Cheshire, Massachusetts
A Short History of Cheshire
From a Baptist farming settlement in the northern Berkshires, to the town that made a 1,235 pound cheese for a president, Cheshire has spent more than two centuries deciding its own affairs in one room.
A Baptist Town in the Hills
Cheshire was first settled in 1766 and incorporated as a town in 1793, taking its name from Cheshire County in England. Many of its first families were Baptists who had come from Rhode Island, descendants of the settlers who followed Roger Williams there to worship as they chose, and that history of dissent shaped the town’s character early. Colonel Joab Stafford, a Revolutionary War figure, was among the leaders of the early settlement on Stafford Hill. From the start this was a farming town, and its cows would soon make it briefly famous.
The Mammoth Cheese
In 1801, to honor the election of Thomas Jefferson and to make a public statement for religious liberty, the farmers of Cheshire combined a single day’s milk from the town’s cows into one enormous cheese. It measured about four feet across, eighteen inches thick, and weighed 1,235 pounds. Elder John Leland, the town’s influential Baptist preacher, carried the Cheshire Mammoth Cheese by sleigh, boat, and wagon to Washington and presented it to President Jefferson on New Year’s Day of 1802. Jefferson sent back a personal letter of thanks. It was a small hill town making itself heard at the very top of the new republic, and it is still the story Cheshire tells about itself.
Forges, Mills, and Glass
Through the nineteenth century Cheshire’s economy ran on water power and local resources. The town had early forges and saw mills, grist mills, and tanneries, and in 1812 the Cheshire Crown Glass Company opened its works. Farming, and especially dairy, remained the backbone of the town, and the lime and iron of the Berkshires gave it small industry alongside the fields.
Mountains, Water, and a Rail Trail
Cheshire sits in a dramatic corner of the state, between Mount Greylock, the highest point in Massachusetts, on its western edge and the Hoosic River valley running through it. The Cheshire Reservoir spreads across the town’s eastern side, and the Appalachian Trail crosses the landscape nearby. Today the Ashuwillticook Rail Trail, an eleven mile paved and universally accessible path built on a former rail line, runs the length of Cheshire and links it with its Berkshire neighbors, carrying walkers and cyclists past the same fields that once fed a president’s cheese.
Sources: Wikipedia, Cheshire, Massachusetts (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheshire,_Massachusetts); U.S. Census Bureau.