Groton, Massachusetts
Groton is a town in northwestern Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, within the Greater Boston metropolitan area. The population was 11,315 at the 2020 census. It contains the census-designated place of the same name. An affluent bedroom community roughly 45 miles from Boston, Groton has a large population of professional workers, many of whom work in Boston's tech industry. It is loosely connected to Boston by highways and commuter rail.
The town has a long history dating back to the colonial era. It was a battlefield in King Philip's War and Queen Anne's War, and several Grotonians played notable roles in the American Revolution and Shays' Rebellion. Groton is home to two college-preparatory boarding schools: Lawrence Academy at Groton, founded in 1793; and Groton School, founded in 1884. Notable Groton residents include former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, sports writers Peter Gammons and Dan Shaughnessy, and NBC political correspondent Steve Kornacki.
History
Early frontier settlement
The area surrounding modern-day Groton has, for thousands of years, been the territory of various cultures of indigenous peoples. They settled along the rivers, which they used for domestic tasks, fishing and transportation. Historic tribes were the Algonquian-speaking Nipmuc and Nashaway Indians, who established trails connecting the area to Massachusetts Bay.The European presence in the era began when John Tinker established a trading post with the Nashaway tribe at the confluence of Nod Brook and the Nashua River. The Nashaway called the area Petapawag, meaning "swampy land." Over the years, more European settlers moved to the area, as it was productive for fishing and farming.
In 1655, the town of Groton was officially settled and incorporated by a group of selectmen including Deane Winthrop. The town was named for Groton in Suffolk, England, the hometown of Deane's father, the Massachusetts governor John Winthrop. Called The Plantation of Groton, it included all of present-day Groton and Ayer, almost all of Pepperell and Shirley, large parts of Dunstable, Littleton, and Tyngsborough, smaller parts of Harvard and Westford, and the New Hampshire towns of Nashua and Hollis.
During King Philip's War, when Native Americans tried to destroy the inhabitants, on March 13, 1676, Native Americans raided and burned all buildings except for four Groton garrisons. Among those killed was John Nutting, a Groton Selectman. Survivors fled to Concord and other safe havens. Two years later, many returned to rebuild. The rebuilt town was heavily militarized, and recorded a garrison of 91 men in 1692.
In 1694, Abenaki warriors attacked the town again during the Raid on Groton. Lydia Longley and two of her siblings were taken captive; the rest of their family was killed. Lydia was taken to Montreal where she was ransomed, converted to Catholicism, and joined the Congregation of Notre Dame, a non-cloistered order.
In 1704, during Queen Anne's War, an Abenaki raiding party kidnapped Matthias Farnsworth III from his home and brought him to Montreal.
In June 1707, Abenaki warriors abducted three children of the large family of Thomas Tarbell and his wife Elizabeth, cousins to the Longleys who were abducted in 1694. The raiders took them overland and by water to the Mohawk mission village of Kahnawake south of Montreal. The two Tarbell boys, John and Zachariah, were adopted by Mohawk families and became fully assimilated. They later each married chiefs' daughters, had families, and became respected chiefs themselves. They were among the founders in the 1750s of Akwesasne, after moving up the St. Lawrence River from Kahnawake to escape the ill effects of traders. The brothers' older sister Sarah Tarbell was ransomed by a French family, and converted to Catholicism. Renamed as Marguerite, she followed Lydia Longley in joining the Congregation of Notre Dame, and served with them for the rest of her life. In the late nineteenth century, a plaque was installed about the Tarbell children at the site of the family's former farm in Groton. Descendants with the Tarbell surname are among the Mohawk living at Kahnewake and Akwesasne in the 21st century.
Revolutionary era and early republic
The townsfolk of Groton supported the Patriot cause in the American Revolutionary War. Following the Boston Tea Party, the town passed a resolution thanking Boston "for their wise, prudent and spirited conduct at this alarming crisis," and resolved to boycott the tea industry until duties on tea were lifted.In 1775, local minutemen assembled on the common in front of the First Parish Church of Groton before marching to the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Groton sent 101 men to the battle, but they arrived too late to participate. The American commander at the Battle of Bunker Hill, William Prescott, was born in Groton, and Groton lost 10 or 12 men at the battle, more than any other town.
This patriotic feeling did not last very long, and a majority of Groton residents aligned with the rebels during Shays' Rebellion. Job Shattuck, a former Continental Army officer and Groton's largest landowner, organized an early tax revolt in 1782. He escaped with a fine, but rose up again in 1786 and led a mob that shut down the Middlesex County Courthouse in Concord, Massachusetts. He was captured by a search party that included some pro-government Groton residents. He was sentenced to death but pardoned by Governor John Hancock.
Early Groton developed a strong economy, assisted by its location near the confluence of the Nashua and Squannacook Rivers. By 1790 it was the second-largest town in Middlesex County, with 1,840 residents. Agriculture was the backbone of the economy, but the town also welcomed industry. In the early 1800s, the Hollingsworth family acquired a paper mill in West Groton. In 1828, miners discovered a large soapstone quarry; Groton eventually hosted the nation's largest soapstone factory, which exported products as far away as China. South Groton was connected to railroad lines in the 1840s. One line survives as the MBTA Fitchburg Line, the town's present-day commuter rail link to Boston.
African-Americans have lived in the area since at least the 1750s, when Primus Lew bought a farm in the area. Private Pomp Phillis was called up to fight at Lexington and Concord. Historian Jeremy Belknap wrote that "a negro man belonging to Groton" fired the shot that killed Major John Pitcairn at the Battle of Bunker Hill.
Starting in the 1840s, Catholic immigrants began moving to the Nashoba Valley in large numbers. St. Mary's Catholic Church was established in 1858 to serve the Catholic residents of Ayer. Ayer split off from Groton in 1871, and in 1904, one of the local private schools donated Sacred Heart Church for the use of the Catholics who stayed in Groton proper.
Economic decline and social unrest
Groton's economic growth slowed in the second half of the nineteenth century. The soapstone quarry shut down in 1868. The town's population nearly halved from 1870 to 1880, although most of this was due to the 1871 secession of Ayer, which had 1,600 residents in 1870.In the 19th century and early part of the 20th century, Groton's population was largely white and Christian; people have debated whether it was a sundown town. The town became a center of the Second Ku Klux Klan, which was active in Massachusetts in the 1920s. This incarnation of the Klan expressed primarily anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant prejudice, while also opposing racial minorities. Local schoolmaster Endicott Peabody summarized the movement as follows: "There is an astonishing tendency among some of the respectable people in this part of the world to justify existence on the ground that the Jews and Roman Catholics are taking possession of the country."File:Groton, Mass..jpg|thumb|Lithograph of Groton from 1886 by L.R. Burleigh with list of landmarksThe Klan held a rally in Groton in September 1924. In 1925, an Irish resident reported a cross burning on Gibbet Hill, not far from Main Street. In October 1926, a group of 400 Klansmen were meeting in a field in the town when they were fired upon with guns used by a group of approximately 100 people opposed to the Klan; the police reported that over 100 gunshots were exchanged between the two groups, but no casualties were reported. In 1927, the local Klan chapter endorsed a full slate of candidates for the town elections, with partial success. The Klan appears to have peaked as an organized force in the area by 1931, when Klan head Hiram Wesley Evans visited West Townsend to implore the remaining Klansmen to rebuild the local chapters. The rate of inter-confessional marriages, which decreased significantly from 1924 to 1928, began rising again starting in 1929.
In 2020, Groton unanimously approved a measure denouncing racial bigotry and advocating equality in recognition of earlier violence and the contemporary social justice movement.
Economic revival
Starting in the 1950s, the town of Groton enjoyed an economic revival as Boston's high-tech sector expanded along the Route 128 beltway. Although Groton does not lie on Route 128, the gravity of the suburban beltway pulled exurban towns like Groton into Boston's economic orbit. The town attracted professional workers, and the population expanded rapidly, nearly quadrupling since 1950. In 2021, Groton's per capita income ranked 32nd out of 341 towns and cities in Massachusetts. In addition, as of 2015, 31 Groton residents reported incomes over $1 million. Town representatives describe Groton as a "bedroom community" and "a relatively affluent town" where "ost residents are well-educated and hold high-paying professional, managerial, or other office jobs."In the 21st century, the town has sought to preserve its rural character and to slow population growth; as of 2017, 42% of the town's 32.5 square miles of land was permanently protected from development. In the 2000s, Geotel Communications founder Steven Webber purchased the 338-acre Gibbet Hill Farm to prevent residential development on the site; the town meeting reportedly greeted his intervention with a standing ovation. Town representatives state that they welcome tourists and seek to encourage "a constant trickle rather than a deluge of visitors." In 2017, the town adopted the motto "All Are Welcome" and placed six waystones engraved with the motto on the major roads entering the town.
Although the town's policies have successfully slowed population growth, town amenities have generally improved. Gibbet Hill now hosts a farm-to-table steakhouse. In 2017, the nation's largest Shirdi Sai Baba temple opened in Groton; it cost approximately $11 million to build. The 126,000-square-foot Groton Hill Music Center opened in 2022 and includes a 1,000-seat concert hall, a 300-seat secondary performance hall, a professional orchestra, and a community music school; it was the gift of an anonymous donor, posthumously revealed to be Sterilite owner Albert Stone. The Groton-Dunstable Regional School District is currently building a new $88.4 million campus for its elementary school, which is scheduled to open in 2024. However, the annual per-pupil expenditures in the 2022–23 school year were $19,392.35, just below the state average of $20,133.67, and in April 2024, voters rejected a proposed $7.6 million/3 year tax increase for the school district by a 3-to-2 margin.