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Uxbridge is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts first settled in 1662, incorporated in 1727, originally part of Suffolk County, and Mendon, and named for the Earl of Uxbridge. The town (population 13,648, estimate)[1] is located 36 mi (58 km) southwest of Boston[2] and 15 mi (24 km) south-southeast of Worcester, at the midpoint of the Blackstone Valley National Park. Two Uxbridge Quakers served as national leaders in the anti-slavery movement. Uxbridge "weaves a tapestry of early America"[3]
Indigenous Nipmuc people near 'Wacentug" (river bend), deeded land to 17th century settlers. Uxbridge granted rights to America's first woman voter, Lydia Chapin Taft. The first hospital for mental illness in America was established here.[4][5] Deborah Sampson posed as an Uxbridge soldier, and fought in the American Revolution. A 140-year legacy of manufacturing military uniforms and clothing began with 1820 power looms. The Board of Selectmen approved Massachusetts's first women jurors. Uxbridge became famous for woolen cashmeres. "Uxbridge Blue", was the first US Air Force Dress Uniform.[6] BJ's Wholesale Club distribution warehouse looms large here today.
John Eliot started Nipmuc Praying Indian villages.[7][8][9] "Wacentug" natives sold land to settlers in 1662,[10] "for 24 pound Ster".[10][10][11] Mendon began in 1667, and burned in King Phillips War. Western Mendon became Uxbridge in 1727, and Farnum House held the first town meeting.[12] Nathan Webb's church, was the Colony's first new Congregational church in the Great Awakening.[13] Lydia Chapin Taft, voted in the 1756 Town meeting, a first for women.[14]
Washington slept here on his Inaugural tour.[27][28]
Quakers, including Richard Mowry migrated here from Smithfield, Rhode Island, and built mills, railroads, houses, tools and Conestoga wagon wheels.[23][29][30] Southwick's store housed the "Social and Instructive Library". Friends Meetinghouse, next to Mosses Farnum's farm, had prominent abolitionists Abby Kelley Foster, and Effingham Capron as members.[31][32][33][34] Capron led the 450 member local anti-slavery society. Brister Pierce, formerly a slave in Uxbridge, was a signer of an 1835 petition to Congress demanding abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia.[35]
The Tafts built the Middle Post Road's Blackstone River bridge in 1709.[36] "Teamsters" drove horse "team" freight wagons, on the Worcester-Providence stage route. The Blackstone Canal brought horsedrawn barges to Providence through Uxbridge for overnight stops.[10][37][38] The "crossroads village" was a junction on the Underground Railroad.[39] The P&W Railroad ended canal traffic in 1848.
A 1732 vote "set up a school for ye town of Uxbridge".[10] A grammar school was followed by 13 one room district school houses, built for $2000 in 1797. Uxbridge Academy (1818), became a prestigious New England Prep School.
Uxbridge voted against smallpox vaccine .[14] Samuel Willard (physician) treated smallpox victims,[40] was a forerunner of modern psychiatry, and ran the first hospital for mental illness in America.[4][5] Vital records recorded many infant deaths,[17] the smallpox death of Selectman Joseph Richardson, "Quincy", "dysentary", and tuberculosis deaths.[17][23] Leonard White recorded a Malaria outbreak here in 1896 that led to [41] firsts in control of malaria as a mosquito-borne infection.[41] Uxbridge led Massachusetts in robberies for a quarter of the year in 1922, and the town voted to hire its first night time police patrolman.[42]
Bog iron and three iron forges marked the colonial era, with the inception of large-scale industries beginning around 1775[43]—examples of this development can be seen in the work of Richard Mowry, who built and marketed equipment to manufacture woolen, linen, or cotton cloth,.[3][44] and gristmills, sawmills, distilleries, and large industries.[7] Uxbridge reached a peak of twenty different industrial mills.[7][23] Daniel Day built the first woolen mill in 1809.[10][14] By 1855, 560 local workers made 2,500,000 yards (2,300,000 m) of cloth (14,204 miles (22,859 km)).[7][23][43] A small silver vein at Scadden, in SW Uxbridge, led to unsuccessful commercial mining in the 1830s.[45]
Innovations included power looms, vertical integration of wool to clothing, cashmere wool-synthetic blends, "wash and wear", yarn spinning techniques, and latch hook kits. Villages included mills, shops, worker housing, and farms. Wm. Arnold's Ironstone cotton mill, later made "Kentucky Blue Jeans",[23] and Seth Read's gristmill, later housed Bay State Arms. Hecla and Wheelockville housed American Woolen, Waucantuck Mill, Hilena Lowell's shoe factory, and Draper Corporation. Daniel Day, Jerry Wheelock, and Luke Taft used water powered mills. Moses Taft's (Central Woolen) operated continuously making Civil War cloth,[23][46]
North Uxbridge housed Clapp's 1810 Cotton Mill, Chandler Taft's and Richard Sayles Rivulet Mill, the granite quarry, and Rogerson's village. Crown and Eagle Mill was "a masterpiece of early industrial architecture".[47] Blanchard's granite quarry provided curb stones to New York City and regional public works projects.[7][23][48] Peter Rawson Taft's grandson, William Howard Taft, visited Samuel Taft House.[49]
John Sr., Effingham and John W. Capron's mill pioneered US satinets and woolen power looms[7][10][43][50] Charles A. Root, Edward Bachman, and Harold Walter expanded Bachman-Uxbridge., and leadership in women's fashion.[51] The company manufactured US Army uniforms for the Civil War, World War I, World War II, the nurse corps, and the first Air Force "dress uniforms", dubbed "Uxbridge Blue".[23][52] Time magazine covered Uxbridge Worsted's proposed a buyout to be the top US woolen company.[53] One of the largest US yarn companies, Bernat Yarn's largest plant was located here from the 1960s to the 1980s. A historic company called 'Information Services', operated from Uxbridge, and managed subscription services for 'The New Republic', among other publications, in the later 20th century.
State and national parks developed around mills and rivers were restored.[54] Elmshade, (where War Secretary Alphonso Taft had recounted local family history at a famous reunion).[59][60] Capron's wooden mill survived a 2007 fire at the Bernat Mill.[61] Stanley mill is being restored while Waucantuck mill, was (mostly) razed. In 2013 multiple fires again affected this town and included a historic bank building and a Quaker home from the early 1800s. See National historic sites.
Nipmuck Dancing in the Blackstone Valley; The original Town of Mendon, MA was purchased from the Nipmuck in 1662 as Squinshepauk Plantation. Nipmuck are the indigenous people of Worcester County, Northeastern CT, and NW Rhode Island.
Coronet John Farnum, Jr., House, 1710, houses Uxbridge Historical Society, Held First Town Meeting in 1727
Nathan Webb's Church (1731), first new Congregational Church in Massachusetts, First Great Awakening Period. This building was built after the church's establishment in 1727, but the Congregation's original church was the first new church in that period.
Portrait, Rev. Samuel Spring, Old South Church, Newburyport; (1746–1819), early American Revolutionary War chaplain, Congregationalist minister, founder of Andover (now Newton-Andover) Theological Seminary and Massachusetts Missionary Society. Uxbridge native, tutored by Rev Nathan Webb
Lt. Colonel Seth Read, born 1746, fought at Bunker Hill, added E Pluribus Unum to coins, and founded Erie, PA, and early settlement at Geneva, New York
Seth Read House Uxbridge, MA, built circa 1767 at corner of present-day Mendon St, and North Main Street before railroad was built.
Lt. Simeon Wheelock House (1768), Deborah Wheelock Chapter, D.A.R. Lt. Wheelock, who was born in 1741, died in Shays' rebellion in 1786, while on duty protecting the Springfield Armory. Shays' Rebellion had opening salvos in Uxbridge
Deborah Sampson, a woman posing as a male soldier, enlisted in the Continental Army at Bellingham as "Robert Shurtlieff of Uxbridge". A minister kept her secret, and she was later honored as a heroine by the Massachusetts legislature.
Aaron Taft House, Hazel St. was the birthplace of Peter Rawson Taft in 1785, Grandfather of President William Howard Taft.
William Howard Taft in 1910.
Friends Meeting House (1770), Quaker Highway at Route 98, Uxbridge, MA. Abolitionist Quakers with ties to Moses Brown first resettled here from Rhode Island. At least two of its members became key leaders in the national anti-slavery movement—Abby Kelley Foster and Effingham Capron.
Abby Kelley Foster, a member of the Uxbridge Friend's Meeting, led Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone to abolitionism. She became the foremost lecturer and fundraiser for the American anti-slavery society of which fellow Quaker meetinghouse member Effingham Capron became Vice President.
The town of Uxbridge built 13 district schoolhouses in 1797. The South Uxbridge schoolhouse today houses the south Uxbridge community association at the historic site of Ironstone, Massachusetts.
Jacob Aldrich house typifies the early Quaker houses at Quaker City, and South Uxbridge.
Uxbridge Academy & Masonic Lodge. Uxbridge Academy was a sought after New England Prep School from 1818
Site of the Daniel Day Mill, 1809. Daniel Day started the first woolen mill in the Blackstone Valley later also known as "Scott's Mill", the current factory recently housed Berrocoo Inc., extending a 200-year family enterprise, now a prominent yarn company..
Rivulet Mill Complex, 1814, North Uxbridge, The original mill was built by Chandler Taft, and later owned by Richard Sayles.
Richard Sayles House is a historic home built by Richard Sayles who owned the Rivulet Mill. Located at 80 Mendon Street.
The Capron Mill, 1820, built by John Capron Sr. and his sons Effingham, and John, circa 1820 manufactured the first satinets, used the first power looms for woolens in America, and made US military uniforms for over 140 years, including the first US Air Force dress uniform, "Uxbridge 1683", aka Uxbridge Blue.
Charles Capron House, 2 Capron Street. The Capron family was prominent in the Industrial era
Crown & Eagle Mill, built in 1824 by Robert Rogerson, a son of British immigrants, and a musician, it is considered a masterpiece of early American Industrial architecture, today the heart of Rogerson's Village Historic District.
The Company Store at Rogerson's Village, now known as the Larkin Building
Rogersons Village mill worker housing, Rhode Island System of mill villages
Joseph Richardson House, on the national historic register, Joseph Richardson was a Selectman, and landowner in South Uxbridge, who died of smallpox in 1825.
Stanley Woolen Mill, 1852, built by Moses Taft, with view of the Blackstone Canal, was the scene for two movies, The Great Gatsby, 1974, and Oliver's Story, 1978. In 1989, it had been the longest continuously operating family-owned mill in the US. This mill ran 24/7 making Civil War blue woolen cloth for military uniforms.
Canoes on the Blackstone Canal. The Blackstone Canal was built starting in 1824 and provided early freight transport by horse pulled barges from Uxbridge and Worcester, to the port of Providence and returns. Uxbridge was the overnight stopping point, and had close mercantile ties to Providence.
The Taft brothers built the first bridge across the Blackstone River in 1709. This stone arch bridge is a familiar scene walking northward at the Blackstone Canal Heritage State Park.
River Bend Farm Interpretive Center at Blacktone River and Canal Heritage State Park
Ezra Taft Benson, (1811–1869) ran a hotel in Uxbridge, married two sisters from Northbridge, LDS Apostle, Missionary to the Hawaiian Islands, and Utah Territorial Legislator
Arthur MacArthur, Sr., born to Scottish nobility, grew up in Uxbridge, circa 1828, became Wisconsin's 4th Governor for a brief period, and its Lt. Governor, and served as Chief Justice, of the US DC District Court. He was the Grandfather of General Douglas MacArthur
Unitarian Church at Uxbridge where Judge Henry Chapin, three term Worcester Mayor, delivered a famous 1864 published historical address. Judge Chapin was as a prominent Unitarian Church leader in Massachusetts. This church was prominent in the Industrial period of this community.
Judge Henry Chapin, 2nd Mayor of Worcester, 1849–1851), three term Mayor, Chief Judge, and Practicing Attorney who lived in Uxbridge, and delivered a famous historical address to the Uxbridge Unitarian Church in 1864 recording the account of America's First Woman Voter, Lydia Taft
Effingham Capron (1791–1859) was a national, state and local anti-slavery champion. He and his brother John Capron, Jr and their father, ran the Capron Mill at Uxbridge. The historic park commemorates the contributions of Effingham Capron here and to the USA.
Franklin Bartlett was a US Congressman from New York from 1893–1897. He fought in the Spanish–American War and his brother Willard Bartlett was Chief Justice of the New York Court of Appeals.
Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr, National Gallery Curator Northern Baroque Art, grew up in Uxbridge family which had started and operated multiple mils for 200 years. A descendent of Rev. Ralph Wheelock who pioneered public education in America.
Brian Skerry, At Boston University, 2011, born 1962, Underwater Photographer, With National Geographic, Sounding the Alarm for Global Sealife.
Uxbridge High School, Quaker Highway, S. Uxbridge, MA, built 2012.
Uxbridge Free Public Library. The Thayer Family donated the local public library which is located in the Uxbridge Common Historic District.
C.R. Thomson House and Barn, today a golf course with banquet facilities, located at Chockalog Rd. in SW Uxbridge.
Once a department store in the mid 1800s, The Granite Store is located on Hecla Street in Uxbridge.
Fall Scene Downtown Uxbridge, October 2012 looking south on MA route 122 before Hurricane Sandy and when an historic old bank building was still standing in the left background down the street.
TF Green State Airport Warwick-Providence, RI, Worcester airport, and Boston Logan International Airport, have commercial flights. Hopedale airport, 7.2 miles (11.6 km), and Worcester airport, have general aviation. A private air strip, Sky Glen Airport on Quaker highway is still listed on FAA sites, though the map location shows it within a dense Industrial Park, and at its peak of operations, it saw very low traffic.[88]
Route 146[87] links Worcester, I-290, and I-90, to Providence at I-95 and I-295. Route 16 links to Connecticut via I-395, and Boston, by I-495. Route 122 connects Northbridge, and Woonsocket. Route 146A, goes into North Smithfield. Route 98 leads to Burrillville.
The nearest Franklin Line and Grafton (MBTA station) and Worcester on the Framingham/Worcester Line, 15 miles away. The Northeast Corridor Providence (Amtrak station), has trains with top speeds of 150 MPH. The Providence and Worcester Railroad freight line passes two former local stations.
Tri-River Family Health Center, (UMass Medical) offers primary care. Milford Regional, Landmark M/C, hospices and long term care are nearby, or local.
Local schools include: Taft pre k-2, Whitin Elementary, McCloskey Middle School, Uxbridge High (built 2012) and Our Lady of the Valley Regional. Valley Tech (Upton) houses Quinsigamond Community College The New York Times called Uxbridge education reforms, a "little revolution" to meet family needs.[86]
High tech, services, distribution, life sciences, hospitality, local government, education and tourism offer local jobs. A 618,000 square feet (57,400 m2) distribution center serves Fortune 500 BJ's Wholesale Club's, northern division. The July 2013 unemployment was 6.9% [85]
The 2010 United States Census[84] population was 13,457, representing a growth rate of 20.6%, with 5,056 households, a density rate of 166.31 units per square mile. 95.7% were White, 1.7% Asian, 0.90% Hispanic, 0.3% African American, and 1.4% other. Population density was 442.66 people/ mile2 (170.77/km²). Per capita income was $24,540, and 4.7% fell below the poverty line. The number of registered voters was 9,959 for 2010
A USDA hardiness zone 5 continental climate prevails with snowfall extremes from October (rare), to May. The highest recorded temperature was 104 F, in July 1975, and the lowest, -25 F in January 1957.[73]
The town is 30.4 square miles (79 km2), of which 0.8 square miles (2.1 km2), or 2.73%, is water. It is situated 39.77 miles (64.00 km) southwest of Boston, 16 miles (26 km) southeast of Worcester, and 20 miles (32 km) northwest of Providence. Elevations range from 200 feet (61 m) to 577 feet (176 m) above sea level. It borders Douglas, Mendon, Millville, Northbridge, and Sutton, Massachusetts, plus the Rhode Island towns of Burrillville and North Smithfield.
Uxbridge has a Board of Selectmen and town meeting government, with officials listed in the top infobox:[70] Local government 1) granted the first woman in America the right to vote,[14] 2) nixed smallpox vaccine in 1775,[14] and 3) defied the Massachusetts Secretary of State, by approving women jurors.[71] The 2009 Board of Health made Uxbridge the 3rd community in the US to ban tobacco sales in pharmacies, but later reversed this.[72] State agencies control county elected offices (see info box). In fact, Uxbridge has a District Courthouse.
Charles Aurthur Root, Edward Bachman, and Harold Walter built Uxbridge Worsted into a manufacturing giant which led women's fashions. Alice Bridges won an Olympic bronze in Berlin.[64] Tim Fortugno played for the California Angels and Chicago White Sox. Richard Moore, recent Senate President Pro Tem (MA), was a FEMA executive, a Past President of the Conference of State Legislatures, and a principal architect of Massachusetts's landmark health care law .[65][66] Brian Skerry is a National Geographic photojournalist, protecting global sea life.[67] Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr. is curator of Baroque Art at the National Gallery.[68] Jacqueline Liebergott,was president of Emerson College. Jeannine Oppewall, has four Academy Award nominations for best art direction. Skip Shea, produced 10 films, and won a top award at the Rome Film Festival for Ave Maria, a film about victims of clergy abuse.[69] (notable residents).
Willard Preston, the 4th University of Vermont President, published famous sermons while later serving the Independent Presbyterian Church of Savannah.[62] Arthur MacArthur, Sr. was a Lt. Governor, Chief Justice and Douglas MacArthur's grandfather. Seth Reed fought at Bunker Hill, was "instrumental" in adding E Pluribus Unum, to U.S. Coins.[24][63] and was a founder of Erie, Pennsylvania and Geneva, New York.[15][24] Paul C. Whitin, founded the Whitin Machine Works. Phineas Bruce and Benjamin Adams were Congressmen. Joshua Macomber and William Augustus Mowry were educators. Effingham Capron,[39] led Uxbridge as a center for pre-civil war anti-slavery activities, was a state a national anti-slavery leader, and an industrialist.[39] Edward Sullivan, won a Congressional Medal in the Spanish–American War. Willard Bartlett was a NY Chief Justice and Franklin Bartlett, a Congressman. Edward P. Bullard started Bullard Machine tools whose designs enabled auto manufacturing and industry.
. William Howard Taft was the grandfather of Peter Rawson Taft I. Hon. Stanley Woolen Mill built Moses Taft built 2 water powered textile mills, and Luke Taft, a Taft, started the third US woolen mill. Daniel Day legislator. Chandler Taft built the 1814 Rivulet Mill. Utah missionary, and Hawaii, Apostle LDS Church was an Ezra ("T".) Taft Benson [14]
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