Sudbury is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. At the 2010 census, it had a population of 17,659. The town, located in Boston's MetroWest, has a rich colonial history.

The town was incorporated in 1639. At that time, the boundaries of Sudbury included (by 1653) all what is now of Wayland (which split off in 1780), and parts of Framingham, Marlborough, Stow and Maynard (Maynard split off 1871). The Sudbury Center Historic District has changed little since 1800.

Sudbury also contributed the most militia during King Philip's War and was the site of a native raid. Ephraim Curtis was a successful leader of the militia of West Sudbury and would lend his name to the town's junior high school. Sudbury militia participated in the Battle of Lexington and Concord, in 1775, where Sudbury members sniped on British Red Coats returning to Boston.

One of Sudbury's historic landmarks, the Wayside Inn, claims to be the country's oldest operating inn, built and run by the Howe family for many generations. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote Tales of a Wayside Inn, a book of poems published in 1863. In the book, the poem The Landlord's Tale was the source of the immortal phrase "listen my children and you shall hear, of the midnight ride of Paul Revere." Henry Ford bought the inn in 1923, restored it and donated it to a charitable foundation which continues to run it as an operating inn to this day. Ford also built a boys' school on the property, as well as a grist mill, and the Martha–Mary Chapel. He brought in the Redstone Schoolhouse from Sterling, which was reputed to be the school in Sarah Josepha Hale's nursery rhyme Mary Had a Little Lamb. However, Giuseppi Cavicchio's refusal to sell his water rights scuttled Henry Ford's plans to build an auto parts factory at the site of Charles O. Parmenter's mill in South Sudbury.

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