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Wrentham MA

In 1660, five men from Dedham were sent to explore the lakes near George Indian’s wigwam and to report back to the selectmen what they found. The report of those men, Daniel Fisher, Anthony Fisher, Sgt. Fuller, Richard Ellis, and Richard Wheeler, was received with such enthusiasm that in March 1661 it was voted to start a new settlement there. The Town then voted to send Ellis and Timothy Dwight to go negotiate with King Phillip to purchase the title to the area known as Wollomonopoag.

They purchased 600 acres of land for £24, 6s. The money was paid out of pocket by Captain Willett, who accompanied Ellis and Dwight. The Town voted to assess a tax upon the cow commons to repay him, but some thought the money should be paid by those who would be moving to the new village. The dispute resulted in Willet not being paid back for several years.

After the boundaries of the new community were set, the Town voted to give up all rights to the land in return for the proprietors paying Dedham £160 over four years, beginning in 1661. By January 1663, however, little progress had been made towards establishing a new village. A meeting was called, and the 10 men who volunteered to go raised several concerns about their ability to move forward.

After much discussion, it was decided not to give the 600 acres to the group of pre-selected men, but rather to lay out lots and then award them by lottery. Those who already began to improve their lots were allowed to keep them, and land for a church, burial ground, training ground, roads, and officer lots were not included. All were free to buy and sell their lots.

Not much happened at Wollomonopoag until 1668, at which time a report arrived of native peoples planting corn and cutting down trees on the land that Dedham had purchased. Eleazer Lusher was charged with sending the illiterate Indians a letter warning them to “depart from that place and trespass no further.” Samuel Fisher then took it to them and read it aloud, at which point they replied that they had every intention of remaining on the land. Though they had still not paid him back for the land in question, the Town then asked Willett to speak with King Phillip and ask that he intervene.

There is no record of Phillip’s response to that entreaty but, in August 1669, the Town Fathers received an odd letter from him offering to negotiate for more land if they would quickly send him a “holland shirt.” Dwight and four others were appointed to negotiate with him again, provided Phillip could prove he, and not another sachem, had the rights to the land. In November, an agreement was reached to clear the title for £17 0s 8d. There is no record of whether a shirt was traded.

Samuel Sheares lived alone at Wollomonopoag for some time before a new attempt at a settlement was undertaken in 1671. Five men, John Thurston, Thomas Thurston, Robert Weare, John Weare, and Joseph Cheeney moved there with him, followed the next year by Rev. Samuel Man, a one-time teacher in the Dedham Public Schools. Robert Crossman was employed at the same time to construct a corn mill.

Those who moved there were drawn from the middle class of Dedham. They were primarily people from outside of Dedham who had purchased land there, and second generation Dedhamites who moved without their parents. Without the outsides, it is questionable whether the new community would have survived.

Soon, however, the Wollomonopoag settlers complained that those in the village center were keeping them in a state of colonial dependency. They were upset about absentee landlords whose land values were going up thanks to the labor of the inhabitants and who refused to pay taxes to support the community. They also complained that with the seat of the town government being so far away that they were disenfranchised and best by a lack of capital. Constables refused to travel to Wollomonopoag to make collections, assessments, and social judgement.

With the blessing of Dedham’s Board of Selectmen, the General Court separated the new town of Wrentham on October 16, 1673.

It was burned down during King Philip’s War 1675–1676. In the nineteenth century, Wrentham was the site of Day’s Academy. For a short time, Wrentham was the residence of the educational reformer Horace Mann. It is also known as one of the residences of Helen Keller.

North Wrentham separated as an independent town in 1870 with Plainville splitting off as an independent town in 1905.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 22.9 square miles (59 km), of which 22.2 square miles (57 km) is land and 0.7 square miles (1.8 km) (3.14%) is water. Wrentham is bordered by Norfolk on the north, Foxboro on the east, Plainville and Cumberland, Rhode Island on the south, Bellingham on the southwest, and Franklin on the west. It has two large lakes towards the center of town, Lake Pearl and Lake Archer, as well as Mirror Lake on the Wrentham/Norfolk border and numerous smaller lakes. Sheldonville, or West Wrentham, is a rural section of Wrentham located on the western leg of town. Sheldonville still maintains a unique identity as the old farming section of Wrentham, has active commercial orchards, and has its own ZIP Code (02070). Wrentham drains into four watersheds. They are the Charles River to the north, the Taunton River to the east, the Blackstone River to the west, and the Ten Mile River to the south.

Wrentham is the only town of that name in the United States. It is named after the village of Wrentham, Suffolk, England. The only other Wrentham is Wrentham, Alberta. Wrentham, Massachusetts, is by far the most populous of the three.

• Wrentham’s Home Page Archived June 5, 2022, at the Wayback Machine
• King Philip Regional School District Home Page
• Wrentham Public Schools
• The Wrentham Times
• Wrentham Cable Access
• Wrentham Patch, published by AOL Inc.