Founders’ Park

Mendon began as an eight-mile square tract purchased for twenty-four pounds from several Native American tribes in 1662. In 1663, fifteen families, mostly from Braintree and Weymouth, began the new settlement known as the Squinshapauke Plantation, and in 1667 it was incorporated as the town of Mendon. Settlers built the first meeting house in 1668 for town meetings and worship, but in 1676 Mendon was destroyed by fire during King Philip's War. After resettlement, a second meeting house was built in 1680 and a third in 1690 to accommodate population growth. Mendon once covered a significant portion of the Blackstone River Valley in Massachusetts, but over time outlying villages became separate towns because travel to Mendon Center for meetings or worship was difficult, including Bellingham in 1719, Uxbridge in 1727, Upton in 1735, Northbridge in 1772, Milford in 1780, Blackstone in 1845, Hopedale in 1886, and Millville in 1916, giving rise to the name "Mother Mendon." These new towns paralleled the development of industrial centers along strategic river locations, while Mendon became an important source of farm produce for immigrant populations working in Blackstone Valley mills. Mendon's "Golden Age" came from the 1820s through the 1840s, when the village center was home to residents of high professional and social status, the town benefited from factory tax revenue from its South Precinct, now Blackstone and Millville, and farmers used the Blackstone Canal to sell products from Worcester to Providence and beyond. This prosperity left many Federal and Greek Revival houses, churches, and public buildings. On April 19, 1775, 164 soldiers from Mendon's militia mustered here in response to the alarm of Lexington and Concord and marched on Middle Post Road toward Boston. In 1831, Nathaniel Torrey operated a general store on this site, and in 1900 it served as a boarding house for workmen building trolley tracks for the Milford-Uxbridge Electric Railway. In 1905, the town voted to create Founders' Park on this site.

Mendon, Massachusetts · United States