Interior House Painter Mendon MA

Mendon, Massachusetts
Town
First Church, Mendon
Seal
Location in Worcester County and the state of Massachusetts.
Coordinates: 42°06′20″N 71°33′10″W / 42.10556°N 71.55278°W / 42.10556; -71.55278Coordinates: 42°06′20″N 71°33′10″W / 42.10556°N 71.55278°W / 42.10556; -71.55278
Country	United States
State	Massachusetts
County	Worcester
Settled	1660
Incorporated	May 15, 1667
Government
• Type	Open town meeting
• Town Administrator	Kimberly Darigan Newman
• Board of    Selectmen	Mark Reil (Chairman) Chris Burke
Area
• Total	18.3 sq mi (47.3 km)
• Land	18.1 sq mi (46.9 km2)
• Water	0.2 sq mi (0.4 km)
Elevation	330 ft (101 m)
Population  (2020)
• Total	6,228
• Density	344.1/sq mi (132.8/km2)
Time zone	UTC-5 (Eastern)
• Summer (DST)	UTC-4 (Eastern)
ZIP code	01756
Area code	508 / 774
FIPS code	25-40255
GNIS feature ID	0618371
Website	http://mendonma.gov/

Mendon is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 6,228 at the 2020 census. Mendon is part of the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor, an early center of the industrial revolution in the United States. Mendon celebrated its 350th Anniversary on May 15, 2017.

History

Early history

Native Americans inhabited the Mendon area for thousands of years prior to European colonization of the Americas. At the time of contact, Nipmuc people inhabited the area that would become Mendon, and Nipmuc Pond is named for them. Nipmuc Regional High School was named after this lake. Nipmuc means “small pond place” or “people of the fresh waters”. The Nipmuc name does not refer to a specific village or tribe, but to natives that inhabited almost all of central Massachusetts. Over 500 Nipmuc live today in Massachusetts, and there are two nearby reservations at Grafton and Webster. The Nipmuc had a written language, tools, a graphite mine at Sturbridge, and well-developed agriculture, including maize (a variant of corn), beans and squash.

In the early 1600s, Praying Indians (natives who converted to Christianity) were settled into Praying Towns. Wacentug and Rice City held two of these villages in Mendon, in a section that later became Uxbridge. These were two of the 14 Praying Indian villages established by Reverend John Eliot, from Natick and Roxbury, who translated the Bible into the Nipmuc language.

Pioneer settlement

Pioneers from Braintree petitioned to receive a land grant for 8 miles (13 km) square of land, 15 miles (24 km) west of Medfield. In September 1662, after the deed was signed with a Native American chief, “Great John” and another Sachem, Quashaamit, the pioneers entered this part of what is now southern Worcester County. Earlier, unofficial, settlement occurred here in the 1640s, by pioneers from Roxbury. This was the beginning of Mendon.

The land for the settlement was 8 miles (13 km) square of Native American land in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and was purchased from the Nipmuc Indians, “for divers good and vallewable considerations them there unto Moovinge and especiall for an in consideration of the summe of twenty fower pound Ster.” In 1662, “Squinshepauke Plantation was started at the Netmocke settlement and plantation”, and was incorporated as the town of Mendon in 1667. The settlers were ambitious and set about clearing the roads that would mark settlement patterns throughout the town’s history.

The early settlement at Mendon was first listed in Middlesex County in 1667, then in 1671 in Suffolk County, and in Worcester County from 1731 onward. Mendon was first settled in 1660 and was officially incorporated in 1667. The town was originally 64 square miles (170 km²), including at least part of the modern-day towns of Milford, Bellingham, Hopedale, Uxbridge, Upton, Blackstone, Northbridge and Millville. For this reason, the town of Mendon is sometimes referred to as “Mother Mendon”. Benjamin Albee (1614–1695) erected a water-powered mill on Mill River in 1664 where it crosses modern-day Hartford Avenue. and was one of the town’s important early residents. The mill was the first water-powered grist mill in the region.

On July 14, 1675, early violence in King Philip’s War took place in Mendon, with the deaths of multiple residents and the destruction of Albee’s mill. These were the first settlers killed in this war in the Colony of Massachusetts. A man named Richard Post, of Post’s lane, may have been the first settler killed. The town was largely burnt to the ground later that winter in early 1676. During King Philip’s War, many Nipmuc from around Marlboro and Natick were interned Deer Island, and many died from the harsh winter in 1675. The town of Mendon was resettled and rebuilt in 1680.

Robert Taft, Sr., settled here, in the part that became Uxbridge, in 1680 and was the patriarch of the famous Taft family. He settled here in 1669 and was among those forced back to Braintree because of King Philip’s War. In 1712, Mendon was the birthplace of Lydia Chapin, who became America’s first legal woman voter, known later as Lydia Chapin Taft, or simply Lydia Taft. Ezra T. Benson was born here and became a famous Mormon Missionary and Utah Territory legislator. (See also the article of neighboring Uxbridge, Massachusetts.) The Taft family became an American political dynasty, especially in Ohio, but also in Iowa, Rhode Island, Vermont, and other states. President William Howard Taft was a descendant and also was a descendant of George Aldrich.