Harvard, Massachusetts

Harvard is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. The town is located 25 miles west-northwest of Boston, in eastern Massachusetts. It is mostly bounded by I-495 to the east and Route 2 to the north. A farming community settled in 1658 and incorporated in 1732, it has been home to several non-traditional communities, such as Harvard Shaker Village and the utopian transcendentalist center Fruitlands. It is also home to St. Benedict Abbey, a traditionalist Catholic monastery, and for over seventy years was home to Harvard University's Oak Ridge Observatory, at one time the most extensively equipped observatory in the Eastern United States. It is now a rural and residential town noted for its public schools. The population was 6,851 at the 2020 census.

History

Europeans first settled in what later became Harvard in the 17th century, along a road connecting Lancaster with Groton that was formally laid out in 1658. They settled on land purchased from Nashaway sachems Sholan and his nephew George Tahanto. There were few inhabitants until after King Philip's War, in which Groton and Lancaster were attacked and substantially destroyed. Over the next 50 years the population grew until it had reached a point adequate to support a church. A new town including parts of Lancaster, Groton, and Stow was incorporated in 1732, subject to the proviso that the inhabitants "Settle a learned and Orthodox Minister among them within the space of two years and also erect an House for the publick Worship of God." It is uncertain how the town obtained its name, though the Willard family, among the first settlers and the largest proprietors in the new town, had several connections to Harvard College. According to ''The Harvard Crimson,'' Josiah Willard named the town after Harvard College, which he had attended, because the articles of incorporation had left the town unnamed. The first minister was Rev. John Seccombe, serving from 1733 to 1757.

In 1734, the town was considered to have five districts or villages. These were Oak Hill, Bare Hill, Still River, Old Mill, and Shabikin, present day Devens.

One notable early enterprise based in Harvard was the Benjamin Ball Pencil Company, which produced some of the first writing instruments made in the United States. They operated in the Old Mill district from 1830 to 1860. Despite this and other limited manufacturing, the town economy was primarily based on agriculture until the middle of the 20th century. This past is most prominently visible in the number of apple orchards. These apple orchards produce many apple products every year the most notable being apple cider. It is now mostly a residential "bedroom community" for workers at companies in Boston and its suburbs. Harvard has had a relatively quiet history, but has attracted several "non-traditional" communities that have given its history some flavor.

The Shakers

One part of town is the site of Harvard Shaker Village, where a utopian religious community was established. During a period of religious dissent, a number of Harvard residents, led by Shadrack Ireland, abandoned the Protestant church in Harvard. In 1769, they built a house that later became known as the Square House. Not long after Ireland's death in 1778, the Shaker Founder Mother Ann Lee met with this group in 1781 and the group joined her United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, or Shakers.

It was the first Shaker settlement in Massachusetts and the second settlement in the United States. The Harvard Shaker Village Historic District is located in the vicinity of Shaker Road, South Shaker Road, and Maple Lane. At its largest, the Shakers owned about 2,000 acres of land in Harvard. By 1890, the Harvard community had dwindled to less than 40, from a peak of about 200 in the 1850s. In 1917 the Harvard Shaker Village was closed and sold. Only one Shaker building is open to the public, at Fruitlands Museum; the remaining surviving buildings are in private ownership.

Nationally, 19 Shaker communities had been established in the 1700s and 1800s, mostly in northeastern United States. Community locations ranged from Maine to Kentucky and Indiana. The Shakers were renowned for plain architecture and furniture, and reached its national peak membership in the 1840s and 1850s. The Shaker community's practice of celibacy meant that to maintain its population, it was always necessary to have new outsiders join. The improving employment opportunities provided by the Industrial Revolution would over the middle decades of the 1800s diminish the attractions of joining the Shaker community. Today, only one church "society" remains open, run by the last Shakers at Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village in New Gloucester, Maine.

Fruitlands

Amos Bronson Alcott relocated his family, including his ten-year-old daughter, Louisa May Alcott, to Harvard in June 1843. He and Charles Lane attempted to establish a utopian transcendentalist socialist farm called Fruitlands on the slopes of Prospect Hill in Harvard. The experimental community only lasted 7 months, closing in January 1844. Fruitlands, so called "because the inhabitants hoped to live off the fruits of the land, purchasing nothing from the outside world", saw visits from the likes of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.Patricia Harris, Anna Mundow, David Lyon, James Marshall, Lisa Oppenheimer. ''Compass American Guides: Massachusetts'', 1st Edition. Random House. 2003. Pg. 186. Louisa May Alcott used her experience at Fruitlands as an inspiration for her novel ''Little Women''.

Clara Endicott Sears, whose Prospect Hill summer estate, The Pergolas, restored Fruitlands and opened it as a museum in 1914. On the grounds of Fruitlands Museum there is also a Shaker house, which was relocated there from Harvard's Shaker Village by Sears in 1920. It is the first Shaker museum ever established in the United States. In addition, Sears opened a gallery on the property dedicated to Native American history. Sears became interested in Native Americans after Nipmuck arrowheads were found around her property on Prospect Hill, which the Nipmuck Indians had called Makamacheckamucks.Kinnicutt, Lincoln Newton. ''Indian Place Names in Worcester County Massachusetts''. Common Wealth Press. 1905. Pg. 20.

Originally, Sears' Fruitlands property spanned , but in 1939, were seized by eminent domain for expansion of Fort Devens. As of 2010, that land is now part of the Oxbow National Wildlife Refuge.

Fiske Warren Tahanto Enclave

Fiske Warren, a follower of Henry George, attempted to establish a single tax zone in Harvard in 1918. The enclave bought up land (previously owned by the recently disbanded Shaker community) communally and attempted to manage the land according to George's principles. The enclave disbanded shortly after Warren died in 1938. His house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.

St. Benedict Center

Father Leonard Feeney was a Jesuit priest who held to a literal interpretation of the doctrine "Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus

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