre of the township . In this village is the town hall, the gift of Cyrus Wakefield (1811-1873), and the Beebe Town Library, founded in 1856 as the Public Library of South Reading, and later renamed in honour of Lucius Beebe, a generous patron . The town park (about 25 acres), shaded by some fine old elms, extends to the S. shore of Lake Quannapowitt and contains a soldiers' monument; and in the S. part of the township are Crystal Lake and Hart's Hill (30 acres), a public park . In the township is the Wakefield Home for Aged Women, and a Y.M.C.A. building . Manufacturing is the principal industry; and among the manufactures are rattan goods, hosiery, stoves and furnaces, boots and shoes, and pianos . The value of the factory products increased from $2,647,130 in 1900 to $4,807,728 in 1905, or 81.6 % . The township owns and operates the electric lighting and gas plants and the water-works .

Within the

present limits of Wakefield the first settlement was made, in 1639, in that part of the old township of Lynn which in 1644 was incorporated as Reading . In 1812 the southern or " Old Parish " of Reading, which was strongly Democratic-Republican while the other two parishes were strongly Federalist, was set apart and incorporated as the town of South Reading . In 1868 the present name was adopted in honour of Cyrus Wakefield, who established the rattan works here . A portion of Stoneham was annexed to Wakefield in 1889 . See C . W . Eaton, " Wakefield," in S . A . Drake's History of Middle-sex County (Boston, 1880) .