Middleboro, MA news and local guide

Middleborough, also spelled Middleboro, was first settled by Europeans in 1661 as Nemasket, a name taken from a Native settlement on the small river that still bears it and that may have meant "place of fish," for the herring that swim upriver each spring. It was later called Middlebury and was incorporated as Middleborough in 1669. No contemporary record ties the name to a place in England, and according to the town's history it derives from Middelburg in the Dutch province of Zeeland, an intellectual and commercial center where English religious dissenters known as Brownists developed their institutions before emigrating to New England.

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During King Philip's War in 1675 and 1676 the whole population took shelter in a fort on the Nemasket River, behind the old Memorial High School, where a state marker now stands. The settlers soon abandoned it and withdrew to Plymouth, and in their absence the entire village was burned, and several years passed before the town was resettled. On May 13, 1853, western Middleborough separated to form the town of Lakeville, taking with it the main access to the area's large freshwater lakes. Sources Wikipedia: Middleborough, Massachusetts