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Mendon MA is located in Worcester County, Massachusetts. Official Website. Southwick’s Zoo Website.
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Mendon, Massachusetts Information and History
The Nipmuc people once inhabited Mendon, and Nipmuc Pond is named for them. Nipmuc Regional High School was named after this lake. Nipmuc means “small pond place” or “people of the fresh waters”. The Nipmuc name does not refer to a specific village or tribe, but to natives that inhabited almost all of central Massachusetts. Over 500 Nipmuc live today in Massachusetts, and there are two nearby reservations at Grafton and Webster.
During King Philip’s War in 1675, Praying Indians (natives who converted to Christianity) were settled into Praying Indian Villages. Wacentug and Rice City held two of these villages in Mendon, in a section that later became Uxbridge. These were two of the 14 Praying Indian villages established by Reverend John Eliot, from Natick and Roxbury, who translated the Bible into the Nipmuc language.
Pioneers from Braintree petitioned to receive a land grant for 8 miles (13 km) square of land, 15 miles (24 km) west of Medfield In September 1662, after the deed was signed with a Native American chief, “Great John” and another Sachem, Quashaamit, the pioneers entered this part of what is now southern Worcester County. Earlier, unofficial, settlement occurred here in the 1640s, by pioneers from Roxbury. This was the beginning of Mendon.
The land for the settlement was 8 miles (13 km) square of Native American land in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and was purchased from the Nipmuc Indians, “for divers good and vallewable considerations them there unto Moovinge and especiall for an in consideration of the summe of twenty fower pound Ster.” In 1662, “Squinshepauke Plantation was started at the Netmocke settlement and plantation”, and was incorporated as the town of Mendon in 1667. The settlers were ambitious and set about clearing the roads that would mark settlement patterns throughout the town’s history.
The early settlement at Mendon was first listed in Middlesex County in 1667, then in 1671 in Suffolk County, and in Worcester County from 1731 onward. Mendon was first settled in 1660 and was officially incorporated in 1667. The town was originally 64 square miles (170 km2), including the modern-day towns of Milford, Bellingham, Hopedale, Uxbridge, Upton, Blackstone, Northbridge and Millville. For this reason, the town of Mendon is sometimes referred to as “Mother Mendon”. Benjamin Albee (1614–1695) erected a water-powered mill on Mill River in 1664 where it crosses modern-day Hartford Avenue. and was one of the town’s important early residents. The mill was the first water-powered grist mill in the region.
In 1986 Congress created the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor, a national park. Mendon falls within this corridor. Southwick’s Zoo in Mendon is currently Massachusetts’s largest zoo. The Mendon Twin Drive-In, one of only three drive-in theaters in Massachusetts, is located in Mendon.
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