Wayland Town Crier 7/15/10: 'Wayland A to Z': 'S' is for 'Surveyors of Lumber. Public servants given responsibility as surveyors of lumber and measurers of wood and bark were important in the 17th century, especially to the settlers of Sudbury Plantation, who had a great deal of lumber and a need for sawmills.

Wayland Town Crier 7/2/10: 'Wayland A to Z': 'S' is for 'Sudbury Valley Trustees'. The Sudbury Valley Trustees Inc. (SVT) is a local conservation organization founded in 1953 by seven Wayland residents to acquire and preserve open spaces in the Sudbury River watershed, to protect its wildlife and native plants, to promote outdoor recreation, and to educate the public in the values of conservation. Current figures show over 3,000 individuals, families and corporations are members.

Wayland Town Crier 4/16/10: 'Wayland A to Z': 'S' is for 'Sudbury River'. The Sudbury River wends its way from Cedar Swamp in Westborough through Framingham, Wayland and Concord, where it merges with the Assabet to become the famed Concord River. Such historic fame does not attach to the Sudbury, which may be the slowest river in the nation! As the often threadlike river traverses the length of Wayland, south to north, so too its languor has influenced Wayland’s evolution from its agricultural beginnings to the residential town it has become.

Wayland Town Crier 4/2/10: 'Wayland A to Z': 'S' is for 'Special Prosecutor'. Archibald Cox had been a familiar figure in Wayland long before he made national headlines and the nightly news in October 1973. A tall, handsome man who wore a characteristic bow tie, Cox had lived in Wayland for almost 30 years before that fateful night he was fired from his job by order of President Richard Nixon. Cox, special Watergate prosecutor, had subpoenaed President Nixon for his audio tapes, which the president refused to release. After two appeals of the subpoenas were turned down, the president offered to give the Senate and Cox written summaries of what was on the tapes. Cox turned down the deal and things got ugly. The president ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Cox, his former professor. Richardson refused and instead resigned. The president ordered Assistant Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to do the firing and when he refused, Ruckelshaus was dismissed. Finally, the president ordered Robert Bork, solicitor general, to do the firing, which he did. The event became known as the "Saturday Night Massacre."

Wayland Town Crier 3/11/10: 'Wayland A to Z': 'S' is for 'Slavery'. Very little is known about slaves in Massachusetts before 1700, due to poor record keeping, a lack of wills, and few newspapers to advertise slave sales or announce rewards for capturing runaways. Many of Sudbury’s settlers, along with the rest of New England’s colonists, were simply too busy clearing fields and raising livestock, dividing land, and preparing for Indian attacks to have the leisure time to write letters or journals. Thus far, only one record has been found of individual slaves or slave owners living in Sudbury before 1700. But that does not mean there were no slaves here. Slaves may have been part of Sudbury households as early as 1653, as can be inferred from town meeting records regarding the division of a new land grant. Most town freemen wanted the land to be divided equally, but a small number had a different suggestion: "The lands shall be divided by the inhabitants according to their several estates and family and counting the family to be the husband, wife, children and such servants as men have that they have either bought or brought up…" Why would this method of land division be proposed if no one in the town had an indentured servant or slave they had paid for?

Wayland Town Crier 2/19/10:  ‘Wayland A-Z’: ‘S’ is for ‘Simpson Estate/Mansion Inn’. Could Michael H. Simpson have known the mansion he was building in 1880 on the corner of West Plain Street and Old Connecticut Path was on the site of an ancient cremation cemetery? Probably not.

Wayland Town Crier 1/28/10: 'A to Z': 'S' is for 'Shoe Industry'. Cochituate began its colonial history as farmland, as did the bulk of the area west of Boston. Natick, however, was designated a "praying village," where the clergy settled to convert Native Americans to Christianity. At first, Cochituate was not part of a particular settlement, its land having been granted to private owners as part of colonial politics and investment. As towns began to form, the settlers knew they must join a town – either Sudbury to the north or Natick to the south. Not wanting to join a town inhabited largely by Indians, they chose Sudbury.