A Short History of Abington

The Town That Was Three Towns

The Abington of 1712 was much larger than the Abington on today’s map. It took in the land that is now Rockland and Whitman, along with parts of Hanover and Bridgewater. Rockland separated in 1874 and Whitman in 1875, and the three towns have been reading the same early records ever since. That is why the Dyer Memorial Library and Archives, on Centre Avenue, describes its collection as the history of Old Abington and serves researchers from all three towns.

A Machine for Making Tacks

In 1815 Jesse Reed invented a machine in Abington that mass produced tacks, and the shoe industry followed the tacks into town. Through the nineteenth century boots and shoes were Abington’s main industry, run on water power from Beaver Brook and the Shumatuscacant, and Abington factories made close to half the footwear worn by the Union Army in the Civil War. The mills are gone and the town is largely residential now, but the street pattern and the pond that powered the shops are still there.

Island Grove, Every August First

From 1846 to 1865 Abington was a centre of the abolitionist movement, and the meeting place was Island Grove. The first open air anti-slavery picnic there was held on August 1, 1846 and was led by William Lloyd Garrison. The Old Colony railroad had opened through North Abington the previous November, which is how people from Boston, Worcester and Plymouth could reach a pond in a small town for a day of speeches and singing, sometimes for as little as fifty cents round trip. The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society kept returning every August 1, the anniversary of emancipation in the British West Indies. In 2002 the park was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Island Grove Park National Register District: 53 acres, with landscape work by the Olmsted Brothers and a memorial sculpture by Bela Pratt.

2016: The Town Wrote Its Own Rules

Here is the piece of Abington history that most directly affects you. On April 30, 2016 the voters adopted a home rule charter by referendum at the Annual Town Election, and the Legislature approved it as chapter 445 of the Acts of 2016. That document is where Abington’s government actually lives: it vests the executive power in a five member Select Board, hands the day to day management to an appointed Town Manager, keeps open Town Meeting as the legislature, and lists the eleven bodies the voters still elect for themselves.

The charter also builds in its own revision. Section 7-8 requires a Charter Review Committee at least once every ten years, chosen by the Town Moderator, to report back to Town Meeting with proposed amendments. In 2025 a charter change went on the annual ballot and passed 344 to 18. The rules can be rewritten, and they get rewritten in the same rooms where the budget is voted.

The Morning the Town Bought a School

On Saturday, September 27, 2014, a Special Town Meeting filled the Abington High School and took up Article 2: appropriate $96,400,000 for a new co-located middle and high school with a pre-kindergarten, at 201 Richard Francis Gliniewicz Way. The article needed a two thirds majority, so the Moderator called for a standing count. It came back 961 yes to 20 no out of 981 voters, and the meeting adjourned at 10:50 in the morning. The building those voters authorized is the one Abington students walk into today.