Williamsburg, Massachusetts
A Short History of Williamsburg
A hill town settled in the 1730s that grew into a river full of mills, and then rebuilt after the 1874 flood that broke a dam above the town and remade the state’s law on dam safety.
Settlement and Incorporation
English families first settled the hills here in 1735, and the town was incorporated as Williamsburg in 1771, five years before independence. It grew as three village centers rather than one: Williamsburg, Haydenville and Searsville, strung along the branches of the Mill River. Haydenville is now recognized as a National Register historic district, and the same open Town Meeting that organized the town’s early business still votes its budget today.
The Mill River
Through the 1800s Williamsburg became a mill town. The East and West branches of the Mill River join at Williamsburg village and run southeast through Haydenville toward Northampton, and along that fall of water the town built factories. Small shops began dressing woolen cloth in Searsville in the early nineteenth century, and by mid-century the valley’s mills were turning out silk thread, woolen cloth, brass goods, grinding wheels and buttons. In Haydenville, the manufacturer Joel Hayden built a brass works that gave the village its name.
The Flood of 1874
On the morning of May 16, 1874, the reservoir dam above Williamsburg failed and sent a wall of water down the narrow valley. Within an hour it had killed 139 people and left roughly 740 homeless, tearing through the mill villages of Williamsburg, Skinnerville and Haydenville and on into Leeds in Northampton. It was the first great dam disaster in United States history, and it changed the law: the Mill River flood pushed the Massachusetts Legislature to begin regulating how dams are designed and built. The Meekins Library keeps a collection of stereograph photographs of the wreckage, and the old reservoir site is now part of the town’s woodland trails.
The Town Today
The mills are gone, but their streets and mill houses still shape the three villages, and the Mill River corridor is now the focus of a greenway effort rather than a power source. Williamsburg remains a small hill town of about 2,500 people that governs itself the old way, in a room any registered voter can enter.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Williamsburg, Massachusetts”; New England Historical Society and Historic Northampton on the 1874 Mill River flood; the Meekins Library and the Mill River Greenway. U.S. Census Bureau. Accessed 2026.