A Brief Profile & History of the Town of Williamsburg and the Village of Haydenville

While scenic Williamsburg is a quiet little town from which one may, summer or winter, step into the forests of the Berkshire Hills, it is the last stop on the Pioneer Valley bus system that connects the town to Northampton, Amherst and all the educational, cultural and market opportunities that the Five College Campus attracts to the Pioneer Valley. The population is founded of the rooted families that have descended the ladder from those agrarian settlers who had cleared the woods more than two hundred years ago, intermarried with the industrialists and immigrant mill workers who rode the tide of the industrial era up the river in the mid-nineteenth century. Salted in, is the added human element of those educators, professionals and others who have come to enjoy the peace and tranquility of Burgy.

Perhaps the fabric of character of the town, today, is owing to the events of its past: an unusual history that has gone largely untold for generations. In 1874, the mill town it was then, suffered a horror-filled industrial disaster when the huge, poorly constructed reservoir burst, demolishing many mills, homes and lives along the course of the Mill River. Heroes rode before the flood saving hundreds of lives. Volunteers retrieved the dead and revived the villages. Few of the factories were rebuilt. Many of the industries were removed to other locations, the laboring population following them. Time has healed those scars with fresh vegetation and a new generation born without the memories of the living nightmare of the past. The main streets of both the villages, Williamsburg and Haydenville, feature remarkable examples of Greek revival architecture in private homes and public buildings. This pride of the industrial era was spared, on higher ground, by the raging flood.

Everywhere, today, can be seen the effects of volunteerism on the museums, libraries, schools, and activities of the youth and aged. There seems to be a helping hand and live-and-let-live attitude that has yet to be overwhelmed by the ravages of other kinds of modern inundations. There is an ongoing spirit, a civic pride, prompting gifts and endowments in a time honored tradition. There is a certain solidarity in the organization of the town, its people, and the institutions and societies they have formed, as though the town owns the people.