MENUS
Buildings, Businesses, Cemeteries, Churches and Town Departments
Draper Corporation and Draper Family
Grafton & Upton Railroad And trolleys, also.
Group Pictures from decades ago
Hopedale Community - 1841 - 1856
Hopedale History Email Stories
Hopedale Reminiscences A dozen stories written in 1910, by people who, as children, lived in the Hopedale Utopian commune of the 1840s and 1850s.
Hopedale on YouTube - Video and slide shows.
Links to Hopedale related sites
Little Red Shop - history and pictures
Little Red Shop interior - photos of looms, etc.
Little Red Shop renovation - photos from each week of the three month project.
Maps - maps of Hopedale going back to the 1850s.
Memories - individual and family stories
Milford
Now and Then - pictures taken a century or so apart
Park, Pond and Sports
Recent Pictures Through 2007 2008 2009 2010
Short Stories and Pictures
War Veterans
Wildflowers of Hopedale
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MISCELLANEOUS STORIES
Hopedale History Chronology
Short Biographies of Prominent Hopedale Citizens Brief History of Hopedale (From the book, Images of America: Hopedale.)
A History of South Hopedale
Origins of Street and Place Names
Hopedale, 1881
Hopedale As I Found It (Hopedale in 1910)
Hopedale Inventors
Underground Railroad???
Mill Town or Shop Village?
Spindleville
White City
Octagon houses
The Pest House
The Water Cure House
The Dutcher Family
Gilbert Thompson, National Geographic Society founder and fingerprinting pioneer.
Sleepy Little Town A song about Hopedale.
Recent Deaths (This may be useful to those of you who don't receive the Milford News.)
Aerosmith
Questions about Hopedale history.
Can you make changes to your house if it's in a National Register District? Find the answer here.
HOPEDALE, MASSACHUSETTS
Hopedale,MA
This site is an attempt to relate a little of the history of Hopedale, Massachusetts. The town was settled in 1842 as a Utopian socialist commune and evolved into the home of the Draper Corporation, at one time the world's largest manufacturer of automatic cotton looms. Hopedale has an area of only five square miles, a population of about 6,000 and is located in the Blackstone Valley in south-central Massachusetts. Massachusetts maps showing Hopedale's location.
While this site originally included only Hopedale history, since 2005 some current stories and pictures have been added. Most of them can be seen by going to the Recent Pictures Menu on the right
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If you have additional information, corrections or opinions on any of the material here, e-mail me and I'll add your thoughts or corrections to the site.
SEARCH THIS SITE (Thanks to John Bevilaqua for the use of his site search engine.).
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NEW.
Now and Then at West Side of Draper Plant.
September 1 Hopedale story - The Fatal Crisis.
Hopedale Pond - September 1.
Now and Then at the Community House.
Octagon houses of Hopedale - recently updated.
Road race - August 21.
Peace garden at Union Evangelical Church.
The Draper plant from 1890 to 1913 - how it grew and changed.
Think the lower end of Hopedale Pond looks low? Take a look at the upper end.
Summer Fun Day at the Bancroft Library on YouTube.
Hopedale in August.
Slideshow of Draper field days photos on YouTube.
Diver inspects Hopedale Pond dam.
Dave Atkinson - Growing up in Spindleville.
If you've never been in the General Draper Library at Hopedale High School, here's your chance to see it.
The howitzers. During World War II, Draper produced howitzers. Nine pages from a 1943 Cotton Chats, including a reprint of a Boston Herald article about the project.
Another Little League Police team picture - This one sent by Dennis Simmons.
First Communion, 1979 - Sacred Heart Church - now with names added.
Princess Boncompagni's donation of her parents' mansion for use as site of General Draper High School.
Now and Then in Hopedale Center.
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HOPEDALE BUSINESSES
Hopedale Power Equipment
21st Century eCommerce - Watches and more watches
TWM Systems - Customized computers and services
Little White Market
AllinOneFunFavors.com - Shower and holiday favors, etc.
CandyUnderCover.com - Candy bars, etc. with personalized wrappers
Appell Engineering - Computer security consulting
Click on the picture to see the upper end of Hopedale Pond on September 1.