WOBURN  , a

city of Middlesex county, Massachusetts, U.S.A., ro m . W. by N.W. of Boston . Pop . (1890) 13,499; (1900) 14,254, of whom 3840 were foreign-born and 261 were negroes; (1910, U.S. census) 15,308 . Area, 12.6 sq. m . Woburn is served by the southern division of the Boston & Maine railway, and is connected with Burlington, Lexington, Reading, Stoneham, Wilmington, Winchester, Arlington, Boston and Lowell by electric railways . In the city area are several villages, including Woburn proper, known as " the Centre," North Woburn, Woburn Highlands, Cummingsville (in the western part), Mishawum (in the north-east), Montvale (in the east) and Walnut Hill (also in the east) . There are two ancient burying-grounds; the oldest, on Park Street, dates from about 1642 and contains the graves of ancestors of four presidents—Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, Franklin Pierce and Garfield—and a granite obelisk to the memory of Loammi Baldwin (1744-1807) . On Academy Hill is the Warren Academy building used by a Free Industrial School . Forest Park (53 acres) is a fine stretch of natural woods, and there are several small parks and squares; on Woburn Common is the Public Library, by H . H . Richardson, the gift of Charles Winn .

The building houses an

art gallery and historical museum, and a library of about 50,000 volumes especially rich in Americana . Among colonial houses still standing are the birthplace of Count Rumford (in North Woburn), built about 1714, and now preserved by the Rumford Historical Association as a depository for the Rumford Library and historical memorials, and the Baldwin mansion (built partly in 1661 and later enlarged), the home of Loammi Baldwin (1780-1838), known as " the father of civil engineering in America." Woburn's manufactories are concentrated within a small area . The city is the most important leather manufacturing centre of New England: in 1905 the value of the leather product was $2,851,5J4, being 61.3% of the value of all factory products ($4,654,067); other manufactures are chemicals, leather-working machinery, boots and shoes, glue and cotton goods . Market gardening is an important industry . Woburn, first settled about 1638-164o, was incorporated as a township under its present name in 1642, and was the first township set off from Charlestown . It then included a large part of the present Winchester and the greater part of the present Wilmington and Burlington, separately organized in 1730 and 1799 respectively . It was named after Woburn in Bedfordshire by its chief founder, Edward Johnson (1599-1672), whose work, The Wonder-Working Providence of Zion's Saviour (1654; latest ed . 1910), was one of the earliest historical accounts of the Massachusetts Bay Colony . The leather industry was established by David Cummings at Cummingsville shortly before the War of Independence . Woburn's industrial growth dates from the construction through the township of the old Middlesex Canal . The city was chartered in 1888 . See P .

L . Converse, Legends of Woburn, 1642–1892 (2 vols., Woburn, 1892–1896) ;

Samuel Sewall, History of Woburn, 1640 to 186o (Boston, 1868) ; F . E . Wetherell, Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of Woburn (Woburn, 1892); and G . M . Champney in S . A . Drake's History of Middlesex County (2 vols., Boston, 1880) .