Our Rich History

The Southborough Village Society was founded in 1922, with initial support from the local Farmers' Club. That same year, Charles F. Choate, Jr. donated the 1.5-acre property and its existing building to the Society, along with adjacent land that would later become Choate Memorial Field. Choate had purchased the property from Boston attorney William A. White, a friend for whom the house was originally built in 1906.

At the front of the building, near the Main Street sidewalk, stands a four-foot-high granite monument installed in 1927. It commemorates the Revolutionary War journey of General Henry Knox, who passed through Southborough in the winter of 1775–76 while transporting artillery from Fort Ticonderoga to aid General George Washington in Cambridge.

As part of his donation, Choate requested that the property be shared with the Leo L. Bagley Post of the American Legion. The Legion occupied the east addition, built between 1921 and 1922, which remains the home of the Bagley-Fay Post 161 to this day.