Greenfield

Greenfield, a township and the county-seat of Franklin county, in N.E. Massachusetts, U.S.A., including an area of 20 sq. m. of meadow and hill country, watered by the Green and Deerfield rivers and various small tributaries. Pop. (1890) 5252, (1900) 7927, of whom 1431 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 10,427. The principal village, of the same name as the township, is situated on the N. bank of the Deerfield river, and on the Boston & Maine railway and the Connecticut Valley street railway (electric). Among Greenfield’s manufactures are cutlery, machinery, and taps and dies. Greenfield, originally part of Deerfield, was settled about 1682, was established as a “district” in 1753, and on the 23rd of August 1775 was, by a general Act, separated from Deerfield and incorporated as a separate township, although it had assumed full township rights in 1774 by sending delegates to the Provincial Congress. In 1793 part of it was taken to form the township of Gill; in 1838 part of it was annexed to Bernardston; and in 1896 it annexed a part of Deerfield. It was much disaffected at the time of Shays’s Rebellion.

See F. M. Thompson, History of Greenfield (2 vols., Greenfield, 1904).

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