The Stockbridge Town Square and Meeting House

by Rick Wilcox

June 1, 1745 (Special Town Meeting) Layout of the highways in Stockbridge by Josiah Jones and David Nawnauneekaunuck, Surveyors for Highways, to be confirmed and established as follows: "A square laid out about the meeting house Twenty-Six rods each way, ten rods east of the meeting house, sixteen rods west, six rods south and twenty rods north. Stakes being set at each corner of said Square." "And a road laid out from said Square to the grist mill begins and continues to be eight rods wide a few rods east of John Konkapot's barn then narrowing gradually to the next stakes and there to be six rods wide and continuing to narrow till it comes against the house of Joseph Woodbridge and then four rods wide and to continue of the last- mentioned width til it comes to the south corner of the Woodbridge lot and then to turn northwardly to the grist mill...." The meeting house, constructed in 1739, a building used for both religious and the secular business of town government, was 40 X 30 feet, two stories high, with the front door facing south. Knowing that it rested fifty or so feet northwest of the Children's Chime Tower that south orientation may seem odd given the location of current Main Street. Apparently, the English colonists did not anticipate the need for a street at that location, and in 1750 a survey placed the burying yard north of the rear of the meetinghouse, land that is now referred to as The Old Section of the town cemetery. Main Street, later Plain Street, in that 1750 survey ended just east of the Town Square. If you wander through the Old Section of the town cemetery you will note that Rev. John Sergeant died in July 1749, his grave predated the cemetery survey by almost a year. In 2024 the current Federal Period brick Congregational Church will be 200 years old. A topic for the next Stockbridge Updates.

Author's note: A rod is 16.5 feet. Plain (Main) Street from the Town Hall to about Elm Street was 8 rods wide or 132 feet wide. Woodbridge house, later Laurel Cottage, believed to have been built about 1740, was at 50 Main Street, Bidwell Park. Woodbridge lot, and grist mill is land at the base of Yale Hill Road on the right.

Greetings from Antarctica. Photo: Lionel Delevingne