COMMON GROUND
THE HEART OF STURBRIDGE
Concert-goers, at top, await the start of the first Roots N' Bluegrass Festival on The Common in mid-September. The Sturbridge Federated Church shares the crest of the hill with the Town Hall and the library. Across the road is the town's original burying ground, where the first white person born in Sturbridge is buried— Experience Deneson Wheelock.
Sturbridge, Mass., is known to schoolchildren and their elders across a broad swath of New England for Old Sturbridge Village, a re-creation of an 1830s New England settlement. But although the Village, which opened in 1946, has an absorbing and colorful history of its own, the original old Sturbridge village lies scarcely a mile to the east. Here, the town’s earliest organized settlers cleared a Town Common and built the town’s first Meetinghouse in 1734, establishing an enduring center of commerce and community — the true and still-beating heart of the town.
Today, The Common encompasses a hill held by the Town Hall, the Federated Church and the town library, and a two-acre greensward to the east along Route 131, surrounded by homes and faced by several shops and the venerable Publick House Inn across the road. Adjacent to the inn and also on the Common are the town’s historic graveyard, and the town office building, once a
school. Magnificent trees nearly a century old anchor the corners of the green, and a fine modern bandstand holds the western edge in the shadow of the library.
Free public concerts, bazaars and other events are frequent during the warm months, drawing hundreds of local folks and neighbors from surrounding towns; and the annual Harvest Fest, though just a quarter-century old, echoes similar community celebrations repeated for hundreds of years.
“I think our forefathers were really smart when they created these public spaces,” says Alix McNitt, executive director of the local Chamber of Commerce, sitting comfortably just out of the warm October sun in one of the white tents ringing the green amid the bustle of the 2013 Harvest Fest. “People come year after year — you see the same faces — people getting together, catching up with neighbors. It’s a great spot and you have the historical connection with the Publick House … it’s sweet!”
Brian Amedy, a member of the Tourist Association and a lodging manager for Old Sturbridge Village, concurs. “The Common is a focal point for all of your community activities. And having the Publick House there for so many years really helps because it draws a lot of people to the area. And so there’s often things going on on both sides of the street.”
Early records regarding The Common are sketchy, but as the site of the Meetinghouse — the town’s first church and place of government — it has served as the center of community life from the town’s beginnings. Few people lived on or around The Common in its early days, but here is where residents of the fledgling township came weekly for worship and for public business. This is where the town developed, and here is where people have done their commerce, enacted their seasonal celebrations, and buried their dead.
Beginning in the winter of 1774, as feelings ran high in the wake of the Boston Tea Party, the Common was used as a military mustering ground, and here the townspeople voted for independence in June 1776. The Marquis de Lafayette, a French hero of the Revolutionary War, visited The Common in 1824, and it’s reported that 3,000 people turned out on The Common to greet him. Regrettably, he could not stay, as an accounting in a Publick House write-up has it: “The General, however, was behind in his schedule and the Taproom hospitality proved so bountiful that he ventured no further into the Inn, but presently proceeded on his journey.”
Sturbridge was founded at the confluence of the main east-west and north-south roads along the Connecticut border in Massachusetts — routes that are roughly followed today by I-84, which stretches south to Hartford toward New York, and the Massachusetts Turnpike, which spans the state from east to west.
After the war, tradesmen began setting up shop here to serve the widely dispersed farming community, as well as the growing traffic on the two main roads. And as those roads improved, Sturbridge became a key stop on the 39-hour New York-to-Boston stage line.
The Common hummed with activity in the early 1800s as a way station serving travelers at the crossroads. The carriage trade and other light industries, some powered by a nearby brook, flourished at this time, helping bring a commercial vibrancy to The Common. And the addition of a general store and other shops, along with most of the houses that still stand around this green, made The Common a bustling village center.
But even as the central village began to thrive, two other centers of industry developed along the nearby Quinebaug River, and the economic power of both of these soon eclipsed The Common. Although it still had many good years left as a way station and a community gathering place, the economic development of The Common was over.
The last major addition to The Common came in 1896 with the construction of the Joshua Hyde Library overlooking the green. Another significant feature was added in 1994 — a bandstand — which unofficial town historian Bob Briere had been trying to get built for more than two decades to accommodate the frequent musical events held on The Common.
The importance of The Common springs from its role as a locus of community for almost three centuries. “In the old days, this is where people came to meet. And it’s where they still come today,” Briere says. The story of The Common is one that is still unfolding — in a place where community still happens.