Savoy, Massachusetts
A Short History of Savoy
From a 1777 hill settlement called New Seconk, to a town named for a French duchy, to a community that still votes its own budget face to face in the fire house.
A Town Named for a Duchy
Savoy began as Northern Berkshire Township Number 6, one of the parcels the Massachusetts colony sold off in its northwestern hills. It was first settled in 1777 by a group led by Colonel Lemuel Hathaway, and the land changed hands at auction more than once before Colonel William Bullock of Rehoboth bought it. The settlement was first called New Seconk, then renamed Savoy for the way its high, folded country resembled the mountainous Duchy of Savoy in France. In 1797 the town was officially incorporated, and it has governed itself ever since.
From Grazing to Mills
Savoy’s first economy was built on the land: farming and, above all, grazing on the cleared hillsides. As the nineteenth century wore on the town added several lumber mills, cutting the timber its forests grew back faster than most places. The town never became a manufacturing center like the mill cities down in the valley, and that is part of why so much of it stayed open field and woodland, the landscape residents still live in today.
The Land Itself
Savoy sits high in the northern Berkshires, and the land is the town’s most famous feature. Borden Mountain, at 2,507 feet, is the highest point in town. Savoy Mountain State Forest spreads across Savoy and neighboring Florida, with Tannery Falls, Bog Pond, and miles of trail, and the Cold River runs along part of the town’s northern border. For a town of a few hundred people, the amount of protected forest and water is enormous, and looking after it is one of the jobs residents take on through the town’s conservation and river committees.
Governing a Hilltown Today
The work of a small town is never finished. In 2024 the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection officially closed Savoy’s old landfill, and the town now handles its trash and recycling through a transfer station on Chapel Road. Decisions like that one still run through the same room they always have: the open Town Meeting, where any registered voter can stand up, speak, and vote. Money sits in the treasury, a town meeting votes, and the town moves. That is the working diagram of how Savoy has governed itself since 1797.
Sources: Town of Savoy (townofsavoy.com); Wikipedia, Savoy, Massachusetts; U.S. Census Bureau.