Northfield is a town in Franklin County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 2,951 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. The Connecticut River runs through the town, dividing West Northfield from East Northfield, where the town hall and village of Northfield are located.
Part of the town is included in the census-designated place of Northfield.
History
Originally settled and inhabited by the Pocomtuc tribe, the area was site of the village of Squawkeag. Northfield was first colonized in 1673 by the English and was officially incorporated in 1723.
The territory was successfully defended a number of times by Native Americans. As a result, the English colonists were occasionally taken north to Quebec, held as hostages by the French, causing the town to revert to American Indian control a few times.[1]
Eventually, conflicts with the Native American population ceased after most of the native population was displaced and/or sold into slavery as a result of King_Philip's_War and after a series of massacres of local Indian villages.[2]
Much of Northfield's development in the late nineteenth century was spurred by the work of evangelist Dwight Lyman Moody, a native of Northfield who established the Northfield Seminary for Girls in 1879 on a sweeping hillside in East Northfield. The school was the site of Moody's religious conferences, which attracted thousands of visitors to Northfield each summer. The influx of visitors led to the development of the town as a summer resort, especially after the opening of the Northfield Hotel in 1887. Francis Schell, a New York capitalist attracted by his interest in Moody's work at the Northfield Seminary, commissioned architect Bruce Price to design a summer home, which became known as the Northfield Chateau. Patterned after a French château but fanciful in style with prominent turrets and 99 rooms, the house fell into a state of disrepair following Schell's death, and it was demolished in 1967.
The Vermont and Massachusetts Railroad had established rail service to Northfield by 1850, along a line running from Millers Falls, Massachusetts to Brattleboro, Vermont. Even though the railway crossed the Connecticut River in Northfield, East Northfield Station was actually located in West Northfield, necessitating that travelers had to travel back across the Connecticut River on the lower deck of the rail bridge. To provide for safer and more convenient access across the river, Francis Schell gave $60,000 for the construction of a new steel bridge. The Schell Bridge is a Pennsylvania truss structure of impressive design, which crosses the river in one span of 515 ft (157 m).
In 1971 the Northfield Mount Hermon School was formed by the merger of the Northfield Seminary and the Mount Hermon School for boys, which Moody had founded in 1881 in nearby Gill. The school continued to operate as one school with two campuses some 5 miles apart on opposite banks of the Connecticut River until 2005 when the school consolidated its operations on the Mount Hermon campus in Gill. The school still owns its former campus in Northfield, although it is actively looking to sell the property. Moody's birthplace and grave site, located on the Northfield campus, will not be sold and will be retained as a historic site. The Auditorium, used for Moody's religious conventions, and the school's original Romanesque Revival buildings remain extant on the Northfield campus.
Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 35.4 square miles (91.6 km²), of which, 34.4 square miles (89.1 km²) of it is land and 0.9 square miles (2.5 km²) of it (2.69%) is water. Northfield is the only town in Franklin County to be divided by the Connecticut River. Since the closure of the Schell Bridge in 1987 residents much travel to adjacent Erving, Massachusetts to cross the river. This is not correct. The Bennett Meadow bridge is used which is in Northfield (connecting East and West Northfield on Route 10).
Demographics
As of the census[3] of 2000, there were 2,951 people, 1,158 households, and 815 families residing in the town. The population density was 85.8 people per square mile (33.1/km²). There were 1,262 housing units at an average density of 36.7/sq mi (14.2/km²). The racial makeup of the town was 98.51% White, 0.10% Black or African American, 0.20% Native American, 0.20% Asian, 0.03% from other races, and 0.95% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.58% of the population.
There were 1,158 households out of which 34.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 57.4% were married couples living together, 9.1% had a female householder with no husband present, and 29.6% were non-families. 25.2% of all households were made up of individuals and 10.5% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.53 and the average family size was 3.04.
In the town the population's age was spread out with 26.3% under the age of 18, 6.3% from 18 to 24, 27.5% from 25 to 44, 26.4% from 45 to 64, and 13.5% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 40 years. For every 100 females there were 92.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 89.5 males.
The median income for a household in the town was $49,141, and the median income for a family was $56,816. Males had a median income of $40,396 versus $28,615 for females. The per capita income for the town was $21,517. About 3.6% of families and 5.0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 4.6% of those under age 18 and 9.1% of those age 65 or over.
Points of interest
References
- ^ * Hard, Walter (1998). The Connecticut. Lincoln, Massachusetts: Massachusetts Audubon Society. pp. 97. ISBN 0-932691-27-7.
- ^ * Peske-ompsk-ut. Turners Falls, Mass.: Printed at the "Reporter" job office. 1875. pp. 21. http://books.google.com/books?id=yzUuAAAAYAAJ&dq=Peske-ompsk-ut&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=oZdJFxREel&sig=dI1wnm2KZtvDgRGNiKvG0PN8xoY&hl=en&ei=RrMiSpaOGsKltgfNxe3RBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3.
- ^ "American FactFinder". United States Census Bureau. http://factfinder.census.gov. Retrieved 2008-01-31.
