The Town of New Marlborough is situated on uneven and hilly terrain on an
elevated plateau in the southern Berkshires. It was one of the four towns
established by the Great and General Court to settle and protect the
wilderness trail that was the single route at the time from the lower
Housatonic Valley to the Connecticut Valley and Boston. The territory of
New Marlborough was granted as the six-mile square Township #2 in 1735.
The surveys of the town were completed in 1737 and the proprietors bought
the land the town is on from the Indians for 300 English pounds, a greater
sum “than ever paid by other proprietors”, as they complained to the
General Court. There were 63 original home lots laid out in a “compact and
defensible form”, one for each of the two ministers expected in the new
town, one for a school and one each for the grantees. The grantees were
required to put down 40 Sterling pounds to secure their grant. The first
settler, Benjamin Wheeler, built his house in 1739 and the first children
born in town were twins, a daughter and son for Mr. and Mrs. Brookins. The
town meeting of 1774 in New Marlborough gave staunch support to the
principles of liberty and inalienable rights which would later be embodied
in the Constitution of the new country. By 1759 there were enough settlers
to secure formal incorporation of the town.
New Marlborough contains a part of scenic Lake Buel, on which a steamboat
ran in the 19th century, Campbell’s Falls where the Whiting River pours
down an 80′ drop, and Tipping Rock. The Rock, a huge 40-ton boulder left
behind by retreating glaciers in the ice-age, balances so delicately that
one finger can tilt a weight that a bulldozer couldn’t move. The town is
1400′ above sea level offering cool, fresh mountain air to folk from the
city. The town had a number of summer visitors in the 19th century, but
its character of a summer resort probably begins formally in 1878 when I.M.
Tuttle took over the abandoned buildings of the South Berkshire Institute
and began hosting summer boarders, some of whom stayed through the fall. A
guide to the Berkshires in 1889 describes the foliage in the autumn as a
“wonderful, flaming, shading, rioting of color.”
Despite its tourist industry, the town was basically an manufacturing
village with grist and cider mills, box factory and the Sheffield Clay
Works providing clay for the three major paper mills in town. Stage lines
went through town bringing prosperity until the railroad usurped the
traffic.
Modern New Marlborough has a well preserved village center clustered around
its central green and is more of a residential and rural center than an
industrial one.
elevated plateau in the southern Berkshires. It was one of the four towns
established by the Great and General Court to settle and protect the
wilderness trail that was the single route at the time from the lower
Housatonic Valley to the Connecticut Valley and Boston. The territory of
New Marlborough was granted as the six-mile square Township #2 in 1735.
The surveys of the town were completed in 1737 and the proprietors bought
the land the town is on from the Indians for 300 English pounds, a greater
sum “than ever paid by other proprietors”, as they complained to the
General Court. There were 63 original home lots laid out in a “compact and
defensible form”, one for each of the two ministers expected in the new
town, one for a school and one each for the grantees. The grantees were
required to put down 40 Sterling pounds to secure their grant. The first
settler, Benjamin Wheeler, built his house in 1739 and the first children
born in town were twins, a daughter and son for Mr. and Mrs. Brookins. The
town meeting of 1774 in New Marlborough gave staunch support to the
principles of liberty and inalienable rights which would later be embodied
in the Constitution of the new country. By 1759 there were enough settlers
to secure formal incorporation of the town.
New Marlborough contains a part of scenic Lake Buel, on which a steamboat
ran in the 19th century, Campbell’s Falls where the Whiting River pours
down an 80′ drop, and Tipping Rock. The Rock, a huge 40-ton boulder left
behind by retreating glaciers in the ice-age, balances so delicately that
one finger can tilt a weight that a bulldozer couldn’t move. The town is
1400′ above sea level offering cool, fresh mountain air to folk from the
city. The town had a number of summer visitors in the 19th century, but
its character of a summer resort probably begins formally in 1878 when I.M.
Tuttle took over the abandoned buildings of the South Berkshire Institute
and began hosting summer boarders, some of whom stayed through the fall. A
guide to the Berkshires in 1889 describes the foliage in the autumn as a
“wonderful, flaming, shading, rioting of color.”
Despite its tourist industry, the town was basically an manufacturing
village with grist and cider mills, box factory and the Sheffield Clay
Works providing clay for the three major paper mills in town. Stage lines
went through town bringing prosperity until the railroad usurped the
traffic.
Modern New Marlborough has a well preserved village center clustered around
its central green and is more of a residential and rural center than an
industrial one.
