Montgomery, Massachusetts
A Short History of Montgomery
From a 1767 settlement on a high plain in the Berkshire foothills, to a town named in wartime for a general who never came home, to a quiet hilltown a highway turned into a place people commute from.
A Town Named for a Fallen General
People first settled the Montgomery hills in 1767, and in 1780, with the Revolution still being fought, Massachusetts incorporated the town. It was pieced together from land taken off the edges of Westfield and Southampton and from unincorporated territory that is now part of Huntington. The name honored General Richard Montgomery, the Continental Army officer who had been killed in 1775 leading the American attempt to take Quebec City. Naming a brand-new town for him in the middle of the war was a small, deliberate act of memory, and the town has carried the name ever since.
A Hilltown on a High Plain
Montgomery sits on a high plain in the Berkshire foothills, its center about 1,050 feet above sea level, framed by Tekoa and Shatterack Mountains to the south and west and by the gorge of the Westfield River, which forms part of the town’s border with Russell. The Tekoa Mountain region was originally the country of the Woronoake people. For its first eighty years the town belonged to Hampshire County, which once stretched across most of western Massachusetts; when the map was redrawn in 1812, Montgomery’s corner became part of the new Hampden County, where the town has sat ever since.
From Farms to a Commuter Town
For two centuries Montgomery was a farming community with a small center and a population to match. That began to change in 1957, when Interstate 90, the Massachusetts Turnpike, was built through the area and put Springfield within an easy drive. Montgomery became an outer commuter town, and its population grew, but slowly and without erasing the open hillsides. By the 2020 census the town counted 819 residents, still small enough that the people who show up to Town Meeting can decide the year for everyone.
A Government Run by Neighbors
What has not changed in Montgomery is how the town governs itself. It has never grown big enough to need a mayor or a hired town manager, and it has not adopted one. The three neighbors the voters elect to the Select Board run the town themselves, and the budget is still settled in open Town Meeting, where every registered voter is a member and any of them can stand up and vote. In a town this size, that is not a quaint survival. It is a working system in which one resident in the room genuinely counts.
Sources: Town of Montgomery (montgomeryma.gov); Wikipedia, Montgomery, Massachusetts; U.S. Census Bureau.