Mendon, Massachusetts
A Short History of Mendon
From a plantation the Nipmuc called Squinshepauke, to a town so large that eight other towns were carved out of it, to a 2002 vote that is still buying back its own woods and fields.
Squinshepauke, 1662
English settlers from Braintree petitioned for this land in September 1662, and the deed was signed by the Nipmuc leaders Great John and Quashaamit. The place was first called Squinshepauke. Five years later, on May 15, 1667, the settlement was incorporated as the town of Mendon. It sits on the Mill River, near Nipmuc Pond, on ground that rises to about 331 feet.
Albee’s Mill, 1664
Even before the town had a name, it had a machine. In 1664 Benjamin Albee built a water-powered grist mill on the Mill River, the first water-powered mill in the region, so that farmers could grind their grain without carrying it for miles. A town that could mill its own flour could feed itself, and the mill is a good reminder that early Mendon was an engineering project as much as a settlement.
King Philip’s War
Mendon’s first decade ended in violence. On July 14, 1675, the first settlers killed in King Philip’s War anywhere in the Massachusetts colony died here, and early in 1676 the town was largely burned. The survivors left, and Mendon was not resettled and rebuilt until 1680. It is hard history, and it is part of how this town began, told here plainly because it is true.
Mother Mendon
Old Mendon was enormous, about 64 square miles, and over the next century and a half it was carved into new towns one after another: Milford, Bellingham, Hopedale, Uxbridge, Upton, Blackstone, Northbridge, and Millville all began as part of Mendon. That is why old maps call it Mother Mendon. The town you live in is what remained after all its children moved out.
The Taft Library, 1881
In 1881 Mrs. William R. Huston gave the town 1,000 dollars to found a public library in memory of her brother, Putnam W. Taft. The Taft Public Library opened for lending on August 20, 1881, in a small brick building, and that original building now serves as the museum of the Mendon Historical Society. The library is still the town’s, and the same idea, that a small town can decide to own something for everyone, runs from that gift to the vote below.
The 2002 Vote
In 2002 a Mendon Town Meeting adopted the Community Preservation Act and added a 3 percent surcharge to the town’s own property taxes. That vote has since raised roughly 3.7 million dollars of local money and drawn about 2.5 million more in state matching funds, and the town has spent it on things residents can stand on: the woods and nine acre pond at Meadow Brook Woods, the ballfields at Veterans Field, the playground at Memorial Park, and the preservation of town records dating to the 1600s. It is Town Meeting itself, a room full of neighbors deciding to tax themselves, doing something you can visit.
Sources: Mendon, Massachusetts (Wikipedia); Taft Public Library; the Mendon Historical Society; U.S. Census Bureau.