Hopedale History
May 2025
No. 439
The Big Split
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Twenty-five years ago – May 2000 – President Bill Clinton announces that accurate GPS access would no longer be restricted to the United States military
India’s population reaches 1 billion, baby girl Aastha Arora chosen as symbolic billionth.
Fifty years ago – May 1975 – The American merchant ship Mayaguez, seized by Cambodian forces, is rescued by the U.S. Navy and Marines; 38 Americans are killed.
Junko Tabei from Japan becomes the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
One hundred years ago – May 1925 – African American Tom Lee rescues 32 people from the sinking steamboat M.E. Norman on the Mississippi River.
In Dayton, Tennessee, Dayton City School biology teacher John T. Scopes was arrested after teaching evolution from a chapter in the textbook Civic Biology, in a violation of a new Tennessee state law.
President Calvin Coolidge ruled out prohibitionist Wayne Wheeler‘s plan to use the U.S. Navy to enforce the Volstead Act, believing the navy’s purpose should only be for national defense and not police duty.
Baseball pitcher Buster Ross of the Boston Red Sox set a record, still standing after almost a century, by committing four errors in a single game.
News items above are from Wikipedia. For Hopedale news from 25, 50 and 100 years ago, see below this textbox.
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The Big Split
By Peter Hackett
Everybody knows that Mendon is an old town and that a number of area towns were originally part of it. But everybody doesn’t know how many of these towns there are now, or when they became incorporated.
The accompanying chart, simple though it may seem and requiring much more research than may be imagined, gives the answers.
The chart was made in 1966 in connection with the 300th anniversary of Mendon, which was celebrated in 1967.
The next date on the chart is 11-27- 1719, when Bellingham was incorporated. That date could well be considered important, not only in Bellingham but also to Mendon. It was the year Mendon became, for the first time, a “Mother” town.
Only a part of Bellingham came from Mendon; other parts came from Wrentham and Dedham. It was the first time, however, that a part of Mendon had separated itself from the parent town.
In whole, or in part, eight towns came out of Mendon. She always resisted such moves. Her archives teem with petitions, pleas and grievances made to the General Court against such separations, but to no avail.
Split…Why?
Why did these towns separate from the mother town? A good question we shall now explore.
One of Mendon’s chief claims to fame, historically, is her mother town status. It was this status that destined her to be an agricultural town, and as presently indicated, a residential one. Her size was also a determining factor affecting her status.
The Indian deed of eight miles square which seemed so good to the first inhabitants, became a serious handicap as they began spreading out from the center, settling on the rivers and streams.
The waterways furnished the power for their grist mills, sawmills and forge shops. The river meadows made good farming lands.
The villages settled on these rivers grew faster and larger than Mendon itself. But they had no meeting house and since colonial law required that the inhabitants must attend the public worship of God, also town meetings, it became a great inconvenience for those far-flung villagers to attend the Mendon meeting house.
It was only natural, therefore, that they should want a meeting house of their own and that basically was the reason given in their petition to the General Court for incorporation as independent towns. In the Act of Incorporation, it was always stipulated that within a varying time, one to three years, the new town must build a meeting house and settle an orthodox minister (Congregational) of good standing.
To our forefathers, God was very much alive and duly considered in all their activities.
In time, the little grist mills and sawmills gave way to the increasingly larger textile mills and machine shops. Whitinsville, on the Mumford River, originally in Mendon, then Uxbridge and finally Northbridge, became the home of the large Whitin Machine Works complex. The textile mills of Uxbridge were built on the Mumford, Blackstone and West rivers.
The grist mills and sawmills of the Mill River on the east side of Mendon gave way to the great Draper shops of Hopedale. Like Whitinsville, Hopedale also lay within the bounds of Mendon’s eight-mile square domain.
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Hopedale News – May 2000
Hopedale News – May 1975
Hopedale News – May 1925
