Pelham, Massachusetts
A Short History of Pelham
From a 1739 settlement by Scottish immigrants, to the 1743 meetinghouse the town still uses, to the reservoir that swallowed a third of its land, Pelham has held onto the oldest form of self government in the country.
A Town Founded by Scots
Pelham was settled in 1739 by Scottish immigrants and incorporated as a town in 1743, the first incorporated town between Worcester and the Connecticut River valley towns. It sits on the ridge that divides the Pioneer Valley from central Massachusetts, and for most of its history it has been a small hill town of farms, woods, and streams, governed by the neighbors who show up to Town Meeting.
The Oldest Town Hall in the Nation
The Old Meeting House that Pelham’s residents raised in 1743 still stands, and the town holds it out as the oldest town hall in continuous use in the nation. It is still the site of the Fall Town Meeting, and that is the point worth holding onto: the room where the town’s business is decided is the same room the founders built, and the way the decision gets made, by any resident who stands up to speak and vote, has not changed either.
Daniel Shays and the Rebellion That Shaped a Constitution
Pelham’s most famous citizen was Capt. Daniel Shays, who in 1786 led a movement of farmers, many of them driven into debt after the Revolution, against the courts that were seizing their land. Much of it was planned in the local meeting place, Conkey’s Tavern. Shays’ Rebellion is credited with convincing the nation’s leaders to gather at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, and the highway that runs through the eastern side of town, Daniel Shays Highway, now part of Route 202, still carries his name.
The Reservoir That Took a Third of the Town
When the Quabbin Reservoir was built in the 1930s to supply water to metropolitan Boston, nearly a third of Pelham’s original land became part of the reservoir and its protected watershed. The eastern third of the town is state-owned land to this day. Pelham absorbed the loss and kept its town meeting, and in 2012 it was designated a Massachusetts Green Community, a modern chapter in a long habit of the town deciding its own course.
A Town of 1,280
Pelham counted 1,280 residents at the 2020 census, spread across roughly 25 square miles of hill country. The restored Community Hall, built around 1893, gives the town a gathering place beyond the meetinghouse, and the Pelham Historical Society keeps the town’s records and museum at the Pelham Historic Complex on the corner of Amherst Road and Daniel Shays Highway.
Sources: Town of Pelham (pelhamma.gov, About Pelham); Pelham Historical Society (pelhamhistory.org); 2025 Annual Town Report; U.S. Census Bureau.