To tell the story of Framingham, Town Historian Stephen W. Herring spent several years collecting and compiling stories, biographies, anecdotes, and facts stretching back almost 400 years, and wove them into a concise narrative that tells the story of a town whose roots are closely entwined with the roots of the American nation.

     In hist introduction, Stephen Herring states that Framingham has always been " in the direct path of all the traditional forces of American history, including western migration, the railroad era, immigration, industrialization, suburbanization, and the rising dominance of technology in our lives. This, the Framingham experience has been, to a large extent, the American experience."

Stephen W. Herring has been closely involved with local history since coming to Framingham in 1974. He was curator of the Framingham HIstorical Society from 1976 to 1989, and has been Chairman of the Framingham Historical Commission since 1991. He is also the author of a general illustrated history of the Framingham area called "South MIddlesex: A New England Heritage, published in 1986. In 1996, the framingham Board of Selectmen appointed him to be the first Official Town Historian.