Clarksburg, Massachusetts
A Short History of Clarksburg
Three families settled this corner of the state, and the town is named for the one that had a baby at the right moment. It is a story about counting votes, which turns out to be the theme of everything that happened here afterward.
A Soldier and a Tree, 1749
The first documented person in what would become Clarksburg was Seth Hudson, a soldier and surgeon from Fort Massachusetts in what is now North Adams. In 1749 he felled a tree just north of the Natural Bridge, and the town’s own history calls him the first documented inhabitant of what would become Clarksburg. Hudson Brook still carries his name. He went on to help found Pownal, just over the Vermont line, which tells you how this whole corner of the map was being drawn at the time: by a small number of people walking north and deciding where to stop.
The Clarks Get One More Vote
Captain Matthew Ketchum, Colonel William Bullock and Nicholas Clark are credited with settling the township around 1769. When it came time to name the place, the town’s own history says the deciding factor was a birth: a child born to the Clarks gave that family one additional vote, and the name went to Clark. Clarksburg has been settling questions by counting the people in the room ever since.
Bullock’s part of the story is a surveying problem. He had been granted 23,000 acres and had to extend his measurement around Bernardston’s grant to reach his full complement. He meant to run it to the Vermont line, but not knowing exactly where that line was, and unwilling to lose any part of the grant by crossing into another state, he stopped about a mile short and turned west. The land north of that line, plus the gore separating it from Williamstown and Vermont, became Clarksburg: about 10,400 acres.
Incorporated 1798, and Redrawn 1848
Clarksburg was officially incorporated as a town in 1798. Fifty years later, on May 2, 1848, part of it was annexed to the neighboring town of Florida, which is why the shape on the map today is not the shape Bullock measured. A town line in Massachusetts is not a natural feature. It is a decision, and it can be changed by the same legislature that made it.
Four Mills Running All Year
Clarksburg began as an agrarian town and became, briefly, an industrial one. As early as 1829 there were four mills running year round on the town’s brooks. The village of Briggsville held the earliest post office, with A. A. Lee as its first postmaster. In the nineteenth century the mills included one making cashmere and several making gunpowder, and the powder mills supplied the Civil War. That industry ended after a mill explosion in 1869, and the town stopped it there. The section where it stood was known for many years afterward as Powdermill Flats.
The Land That Stayed
What Bullock could not quite measure is now most of what people come here for. Clarksburg State Forest and Clarksburg State Park run up the town’s northern reaches toward the Vermont line, with Mauserts Pond, camping and trails. The Dome, a ridge on the Vermont border at the very top of town, is a hiking destination reached from the Clarksburg side. Just over the line in North Adams stands the Natural Bridge, the white marble arch on Hudson Brook that Seth Hudson walked to in 1749. The first thing in this history is still there, and you can go look at it.
Sources: the Town of Clarksburg’s own history page at clarksburgma.gov/history; the Wikipedia article on Clarksburg, Massachusetts; U.S. Census Bureau. Accessed 2026.