Mendon

It's hard to tell whether Mendon is better known as the mother town of all the towns that abut it, or as the town that did not let George Washington sleep there!

While both stories are rooted in fact (an innkeeper's wife turned the President away in 1789), there is another truth about Mendon that is more immediately apparent to the passing visitor: to visit Mendon is to glimpse a 19th-century farming community unaltered by industrialization. Unlike many towns in the Blackstone Valley, Mendon never became the site of major industrial villages. Instead, it became an important source of farm products to an increasingly industrialized population.

Perched on a hilltop at a crossroads to four major manufacturing centers, Mendon's farm production increased in the late 19th century to meet the growing demands of nearby manufacturing centers. Even today, Mendon's agrarian roots can be seen in its winding roads, tranquil pastures, and sturdy stone walls.

The second-oldest town in Worcester County, Lancaster being the oldest, Mendon began as an eight-mile square tract purchased for twenty-four pounds from several Native American tribes in 1662. John Eliot, historically famous "Apostle to the Indians," was one of the witnesses to the deed. In 1663, fifteen families, mostly from Braintree and Weymouth, undertook the arduous task of creating a new settlement in what was then considered the western frontier. Squinshapauke Plantation, as the isolated settlement was originally known, was incorporated as the town of Mendon in 1667.

Eight years later, Mendon was the first town in the Massachusetts Bay Colony to be attacked in the Native American uprising known as King Phillip's War. Five residents were killed, the entire town was burned to the ground, and the community was not resettled until 1679. Over the next 200 years, "Mother Mendon" lost the furthermost portions of her territory when inhabitants of those distant parishes successfully petitioned the courts to incorporate as separate towns.

Lacking the abundant water supply that powered the early mills of the Industrial Revolution, Mendon residents continued pursue to farming and cottage industries. Even the railroads passed the town by. Today, quiet Mendon is becoming a bedroom community as many of its pastures are filled with new housing.

Cars whiz along the intersecting thoroughfares. Yet the past is everywhere evident, in the tiny triangular village, the weathered farm buildings, the sleepy cemeteries, the timeless vistas. In "Mother Mendon" one can still find living vestiges of old New England.