Sutton

By Chris Sinacola

Sutton was born among fertile hilltops and well-watered valleys of the Nipmuc country, where, in the early 1700s, a group of London proprietors established a new foothold in America. In the wake of Indian wars, English farmers built a town on their guns, plows, and Congregational sensibilities, a place echoed today through the images in Sutton. No Massachusetts town sent more of its native sons to fight for independence, and Sutton secured that liberty through hard work. French Canadian workers built the mill villages of Manchaug and Wilkinsonville and turned out cloth, hats, and shuttles. Sutton raised prize-winning cattle and grew the Sutton Beauty apple. As the twentieth century brought growth, Sutton blended highways and subdivisions with eighteenth-century homes, farms, and a working blacksmith shop.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Sep 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781439628621

Chris Sinacola

Chris Sinacola, a member of the Sutton Historical Society and reporter for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, grew up in West Sutton. A descendant of Sutton's early settlers, he trekked about Hotel Pond, marveled at Purgatory Chasm, and listened to his grandmother's tales by the wood stove of the Brick Block-tales of shrewd storekeepers, windy selectmen, and attics full of history. Sutton brings to life a community marking three hundred years of history.

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Sinacola.)

INTRODUCTION

Walk the pastures and farmlands of Sutton, and even today you can occasionally uncover a sharp, flaked arrowhead left by a Nipmuc hunter thousands of years ago. Tour the 1757 Waters family farmhouse, and you can see and feel three centuries of history return to life in the wood that burns upon the hearth, the quilts that once softened settlers’ sleep, and the simple furniture that rested aching bodies.

All these things were drawn from the land, the eight miles square that offered Sutton’s first English settlers fertile soil, powerful waterways, and plentiful timber.

A Nipmuc Indian, John Wampas, had visited England in the 1600s and deeded thousands of acres in Massachusetts to Edward Pratt. Following Wampas’s death, Pratt came to America, where he sold interests in his land to several other Englishmen, whose claims, along with those of the Nipmucs, constituted a legal thicket for the provincial government.

In 1681, the General Court of Massachusetts Bay Colony sent William Stoughton and Joseph Dudley to the Nipmuc country to sort out those claims. Their own holdings, known as Manchaug Farm, included most of what is now West Sutton.

The remaining lands beyond the Blackstone remained unresolved until 1704, when the General Court granted Pratt and his fellow proprietors a certain tract of land . . . situated in the Nipmug Country between the towns of Mendon, Worcester, New Oxford, Sherburne and Marlborough, of eight miles square.

Sutton, an Anglo-Saxon name meaning South Town, had been born.

The town was surveyed in 1715, its ill-defined edges bordering on sundry farms and one or another established town. However, the first settlers had no time to quibble over boundaries.

The Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 had brought a temporary halt to war between England and France, a conflict played out on New England’s frontiers by the early settlers and their respective Native American allies.

Thirty families—including Sibley, Stockwell, Marsh, and King—took up the challenge of settlement. The first town meeting was held in 1718, and the first Congregational meetinghouse was soon built, with pews granted to each of the leading families.

When war came again in the 1770s, Sutton sent 65 minutemen to answer the first alarms, followed by 215 Revolutionary soldiers to secure the nation’s independence. It was Rufus Putnam, born in Sutton in 1738, who fashioned a defensive bulwark on Dorchester Heights that helped force the British to abandon Boston.

The land showered Sutton with plenty. On his farm in West Sutton, Stephen Waters perfected the Sutton Beauty apple. Daniel Webster was so impressed by Sutton’s livestock that he once remarked, In the town of Sutton in Massachusetts I have seen some of the best cattle in the world.

The Sutton story, however, was far from complete. In the early 19th century, the American Industrial Revolution, born in Samuel Slater’s mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, spread rapidly along the Blackstone River valley. David Wilkinson built a mill and village on the river. A trio of Providence businessmen—Jonathan Congdon, Samuel Congdon, and Randall Green—purchased pastures in what is now Manchaug village and harnessed the Mumford River for industry.

Sutton’s English heritage was soon spiced with French Canadian workers, along with Irish, Italian, German, Dutch, Armenian, and Swedish immigrants. In 1829, Episcopal and Baptist churches were built. Shuttle and machine tool shops were built. They prospered but then declined as the 20th century brought large-scale industrialization.

The farms, families, and history have endured. Even as recent decades have brought the mixed blessings of progress, Sutton retains much of its collective memory and natural heritage. It is a history that could not have been preserved so well without the patient efforts of dozens of citizens who produced two extraordinary town histories, in 1878 and 1952. Nor would that history be so keenly present today were it not for all the families who kept those old letters and photographs, milk bottles, tools, and guns. Many historically minded organizations and individuals, public and private, have also labored long and hard to ensure that Sutton’s history secures its rightful place in America’s history.

Following upon that legacy has been a formidable challenge. Anyone who grew up in Sutton can recount any number of scenes from the past—a dimly remembered meeting in the old town hall, an afternoon coaxing fish from the ice of Manchaug Pond, or squeezing through Fat Man’s Misery at Purgatory Chasm. Sorting such memories, connecting places to people, both living and dead, and recognizing the patterns established over time are tasks that lie at the heart of local history.

The present volume has been produced in association with the Sutton 300 Committee on the eve of a year-long celebration of Sutton’s three centuries that is sure to bring further light to Sutton’s past. It draws upon the resources of many of Sutton’s long-established families, as well as the archives of the Sutton Historical Society and the Sutton Historical Commission. The images here include many familiar places, often presented in a new light, and many moments in time that have not been shared publicly for generations, if ever.

It is hoped that Sutton natives and newcomers alike will find not just a historical record of so many images but a narrative that crosses time from the bitter winter of 1716, when three families first came to the hills of Sutton, to the present day. To be sure, there are omissions. There are people and places hinted at but not shown. Many of the photographs contain clues and hints that, given further research, would yield stories beyond the scope of this book.

All that is as it must be, for no single volume can exhaust the riches of this New England town. As Sutton’s fourth century unfolds, the people of Sutton continue to build on their legacy. Their careful preservation of the works and days of their town ensures that historians to come will also know the joys of discovery.

One

A NEW ENGLAND VILLAGE

Children run a footrace down Singletary Avenue on May 16, 1904, the second day of the three-day celebration held to mark Sutton’s 200th anniversary. May 16, dubbed Education