Grafton, Massachusetts
A Short History of Grafton
From Hassanamisco, the place of small stones, to a town common laid out in 1738, to a bandstand built by a Hollywood film crew that residents still use.
Hassanamisco
Before there was a Grafton there was Hassanamisco, which means place of small stones, and it belonged to the Nipmuc. In 1671 an English missionary named John Eliot, who preached at Hassanamisco, established a Native American church and school here, where the Bible was studied in the Indigenous language. Both stood near the ground that is now the town common. This was one of the praying towns, and the Nipmuc presence did not end with the arrival of English settlers: there is a Native American homestead on Brigham Hill today, and the town’s own records document Nipmuc ownership of land here through the 19th century.
Forty Proprietors and a Petition
In 1724 a group of 39 men and one woman, mainly from Marlborough, Sudbury, Concord and Stow, presented a petition to the General Court and were granted the right to purchase 7,500 acres of land from Native American owners. The money was to be held in an account under the direction of the General Court for the benefit of the Native Americans. The Town of Grafton was established in 1735, named for Charles Fitzroy, Duke of Grafton, a grandson of Charles II. So the town has a name from an English duke, a footprint bought by petition, and a much older name underneath both.
Four Acres in the Middle
The present Grafton common was established in 1738, and the decision reads like a Town Meeting vote because that is what it was. The original 40 proprietors voted that four acres near the center of the plantation of Hassanamisco be set aside as common land, and that a meetinghouse, a burial ground, a schoolhouse and a militia training field be placed there. The first meetinghouse of the Congregational Puritan settlement had gone up in 1730 and stood at the center of the common for a hundred years. The cross behind the pulpit in the present Congregational Church is fashioned from timber of that building. In 1845 a portion of the original common was fenced, graded and planted with trees, which is roughly the green you can walk across now.
Six Villages and the Water That Made Them
Grafton did not grow as one settlement. Six villages formed near the centers of manufacturing activity: Grafton center, New England Village in North Grafton, Centerville on Brigham Hill by the river, and Farnumsville, Fisherville and Saundersville in South Grafton. All but the center were sited where there was significant water power, because in the 19th century water power was the reason to put a mill somewhere, and a mill was the reason to put a village around it. That is why Grafton still has more than one downtown, and why the town’s zip codes and school catchments split the way they do.
The Bandstand a Film Crew Built
The bandstand standing on Grafton common was not built by the town. Hollywood filmmakers put it up in 1935 for a scene in the production of Ah, Wilderness, which was filmed here, and it stayed. It is a small thing and a useful one to know, because it is the sort of fact that turns a green you walk past into a place with a record. The town’s Historical Commission and Conservation Commission jointly oversee another such place, Hassanamesit Woods on Keith Hill, where the archaeology and the land are protected together.
The Town That Is Still Voting
The mechanism that laid out four acres in 1738 is the same one that runs Grafton now. On May 19, 2026 the town voted to assess an extra $5,000,000 in property taxes to fund the school and municipal budget, and to borrow outside the limits of Proposition 2 1/2 to replace the roof on the Grafton Middle School. Both passed. In June 2026 the Select Board signed a payment agreement with Tufts University worth about $1.1 million over ten years, tied to development at the Grafton Science Park. Nearly three centuries on, the town is still deciding its own business in public rooms, and the doors are still open.
Sources: Town of Grafton, History of Grafton and About Grafton (grafton-ma.gov); Grafton Historical Commission, Hassanamesit Woods; Town of Grafton Annual Town Election, May 19, 2026, official results attested by Town Clerk Amy M. Berry; Grafton Select Board approved minutes of June 2 and June 24, 2026; U.S. Census Bureau.