Information from Emery, summarized by Ashkar

The decade of the 1870s had been a time of much pulling and hauling

between the north and south parts of the town. Uneven development

always brings strains. As population grew in Cochituate and as Wayland

Center strove to modernize itself and find a substitute for, or

supplement to, farming, there was bound to be friction and jealousy.

This was especially the case when it came to paying for facilities which

were charged to the whole town but benefited only a part of it.

Further, whenever the balance of power between sections changes rather

suddenly, as it did when in the 1870's Cochituate was able to outvote

Wayland, there tends to be unhappiness and resentment.

One finds in the town clerk's record that the year 1871 saw Cochituate

attempting to secure more equal municipal facilities: more school

facilities (Henry C. Dean, selectman, and James S. Draper, chairperson

of investigative committee, were involved in a controversy between the

selectmen and the building committee over whether the school was built

according to the contract, especially the ventilation system; land for a

cemetery (town bought land from Joseph Bullard and John C. Butterfield

to lay out Lakeview Cemetery); extension of library services at some

suitable place in Cochituate Village; and for the first time, to

alternate town meetings between Wayland Center and Cochituate.

Up to 1885 passenger traffic in and out of Cochituate to and from Natick

and Saxonville was handled by a well-organized system of horse-drawn

omnibus coaches, omnibus sleighs or stages. Freight and express were

carried in large wagons, mainly to the Natick railroad station but,

under some circumstances, to the Stony Brook station of the Fitchburg

Railroad line in Weston.

In the late 1860's and early 1870s, James S. Draper, Charles A. Cutting

and others petitioned the Massachusetts legislature for permission to

build a railroad that would run through Wayland Center in hopes of

stimulating the economy which was depressed in part because of the

decline of stage travel. (H. E. p144-145). Cochituate shoe factory

owners desired a railroad come to their village.

The railroad was finally constructed (first rails laid in October 1880)

to pass through Wayland Center. Cochituate residents continue to work

toward getting a railroad through the village, close to the shoe

factories, but this never came to pass.