History of Groton, Massachusetts, USA

In August 1704, the Abernaki, with strong support from the French, attacked Groton, another village not far from Boston.

Groton, Massachusetts
Middlesex county. This is a delightful town, with an extraordinary good soil; 32 miles N.W. from Boston, and 13 W. by S. from Lowell.
Groton was settled soon after Concord. It was for some years a frontier settlement and much exposed to the Indians. In 1676, the town was attacked by 400 Indians, and all the buildings plundered and burnt, except four garrison houses.

The town is finely watered by the Nashua and Squanacook rivers and a number of beautiful ponds. The buildings are in a style of great neatness and taste, and some of elegance. This town has a female seminary of high reputation, and a number of moral and religious institutions. The local beauties of Groton and its facilities for education are so great as to induce many wealthy families to make it their residence. The manufactures of Groton consist of paper, axle-trees, soap-stone pumps, mathematical instruments, clothing, palm-leaf hats, chairs, cabinet ware, leather, boots and shoes....

The name of Groton was given to part of the Indian district of Petapaway, in honor of a town in England from which Governor Winthrop's family came.

This town, and several others in its vicinity, were included in a grant, eight miles square, made by the General Court to Dean Winthrop, a son of the governor.

Groton suffered so much from the Indians in Philip's War, that the settlement was entirely abandoned for two years.

The boundary line of Groton is very irregular, and little or none of it remains as it was originally drawn.

This is a farming town, and some attention has been paid to the cultivation of hops.

Distance from Concord, 17 miles; from Boston, 84.

GROTON was originally a grant by the general court, made May 23, 1655, of eight miles square, to Mr. Dean Winthrop and others, at a place called Petapaway, and included the greatest part of the towns of Pepperell and Shirley, and parts of Dunstable, Westford, Littleton, and Harvard. Mr. Dean Winthrop, being a son of John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts colony, probably named the place Groton, from the town in England whence the family came. The grant, in the quaint language of the times, says, “the court judgeth it meet to grant the petitioners eight miles square in the place desired, to make a comfortable plantation,” and it is ordered to be laid out “with all convenient speed, that so no encouragement may be wanting to the petitioners for the speedy procuring of a godly minister among them.” Among the first settlers were William Martin, Richard Blood, Robert Blood, and John Lakin. The precise time of the first settlement is not known; but a committee of the general...

Groton, a post-township of Middlesex co. Massachusetts, 30 miles N. W. from Boston Several railroads centre at Groton Junction in this township. Population, 2515.

...At Groton Junction the side of a brick building, occupied by a blacksmith, was blown in...

GROTON, a township in Middlesex co., in Massachusetts, 33 m. NW of Boston.