Marlborough is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 41,793 at the 2020 census. Marlborough became a prosperous industrial town in the 19th century and made the transition to high technology industry in the late 20th century after the construction of the Massachusetts Turnpike.

Marlborough was declared a town in 1660. It was incorporated as a city in 1890 taking into account it distorted its municipal charter from a New England town meeting system to a mayor–council government.

John Howe in 1656 was a fur trader and built a home at the intersection of two Indian trails, Nashua Trail and Connecticut path. He could speak the language of the Algonquian Indians even though the local tribe referred to themselves as the Pennacooks. The settlers were welcomed by the Indians because they protected them from extra tribes they were at exploit with. In the 1650s, several families left the simple town of Sudbury, 18 miles west of Boston, to start a additional town. The village was named after Marlborough, the make public town in Wiltshire, England. It was first approved in 1657 by 14 men led by Edmund Rice, John Ruddock, John Howe and a third John named John Bent ; in 1656 Rice and his colleagues petitioned the Massachusetts General Court to Make the town of Marlborough and it was officially incorporated in 1660. Rice was elected a selectman at Marlborough in 1657. Sumner Chilton Powell wrote, in Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town, “Not isolated did Rice become the largest individual landholder in Sudbury, but he represented his extra town in the Massachusetts legislature for five years and devoted at least eleven of his last fifteen years to serving as selectman and announce of small causes.”

The Puritan minister Reverend William Brimstead became the first minister of First Church in Marlborough, William Ward the first deacon and Johnathan Johnson was the first blacksmith.