Milford

One day in the early 1870s, two brothers walking in Milford's Rocky Woods took a hammer and wedge to a huge rock, split it open, and changed Milford's history forever.

Inside the immense boulder (found near where present-day Rte. 495 crosses Rte. 16), James and William Sherman discovered a pink-colored stone now prized the world over and known as "Milford Pink" granite.

The ramifications of that discovery still ripple through Milford today - a town of 27,000 conveniently located 32 miles west of Boston, 19 miles east of Worcester, and just 28 miles north of Providence, R.I.

Considered one of the "great granites" of this country, "Milford Pink" has been used to build the base of the Statue of Liberty, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C., both Penn Station and Grand Central Station in New York, Boston's first John Hancock building, the Boston Public Library, and countless other notable buildings.

When the Sherman brothers first discovered "Milford Pink" granite that day in the Rocky Woods, the town already had a number of small quarries supplying its needs for curbstone and building blocks. And the Shermans were in fact stonecutters looking for a new quarry site. But what they found was far more valuable than a new quarry - it added a whole new dimension to the town's economy, its ethnic diversity and its future generations.

Within 15 years of their discovery, Milford's quarry industry exploded, and thousands of stonecutters poured into Milford from all over the world, most notably from the quarries of northern Italy. Their descendants remain an integral part of the town's social fabric today. According to A History of Milford, Massachusetts, 1780 - 1980, "It was an industry shared by all nationalities and religions, Irish, Italians, Swedes, Catholics and Protestants, who worked side by side, lugging and lifting, sharing together in the pride of their work."

Distinguished by its pink shades flecked with black mica, "Milford Pink" granite has an impressive character particularly suited for use in large areas. One gigantic pink granite slab quarried in Milford weighed 8,000 tons and measured 90 feet long, 30 feet wide and 35 feet high. To see "Milford Pink" today you need only to travel as far as the town's "Granite Grove," (St. Mary's Cemetery) where the stone was used to build a 110-foot replica of an ancient Irish Round Tower, the dream-come-true of Irish priest and quarry owner Father Patrick Cuddihy, who came to Milford in 1857. "Milford Pink" was also used to build St. Mary's Church, the Milford Armory and a number of other local landmarks.

Well before Milford made its name with "Milford Pink" granite, the town was a thriving boot and shoemaking center, thanks to the entrepreneurial spirit of Colonel Arial Bragg, who started his dynasty in nearby Holliston in 1795. At the time, custom cobblers filled individual orders only - there were no shoe stores. And since nearly every man and boy in the country wore calf boots, Bragg had only to figure out a way to meet demand to make money.

Others followed his lead, and by 1856, Milford had 11 shoe factories, turning out more than a million pairs of footwear made by more than 3,000 workers. Many ancillary businesses sprang up to feed the shoe industry, including tanneries and the Milford Paper Box Company. A few other industries rose to prominence in Milford in the nineteenth century, among them cigar manufacturing and straw hat makers. It's hard to believe now, but in 1886, some two million cigars were rolled in Milford, and around the same time 700 millinery workers, mostly women, created the latest in straw hat fashions.

Once a part of Milford, neighboring Hopedale petitioned the state legislature to separate and became an independent municipality in 1885, led by industrialist George Draper, head of the Draper Corporation -- at the time the largest manufacturer of automatic looms in the world. But despite the separation, the byproducts of Hopedale's and the Draper Corporation's success continued to spill over into Milford.

For example, houses in the town's Prospect Heights neighborhood were built, owned and maintained by the Draper Corp., which rented them to its workers. For $1.40 per week a factory family could live in a new brick home with a free cold water faucet in each sink. For $1.75, a family could enjoy a home with heat, hot water and a full bath. The Irish workers, who had immigrated years earlier, moved into these, clearing the way for newly arrived laborers from Portugal and Armenia. To help the newest workers feel "at home," Draper assigned the Portuguese houses # 1-40; the Polish and Italian families #41-60 and the Armenians # 101 - 118, with other nationalities sprinkled in between.

Today, Milford continues to thrive due to its multi-ethnic background, and because of its location on the "Golden Triangle" - a location nearly equidistant to Boston, Worcester and Providence, R.I. With its two exits onto Rte. 495, Milford is convenient for both commuters and businesses. In fact, Milford's population has doubled since the 495 beltway was built.

Milford has two major industrial parks: the Bear Hill Industrial area, home to worldwide computer data storage manufacturer EMC, and home to Waters Corp., which makes liquid chromatography equipment for medical labs around the globe. Among the businesses located in Granite Park are Boston Digital, Photofabrication Engineering Inc., and A.J. Knott Tool and Manufacturing. Other major employers include Foster Forbes glass manufacturing and the Benjamin Moore Company, which makes house paints in nearly 1,000 different colors at its Milford plant.

Milford's most famous native is Dr. Joseph E. Murray, (Milford High School class of 1936), who conducted the first successful organ transplant in 1954 - a kidney from donor Ronald Herrick to his twin brother Richard. Dr. Murray, Professor of Surgery Emeritus at Harvard Medical School, shared the 1990 Nobel Prize in Medicine, and was honored for his work in transplants and the use of immunosuppressive drugs to solve organ rejection.