Gill, Massachusetts
A Short History of Gill
From a corner of old Deerfield, to a town named for a governor who left the state with no governor at all, to a river bend that raised a famous school, Gill has spent more than two centuries deciding its own business at Town Meeting.
A Piece of Deerfield
The land that became Gill started out as part of Deerfield. In 1753 a large piece of Deerfield was set off as the district of Greenfield, which became a town that same year, and Gill was part of that. So some of the first families lived in Deerfield, then Greenfield, then Gill, one after another, without ever moving their houses. When you stand on Main Road you are on ground that changed towns twice before Gill existed as a name.
1793, and a Town of Its Own
Gill was incorporated on September 28, 1793. Two years later, on February 28, 1795, the Grass Hill section of neighboring Northfield was annexed to the young town. The first Gill town meeting had already been held on December 18, 1793, with Moses Bascom as moderator and Moses Bascom Jr. elected town clerk and treasurer. That first meeting is the same institution that still votes the Gill budget every spring: a room of registered voters, a moderator, and a show of hands.
The Governor It Was Named For
Gill takes its name from Moses Gill, a member of the Massachusetts Executive Council who became lieutenant governor in 1794 and acting governor in 1799, after Governor Increase Sumner died in office. When Moses Gill himself died in 1800, Massachusetts was left with no governor and no acting governor, the only time in the state’s history that has happened. The town carries the name of a man who briefly ran the whole Commonwealth and then, by dying, left the top of it empty.
The River and the Falls
Gill lies in a wide bend of the Connecticut River, where the Millers River empties in near the French King Bridge and the river turns sharply northwestward. The falls just downstream carry the name of Captain William Turner, who led a raid there on May 19, 1676, during King Philip’s War, an attack on a Native encampment that is remembered today as the Great Falls Massacre. The land, the water, and the place names here all predate the town, and the river still shapes where people live and work.
The School on Grass Hill
In 1881 the evangelist Dwight L. Moody founded the Mount Hermon School on the Grass Hill section of Gill, the same land annexed from Northfield in 1795. The school grew into a campus above the Connecticut River, and it later joined with the Northfield School for girls to become Northfield Mount Hermon, a boarding and day school that still sits in Gill today. A town of about 1,500 people is home to a school that draws students from around the world.
Barton Cove and the Working River
Along Gill’s southern edge the Connecticut River widens into Barton Cove, a wooded peninsula where bald eagles nest and where canoeists and campers put in each summer. Just upstream the iron French King Bridge, built in 1932 and rebuilt in 1992, carries Route 2 across the gorge between Gill and Erving. The same river that organized life here for centuries now anchors the town’s parks, its recreation, and its view.
Sources: Town of Gill, About Gill and Attractions pages (gillmass.org); Gill, Massachusetts (Wikipedia); U.S. Census Bureau.