Really Belated Birthday Story

by Bobby Blair
Happy Birthday Hollyrock.

December 3rd was the 283rd birthday of the Town of Holliston. Taking a look back, this is what the Gazetteer of Massachusetts wrote about the town in 1846:

“This town lies twenty miles south from Concord, and twenty-three miles south west from Boston. From the centre village in the town, to the Worcester railroad in Framingham, is five miles north by west.

The surface of the town is pleasantly diversified, and the soil is good, and well cultivated. A number of small streams give the town some water power, and Winthrop’s pond, some pleasant scenery.

There are in town, manufactures of cotton and woolen goods, leather, boots, chairs, cabinet ware, combs, books, straw bonnets, ploughs, clothing, wagons, harnesses, the value of boots and shoes made here in one year was about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

The town was formerly the western parish of Sherburne. It was first settled in 1710, and named at its incorporation, in 1724, for Thomas Hollis of London, a patron of Harvard College.

In 1753, a fatal disease prevailed in this town. At the time its population was not more than four hundred. The patients were violently seized with a piercing pain in the breast or side, to be seized in the head was not common, the fever high. The greater part of those that died were rational to the last, they lived three, four, five, and six days after they were taken. In about six weeks fifty three persons died, forty one of whom died within twenty-two days.”

The Gazetteer also gave the following information in 1846.

• Valuation - $415,294
• Polls - 479
• School moneys - $900
• Public Schools - 9
• Boys and girls between the ages of four and sixteen - 489.
  
  

We’ve come a long way baby, nearly three centuries after the first settlers arrived in this place we affectionately call Hollyrock,

it’s a safe bet that not one resident will be found today on Mt. Hollis tending to the sheep.

A safer bet might likely be that the line of cars at the local Dunkin Donuts are long on these cold snowy and blustery birthday.

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