Founders’ Park

    Founders’ Park has been regarded as sacred land, because it is the site of many important occurrences
    that have taken place in Mendon’s great history.

    The first meetinghouse was built here in 1668 for the purpose of conducting town meetings and
    worshipping God.  It was built on Joseph White’s lot adjacent to his sawpit.  His property included the land
    between Muddy Brook and Willowbrook. (Drive-in theater to site of former Lowell's Restaurant.) The
    building was twenty-two feet by twenty-two feet. It was the center of life in the new frontier town carved out
    of the wilderness.  It was destroyed by fire in February 1676, during the King Philip War.  A new
    meetinghouse was built here in 1680, after the resettlement of the town.  A third meeting house was built
    in 1690 to accommodate population growth.  This land served as the town’s cornerstone of democracy
    and Puritan theology.

    The new town of Mendon was eight miles square.  It included a significant area of the Blackstone River
    Valley that was gradually resettled due to industrialization. Strategic river locations allowed for new
    occupational opportunities.  Some people chose to give up a life style of farming in order to work at a
    newly constructed mill or factory.  Small outskirt villages grew to become independent towns.  It meant not
    having to travel to Mendon Center to attend town meetings or to worship.  Bellingham, Uxbridge, Upton,
    Milford, Blackstone, Northbridge, Hopedale, and Millville grew away from Mother Mendon to incorporate
    new industrial based economies.  Mendon remained agricultural and was the main source of farm
    produce for the Blackstone Valley.     

    One hundred sixty-four brave minutemen from Mendon mustered here on April 19, 1775, in response to
    the alarm of Lexington and Concord.  They marched on Middle Post Road to join the embattled farmers
    who fired the shot heard round the world.  This land served as a cornerstone of our nation’s
    independence.

    Nathaniel Torrey operated a general store on this site in 1831.  It was during a time of Mendon Center’s
    high economic prosperity.  Many of the people who lived in the Village Center were of high professional
    and social status.  The 1820’s through 1830’s were a time considered to be Mendon’s golden age.

    In 1900, the store was used as a boarding house for workmen who constructed the trolley tracks for the
    Milford-Uxbridge Electric Railway.  It was torn down in 1901 in order to create a memorial park to pay
    tribute to the founding families of our town.

    This sacred land became Founders’ Park in 1905 by town meeting vote.

    Richard Grady
    Mendon, MA

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