Charlestown is incorporated as a town.

Originally Mishawum, it is renamed for Charles I, and is the first settlement in today’s Boston, Charlestown’s boundaries for a time include what is today Somerville, Malden, Medford, Melrose, Everett, Woburn, Burlington, Winchester, Wilmington, Stoneham, and parts of Cambridge, Reading and Wakefield. The original town is all but destroyed by the British in 1775,* but quickly rebuilt, and becomes a center first for industry and then for shipbuilding. Charlestown is incorporated as a city in 1847,* annexed by Boston in 1874,* becomes an important ship repair center during World War II, experiences a sharp decline in population in the 1960s and a wave of gentrification beginning in the 1980s.