Sachem Rock Farm
Sachem Rock Farm is a historic farm at 355 Plymouth Street in Bridgewater, Massachusetts">Bridgewater, Massachusetts">Bridgewater, Massachusetts, United States. The farm location is important for a variety of reasons. Its earliest historical association is with the Wampanoag people, who are known to have used the area, particularly around Sachem Rock, a granite outcrop they called Wonnocoote that is the property's high point, prior to European contact. Sachem Rock itself is historically significant as the site of a meeting in 1649 between English settlers from the Plymouth Colony, including Myles Standish, with the Wampanoag sachem Massasoit. In this meeting the colonists purchased rights to a large tract of land, including East and West Bridgewater, Bridgewater, and Brockton.
The land around Sachem Rock was settled by 1665, with a farm and gristmill nearby on the Satucket River, and has seen agricultural uses ever since. The oldest buildings to survive are a complex of barns and other outbuildings built c. 1870 by Thomas Hewitt. The Hewitt farmhouse, built in 1869, burned down in 1926, and was replaced by the present two-story Colonial Revival wood-frame house by Henry Moorhouse. The property was purchased by the Town of East Bridgewater in 1998, and is now open to the public. Around 2012, the town the two-story Colonial Revival wood-frame house, and replaced and connected a nearby barn, creating which houses the town's Council on Aging. The facility is rented out as a function hall. Also on the property, during the planting months, residents maintain small gardening plots used for the .
The farm was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2006. It is expected to yield archaeologically significant finds concerning its pre-contact uses, as well as the sites of houses, outbuildings, and industrial mills from the colonial period through the 19th century.