New Braintree, Massachusetts
A Short History of New Braintree
From nine thousand years of Nipmuck settlement, to a 1669 land vote that carved a town out of the far edge of another, to a dairy center that shipped cheese to Boston by the ton and still keeps its farms.
Braintree Farms
Long before any English town meeting, this land belonged to the Nipmuck people, descendants of the Algonquian peoples of Nippenet, “the freshwater pond place,” who lived here for at least nine thousand years. The town that grew on it began with a vote. In 1669 the people of Braintree, southeast of Boston, resolved at their own town meeting that each household would take an equal share in six thousand acres of land purchased to the west, ground they called Braintree Farms. Tracts formerly part of Brookfield and Hardwick were added over the years, and in 1751 the settlement was incorporated as the town of New Braintree. Secluded in the rolling hills of Worcester County, it has kept its rural character ever since.
A Dairy Town
For most of its history New Braintree was a farming town, and by the 19th century it had become a dairy center of real weight. More than a thousand milking cows grazed its hills, and the town produced over two hundred thousand pounds of cheese a year, shipping cheese, dairy, and beef to the Boston market. Around the farms grew the small industries that a working town needs: a broom-making factory, a blacksmith shop, saw and grist mills, and a shoe and boot factory. Today New Braintree has fewer than a thousand residents and keeps its farming character, with a working dairy farm, a commercial orchard, and produce and beef-cattle farms still on the land.
Keepers of the Town’s Memory
New Braintree still governs itself the way it did when it was farms and cheese houses: by open Town Meeting, with a government run by the neighbors it elects. The town’s story is kept by the New Braintree Historical Society and the Historical Commission, which has published a reprint of Jeff Fiske’s “History of New Braintree,” and by the Leroy H. Pollard Memorial Library on Memorial Drive. The road you drive to Town Hall runs past the same farms that voted this town into being.
Sources: Town of New Braintree (newbraintreema.us), Our History page; New Braintree Historical Society and Historical Commission; Wikipedia, New Braintree, Massachusetts.