Waltham lay in a border zone between the Pawtucket confederation and the Massachusett, near the Native settlements of Nonantum and Pequosset, and early settlers noted an "Indian Stockade" near today's Cambridge Reservoir and an "Indian Hollow" in today's Calvary Cemetery. The Old Connecticut Path, a Native trail through the town, remained in use and became the basis of Route 20. The English settled the area in 1634 as part of Watertown, and Waltham was incorporated as a separate town in 1738. It was most likely named for Waltham Abbey in Essex, England, from Anglo-Saxon words meaning "forest homestead," and the name first appears in the articles of incorporation of January 15, 1738.
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In the early 19th century Francis Cabot Lowell and his colleagues founded the Boston Manufacturing Company in Waltham, the first integrated textile mill in the United States, which brought spinning and weaving under one roof and gave its name, with Lowell's, to the Waltham-Lowell system of production. Waltham had no real town center until the 1830s, when the company gave the land for its central square. In 1857 the American Watch Company produced its Waltham Model 1857 watch in the city.
Waltham also has several large estates, including Gore Place, built in 1806 for Governor Christopher Gore, the Robert Treat Paine Estate, designed by H. H. Richardson and Frederick Law Olmsted, and the 400-acre Lyman Estate, built in 1793 by the Boston merchant Theodore Lyman.
Sources
Wikipedia: Waltham, Massachusetts