BRIEF HISTORY OF GREAT BARRINGTON

 "This tract of country, wild, forbidding, and destitute of roads other than the Indian trail… lay…between Boston and Albany… Occasionally traversed by bodies of soldiery in the early wars, and by other parties on public business, it was better known to the neighboring New York border, whose traders were accustomed to visit it for the purpose of traffic with the Indians, than to the more remote inhabitants of [eastern] Massachusetts."  
           -- History of Great Barrington by Charles Taylor

Southern Berkshire County was first inhabited by the Mahican tribe, a part of the Algonquin nation. At some point in time, the ancient aboriginal settlements were abandoned, and the valley of the “Great River of Berkshire” became a part-time hunting ground for Native American visitors who drifted over from the Hudson into a wilderness they called Ou-thot-ton-nook or Housatonnuck.

At the time of the settlement here by the Dutch and English around 1730, the local Indians lived in two small villages, one at Stockbridge and one at Housatonnuck (now Great Barrington).  According to tradition, the site in Great Barrington was referred to as the "Great Wigwam" or "Mahaiwe", the place downstream.  In 1736, a permanent Indian mission was established in Stockbridge, and all of the local Indians moved there.

Great Barrington was known as the Upper or North Parish of Sheffield until 1761, when it was incorporated and named the Shire town of the new county of Berkshire. The towns of Pittsfield and Great Barrington were created by an act of the Great and General Court of Massachusetts in 1761, the former named for Britain's Prime Minister, William Pitt, and (most likely) the latter for his war minister, Lord Barrington. Although many of the early white settlers in Berkshire County were of English extraction from the middle and eastern parts of Massachusetts and from Connecticut and Rhode Island, there were many Dutch families who had settled here even earlier from adjacent areas of New York.

In August, 1774, the county court house in Great Barrington was the site of the first open resistance to British judicial rule. Then, in September, 1786, a ragtag army of Daniel Shays' farmer rebels would not let the Court of Common Pleas meet. The last battle of Shays' Rebellion took place nearby.

In the early eighteenth century, Great Barrington remained primarily a farming community. But by 1830s, there were several taverns, 4 general stores, 2 tanneries, a grist mill, a plaster mill, and various mechanic shops. In the village of Van Deusenville were 2 stores, a woolen factory, and an iron ore blast furnace. In Housatonic, Monument Mills was incorporated in 1850, and the Owen paper mill was started in 1856.

After the Civil War, the influx of "summer people" into the Berkshires began. Great Barrington became, and has continued to be, a well-known summer resort.

Although Great Barrington has seen its share of change over the past 150 years, the innate appeal of the town continues to grow. With pleasures like majestic Monument Mountain, the Housatonic River Walk, the Guthrie Center, Railroad Street, the Mahaiwe Theatre (the list goes on and on), there is even more history to discover.