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The name of the city is pronounced with the primary stress on the first syllable and a full vowel in the second syllable, WAWL-tham, though the name of the Waltham watch was pronounced with a reduced schwa in the second syllable: /?w??l??m/. As most would pronounce in the British way, “Walthum”, when people came to work in the mills from Nova Scotia, the pronunciation evolved. The “local” version became a phonetic sounding to accommodate French speakers who could not pronounce in the British way.

Waltham was first settled in 1634 as part of Watertown and was officially incorporated as a separate town in 1738.[5] Waltham had no recognizable town center until the 1830s, when the nearby Boston Manufacturing Company gave the town the land that now serves as its central square.


[walk-score-map address=”Waltham, MA”]