Wayland, Massachusetts

Wayland is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. Wayland was the first settlement of Sudbury Plantation in 1639. The Town of East Sudbury was incorporated on April 10, 1780, on land that had formerly been part of Sudbury. On March 11, 1835, East Sudbury became Wayland, a farming community, presumably in honor of Dr. Francis Wayland, who was president of Brown University and a friend of East Sudbury’s Judge Edward Mellen. Both Wayland and Mellen became benefactors of the town’s library, the first free public library in the state.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 15.9 square miles, of which 15.2 square miles is land and 0.7 square miles is water. Wayland borders Lincoln, Sudbury, Weston, Framingham and Natick. In 2010, Boston Duck Tours was asked to help transport flood victims in Wayland. Torrential rains had left Pelham Island area of Wayland isolated and the Ducks were brought in to ferry people in and out of their neighborhood until the waters receded. The Wayland display server protocol is named after the town.

Notable residents have included Amar Bose (founder of Bose Corporation, a company that specializes in high-quality sound systems), Archibald Cox (legal scholar, Special Prosecutor of the Watergate Scandal, involving the Nixon Administration) and Bobby Orr (former Boston Bruins hockey player, the MVP of the 1972 Stanley Cup).