Hamilton, Massachusetts
A Short History of Hamilton
A farming parish that became its own town in 1793, a place a hunt club and a wartime general each made famous, and a town that in 2009 hired its first professional manager and in 2021 became the first in Massachusetts to require composting.
1793, and the Parish That Left
Hamilton did not begin as a town. It began as the Hamlet, the farming edge of Ipswich, far enough from the meetinghouse that a Sunday service was a half day’s journey, and by the eighteenth century the settlement out there had grown large enough to want its own affairs. On June 21, 1793, the Legislature incorporated it as the Town of Hamilton, named for Alexander Hamilton. The town later put his portrait on its seal, in 1903. That is the pattern for most of eastern Massachusetts: a town is usually a piece of an older town that got big enough to want its own vote.
The Hunt Club and the Horses
In the 1880s the Myopia Hunt Club moved to the Gibney Farm in Hamilton, and it shaped the town’s character for good. The club’s golf course hosted the U.S. Open four times, in 1898, 1901, 1905 and 1908, and its riders made Hamilton a center of New England equestrian life that it still is today, with horse farms and open fields where the mill towns nearby filled in with houses. When people call Hamilton horse country, this is what they mean.
A General’s Town, and a Gift to It
General George S. Patton, the World War II commander, lived in Hamilton, and his family’s estate on Asbury Street stayed in the town’s story long after he was gone. In 2012 the Patton family gave the town twenty seven acres of that estate, the Patton Homestead, and a Town Meeting voted to accept it. Land that had been a private estate became a public place any resident can walk onto, and while Town Hall is under renovation the town’s own offices operate from it.
2009: The Town Hired a Manager
Here is the piece of Hamilton history that most directly affects how the town is run today. For most of its life Hamilton was governed the traditional New England way, by a board of selectmen and the annual Town Meeting. Then in 2009 the Legislature passed Chapter 114 of the Acts of 2009, a special act written for Hamilton alone, establishing a professional Town Manager appointed by the Select Board. Day to day administration moved from the elected board to a hired manager accountable to it, while the voters kept electing the offices they had always elected: the Town Clerk, the Board of Assessors, the Moderator and the rest.
Whether to keep that arrangement is a real question, and it is the kind Town Meeting can reopen, because an act like this one can be amended the same way it was passed.
A Town That Goes First
Hamilton has a habit of acting on its own convictions. In 2021 it became the first town in Massachusetts to require residential composting, a decision made the way Hamilton makes decisions, by the residents themselves. The vote to accept the Patton land, the vote to compost, the vote on a new school: each of them happened in a room where every registered voter could stand up and be counted, which is the whole point of an open Town Meeting.
Sources: Wikipedia, Hamilton, Massachusetts; An Act Establishing a Town Manager in the Town of Hamilton, Chapter 114 of the Acts of 2009 (malegislature.gov); Town of Hamilton (hamiltonma.gov); U.S. Census Bureau.