Braintree, Massachusetts
A Short History of Braintree
From a sprawling colonial parish that birthed two presidents and the father of West Point, to a manufacturing town, to a Red Line suburb that finally traded its town meeting for a mayor.
A Much Bigger Braintree
English colonists settled here around 1635, and the town was incorporated in 1640, taking its name from Braintree in Essex, England. For its first century and a half Braintree was enormous compared with the town today. Its North Precinct broke away to become Quincy in 1792, and another slice became Randolph in 1793. The Braintree on the map now is what was left after its most famous neighborhoods left to govern themselves.
The Land That Made Presidents
John Adams, the second president, and his son John Quincy Adams, the sixth, were both born in what was then the North Precinct of Braintree, the land that later became Quincy. So while the birthplaces sit in Quincy today, the parish that produced them began as Braintree. The town also gave the country Sylvanus Thayer, born in 1785 in Braintree Highlands, the Army engineer remembered as the father of West Point. His name still marks the town’s Thayer Public Library.
A Manufacturing Town
Through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Braintree grew as a manufacturing town, with shoe, rubber, and other industry strung along its rail lines. The factories drew workers and built the dense neighborhoods that still define East Braintree and the town’s village centers, before the economy shifted toward commerce and bedroom-suburb living.
The Mall and the Red Line
Two pieces of postwar infrastructure reshaped modern Braintree. South Shore Plaza, which opened in the 1960s and grew into one of the largest shopping malls in New England, made the town a regional retail hub. And in 1980 the MBTA pushed the Red Line to a terminus at Braintree station, tying the town directly to downtown Boston and turning it into a commuter gateway for the whole South Shore.
From Town Meeting to Mayor
For most of its history Braintree governed itself the old New England way, through town meeting. That ended in 2008, when voters approved a new charter that replaced town meeting with an elected Mayor and a nine-member Town Council. It was a major break with three and a half centuries of tradition, and it is why a place that still calls itself a town runs on a strong-mayor government more often seen in cities.
Sources: Town of Braintree; Wikipedia; Encyclopaedia Britannica; Ballotpedia.