Granby, Massachusetts
A Short History of Granby
From a far corner of colonial Hadley to a town of its own, Granby was born out of a New England argument about where to build the meetinghouse, and it was settled the way the town still settles its business, by a vote.
A Corner of Hadley
Granby began as part of Hadley, one of the parcels the colony carved out of the Hadley Equivalent Lands along the Connecticut River valley. English families settled the ground that is now Granby in 1727, far enough from the Hadley meetinghouse that getting to worship and to town business was a hardship. In November of that year the residents of what are now South Hadley and Granby petitioned the General Court to be set up as their own precinct within the Town of Hadley, the first step a New England community took toward governing itself.
The Meetinghouse Argument
Becoming a precinct did not settle where the precinct would meet. From 1751 through 1761 the district was deadlocked over where to build a new meetinghouse: west of Cold Hill, in what is now South Hadley, or east of it, in what is now Granby. A meetinghouse in colonial Massachusetts was town hall and church at once, so the fight over its location was really a fight over which settlement would be the center of things. The deadlock ran for a decade before the two sides gave up on sharing one.
A Town of Its Own, 1768
With the two parishes unable to agree, the General Court set off the east parish as a town in its own right, and Granby was incorporated on June 11, 1768. The new town took its name in honor of John Manners, the Marquess of Granby, a popular British commander in the Seven Years’ War whose name was fashionable across the colonies at the time. From that year forward, Granby raised its own money, kept its own records, and made its own decisions at an open Town Meeting, the same form that still governs it.
A Farming Town in the Valley
Granby settled into the life of a Pioneer Valley farming town and has held onto much of it. It sits between South Hadley to the west, Amherst to the north, Belchertown to the east, and Ludlow and Chicopee to the south, with Route 202 running through as East and West State Street and the traprock ridge of the Holyoke Range rising along the northern edge of town. Working farms and open space still shape the place, and its center keeps the look of a traditional New England town.
Still Deciding at Town Meeting
The clearest proof that Granby still runs the way it did in 1768 is recent. In 2025 the town’s officials asked a special Town Meeting for $10 million to turn the closed West Street School into a new town hall, and the meeting said no. Rather than drop the idea, the town rebuilt the plan to fit what voters would approve, and in April 2026 Granby broke ground on a $6.6 million town office to bring its scattered departments under one roof for the first time since 2010. A room of registered voters decided it, which is the same power the town has held since the year it was incorporated.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Granby, Massachusetts” (settlement, precinct petition, meetinghouse deadlock, 1768 incorporation, and the Marquess of Granby); the Town of Granby, granby-ma.gov; U.S. Census Bureau.