Roxbury. Roxbury is a neighborhood within the city of Boston, Massachusetts. Roxbury is a dissolved municipality and one of 23 official neighborhoods of Boston used by the city for neighborhood services coordination. The city states that Roxbury serves as the heart of Black culture in Boston. Roxbury was one of the first towns founded in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630, and became a city in 1846 before being annexed to Boston on January 5, 1868. The original boundaries of the Town of Roxbury can be found in Drake's History of Roxbury and its noted Personages. Those boundaries include the modern day Longwood, Mission Hill, and Symphony neighborhoods, including the Christian Science Center, the Prudential Center, and everything south and east of the Muddy River, including Symphony Hall, Northeastern University, Boston Latin School, Madison Park Technical Vocational High School John D. O'Bryant School of Mathematics & Science, Roxbury Community College YMCA, Harvard Medical School, and many hospitals and schools in the area. This side of the Muddy River is Roxbury, the other side is Brookline and Boston. Franklin Park, once entirely within Roxbury when Jamaica Plain, West Roxbury and Roslindale were villages within the town of Roxbury until 1854, has been divided with the line between Jamaica Plain and Roxbury located in the vicinity of Peter Parley Road on Walnut Avenue, through the park to Columbia Road. Here, Walnut Avenue changes its name to Sigourney Street, indicating the area is now Jamaica Plain. One side of Columbia Road is Roxbury, the other Dorchester. Melnea Cass Boulevard is located approximately over the Roxbury Canal that brought boats into Roxbury, bypassing the busy port of Boston in the 1830s. The neighborhood has also formed community gardens and developed the first urban farm of the city in accordance to the adoption of article 89, Urban Agricultural Ordinance, which provides framework for creating community resources for fresh produce, to be sold at low cost, and also to be donated to programs who help feed those who are in shelters or other care facilities alike. There are also many emergency response facilities who help underprivileged people in the area, such as youth centers, and social service centers. When it was a separate municipality, Roxbury was in Suffolk County until it was added to the newly created Norfolk County in 1793; when it was incorporated into Boston, it returned to Suffolk County. Prior to European colonization, the region around Roxbury was originally inhabited by the indigenous Massachusett. There were small Native communities throughout what became Roxbury, who likely moved between winter homes inland where hunting was plentiful and summer homes along the coast where fishing and shellfish beds were plentiful. An erroneous statement in Francis Drake's History of Roxbury, stated that no Native people ever resided in the area. However, colonial-era documentation and archeological evidence found in several places including the Arnold Arboretum and Jamaica Pond refute that. The Massachusetts Bay Colony founded a group of six towns, including Boston, Cambridge, and Roxbury. For more than 200 years, Roxbury also encompassed West Roxbury and Jamaica Plain. Three miles south, the only land route to the capital led through Roxbury, which made the town important for both transportation and trade. Roxbury in the 1600s also held many of the resources that the Colonists prized: potentially arable land, timber, and a brook, and stone for building. It is noted for its hilly geography and many large outcroppings of Roxbury Puddingstone, which was quarried for many years and used in the foundations of a large number of houses in the area. That particular stone exists only in the Boston basin; it is visible on stony outcroppings and used in buildings such as the Warren House, and it proved to be a valuable asset to the community that led to early prosperity. The village of Roxbury was originally called Rocksberry for the rocks in its soil that made early farming a challenge. The settlers of Roxbury originally comprised the congregation of the First Church in Roxbury, established in 1632. During this time, the church served as a place of worship and as a meeting place for town government. The congregation had no time to raise a meeting house the first winter and so met with the neighboring congregation in Dorchester. One of the early leaders of this church was Amos Adams, and among the founders were Richard Dummer and his wife Mary.