Grafton Common - Grafton MA
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nomadwillie
N 42° 12.372 W 071° 41.130
19T E 278304 N 4676163
The focus of the district is the Grafton Common, also known as
Central Square, a small park, grass-covered, subdivided by paths, and shaded by trees. originally a four-acre area set aside in 1728.
Waymark Code: WM143MB
Location: Massachusetts, United States
Date Posted: 04/08/2021
Views: 1
By 1714, however, colonial settlers came to the area and gained General Court permission to purchase in 1728. The Common itself was established then , when the forty proprietors, in laying out their settlement, voted to set aside four acres of common land to accommodate a meetinghouse, training-field, am a burying place. Very quickly the Common became the center of institutional activity because at the center stood the first meetinghouse of the Congregational settlers, constructed in 1730.
The focus of the district is the Grafton Common, also known as Central Square, a small park, grass-covered, subdivided by paths, and shaded by trees. originally a four-acre area set aside in 1728 for the meetinghouse, training field, and burying ground, it was fenced and landscaped in 1845. Within the park, a Bandstand was constructed during the 1935 filming here of Eugene 0 'Neill's Ah, Wilderness. Three memorials are also located here. The first is a Civil War Memorial dating to 1867-1868, an Italian marble obelisque surrounded by a wrought iron fence and shrubs. The Jerome Wheelock Statue is bronze, the work of Herbert Adams dating from 1906-1908, a tribute to the Grafton native who invented the steam engine valve system and the Wheelock engine. The World War I Monument is a bronze plaque set into a boulder dating to 1923.
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