Richmond, Massachusetts
A Short History of Richmond
From two settlers who arrived in 1759 by two different routes, to a hill town that changed a single letter of its own name to honor a friend of the American cause.
Two Roads In, 1759
The first English settlers reached this stretch of the Berkshire hills in 1759, and they came from opposite directions. Micah Mudge worked his way up the Housatonic River from Connecticut, while Ichabod Wood came west from Rehoboth on the far side of the colony. They settled a rugged upland just east of the New York line, split down the middle by a long north-south spine that would later be called Yokun Ridge. That ridge, running about six miles, kept the earliest two villages apart and shaped where roads and farms could go.
The 1765 Charter
Richmond was incorporated as a Massachusetts town under an act dated June 21, 1765, and at first it was spelled Richmont. It sat at the western edge of a county that was itself brand new: Berkshire County had been set off from Hampshire only in 1761. For a small hill town this far from Boston, incorporation meant the right to hold its own town meeting, elect its own officers, and tax itself for roads and a school, the same machinery Richmond still runs on today.
A Letter Changed for a Friend
In 1785 the town petitioned to change the final letter of its name from a t to a d, turning Richmont into Richmond. The change was most likely made in honor of Charles Lennox, the Duke of Richmond, who had spoken in the British Parliament for the American cause during the Revolution. It is a small thing, one letter, but it tells you how a young town chose to see itself: not named for an English port it had left behind, but for a man who had taken its side.
A Berkshire Town Against the New York Line
Richmond covers about 19 square miles, and its entire western border is the state line with Columbia County, New York, which puts the town right at the edge of Massachusetts, a short drive southwest of Pittsfield. Its landscape is defined by the ridges and by Richmond Pond, a broad pond shared with Pittsfield that has drawn boaters and swimmers for generations. The pond, the working farms, and more than a thousand acres of protected open space are why the town has fought to keep its rural character rather than dissolve into the city next door.
Sources: Wikipedia, Richmond, Massachusetts (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond,_Massachusetts); U.S. Census Bureau; the Richmond Land Trust.