Dover, Massachusetts
A Short History of Dover
From a stretch of Dedham farmland called Springfield, to a parish, to a district, to a town in 1836, Dover has spent most of its more than 350 years governing itself in the same open meeting it still uses today.
Springfield
English families first settled this land around 1635, when it was part of the great Dedham Grant, a farming frontier west of the Charles River. For its open fields and the bubbling springs of Trout Brook, the settlers called it Springfield. It was a long ride to the meetinghouse in Dedham, and as the farms filled in, the families out here wanted a parish of their own so they would not have to travel so far to worship and to vote.
Parish, District, Town
Dover became its own place in three steps, each one a grant of a little more self-government. In 1748 the Commonwealth set it off as the Springfield Parish of Dedham. In 1784 it became the District of Dover, which let it manage its own affairs short of sending a representative to the General Court. Finally, in 1836, Dover was incorporated as a full town, with the right to its own vote on Beacon Hill. The name came from the chairman of the parish committee, who chose it for his ancestral home in England.
The Iron Mill in the Woods
Dover was mostly a farming town, but it had industry too. Along Noanet Brook stood the Dover Union Iron Company, a nineteenth-century mill that used water power to work iron. The business did not last, and for a long time only its stone foundations remained in the woods. Those ruins were later reconstructed, and today they stand inside Noanet Woodlands as a monument to the town’s industrial past, a short walk from the overlook at Noanet Peak.
Keeping the Record
Dover has taken its own history seriously for well over a century. The Dover Historical Society was founded in 1895, and in 1906 the Sawin Memorial Building was raised to honor Eudora and Benjamin Sawin, two of its charter members. That building, now the Sawin Museum on Dedham Street, tells the story of Dover from the earliest evidence of people on this land through its colonial, Revolutionary, and farming years. It is run by residents, which is fitting for a town that has always governed itself the same way.
Sources: Town of Dover, “About Dover” (doverma.gov); Frank Smith, Narrative History of Dover, Massachusetts (1897); Dover Historical Society; U.S. Census Bureau.