Duxbury

Duxbury, a township of Plymouth county, Massachusetts, on Massachusetts Bay, 36 m. S.S.E. of Boston. Pop. (1890) 1908; (1905, state census) 2028. Area, 25.5 sq. m. Duxbury is served by the Old Colony system of the New York, New Haven & Hartford railway. In the township are the villages of Duxbury, South Duxbury, West Duxbury, North Duxbury, Island Creek and Millbrook. The soil is sandy, the surface of the country well wooded and broken by a number of ponds and creeks. Duxbury is a summer resort, with a large hotel at Standish Shore. Duxbury has a public library, and is the seat of the Powder Point school for boys, and Partridge Academy, founded in 1828 by a bequest of $10,000 from George Partridge of Duxbury, and incorporated in 1830. On Captain’s Hill is the Standish Monument (begun in 1872), a circular tower, on an octagonal base, of rough Hallowell granite, surmounted by a statue of Miles Standish, 124 ft. from the ground. The Standish house, built in 1666 by Miles’s son, Alexander, is still in existence. In South Duxbury is an old burying ground, in which the oldest marked grave is that of Jonathan Alden (d. 1697), son of John Alden. For many years there were important cod and mackerel fisheries here and Duxbury clams were famous; there were large shipyards in Duxbury in the 18th century and in the first half of the 19th. At present cranberries are the only product of importance. The first settlement was made here in 1631 by Miles Standish (to whom Captain’s Hill was granted), William Brewster, John Alden, and a few others. In 1632 a church was organized and the present name was adopted from Duxbury Hall, Lancashire, the old seat of the Standish family; the Indian name had been Mattakeeset. The township was incorporated in 1637; it originally included Bridgewater and parts of Pembroke and Kingston.

See Justin Winsor, History of Duxbury (Boston, 1849); and Laurence Bradford, Historic Duxbury in Plymouth County (Boston, 1900).

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