Framingham, Massachusetts
Framingham’s History
Nipmuc homeland, colonial farm grant, mill village, college town, and finally the newest city in Massachusetts. Framingham’s story runs through more than three centuries, and a lot of it is harder and stranger than the tidy version.
Nipmuc Homeland
Before any of the English names, this land belonged to the Nipmuc, who hunted, fished, and farmed the rivers, ponds, and hills here for generations, with the ancient Old Connecticut Path cutting through the area. The Nipmuc leader Tantamous, known to the English as Old Jethro, lived on Nobscot Hill. Then colonization brought disease and war. During King Philip’s War in 1676, the violence reached this ground in the deadly attack at the Eames homestead. The Nipmuc were not a footnote to Framingham’s founding. They were dispossessed of it, and that is where the story actually starts.
Danforth’s Farms and Incorporation, 1660 to 1700
The first English settler was John Stone, who put a farm on the west bank of the Sudbury River in 1647. Starting in 1660, Thomas Danforth, a powerful Bay Colony magistrate, Deputy Governor, and treasurer of Harvard College, was granted thousands of acres of Nipmuc land that came to be called “Danforth’s Farms.” He named the settlement after his English hometown of Framlingham, dropping the “l” along the way. Danforth resisted letting it become a real town for years. Framingham was finally incorporated on June 25, 1700, the year after he died, with about 76 families.
A Refuge From Salem
In the early 1690s, as the Salem witch trials tore through Salem Village, families fleeing the accusations ran here for safety, to the stretch of land still called Salem End Road today. The Clayes family was among them, and Peter Clayes went on to serve as one of the town’s first selectmen when Framingham organized its government in 1700. The fear those families fled is still written on the city’s map.
Revolution & the Republic
Framingham sent real names into the Revolution. Peter Salem, an African American soldier, was celebrated for his service at the Battle of Bunker Hill. So were General John Nixon and Jonathan Maynard. The city also runs into one of the most famous figures of the era through a brutal fact of the time: Crispus Attucks, the first person killed in the Boston Massacre, was the son of Prince Young, a man enslaved in a Framingham household. After the war, the town became a busy stagecoach stop on the Boston to Worcester turnpike.
Industry & the Railroad
Framingham’s first big industry was straw: braided straw hats and bonnets, made here starting around 1799 to 1800. It mattered so much that braided straw still wraps the city seal today. Mills went up at Saxonville turning out cotton and later worsted wool and carpet yarns, the Para Rubber Shoe Company arrived in 1882 with a thousand workers, and the Dennison Manufacturing Company put Framingham on the national map for paper goods and tags. When the railroad came through, it ran along the then-quieter south side, and the town’s whole commercial center slid south to meet it.
Education & the Normal School
In 1853, the first public normal school in America moved to Framingham. It had been founded in 1839 in Lexington under Horace Mann and Cyrus Peirce to train teachers, and it grew into what is now Framingham State University, still anchoring Framingham Centre. The town’s education roots ran deeper still, back to the Framingham Academy chartered in 1798.
The Modern City
In 1948, Framingham became home to the Framingham Heart Study, a National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and Boston University project that changed what the entire world understands about heart disease. If a doctor has ever talked to you about cholesterol or blood pressure risk, the language came partly from research done here. Mid-century also brought one of the country’s first shopping malls, Shoppers World in 1951, and a major General Motors assembly plant. Since the 1980s, the city has grown into one of the largest Brazilian communities in the United States. In April 2017 residents voted to adopt a city charter, and on January 1, 2018, Framingham, for generations the largest town in Massachusetts, finally became its newest city.
Explore Further
Sources: City of Framingham; Framingham History Center; Framingham Public Library; the Framingham Heart Study; and the Wikipedia entry for Framingham, Massachusetts. Dates and details are summarized for a general audience.