Belchertown (previously known as Cold Spring and Belcher's Town)CIS: Unincorporated and Unofficial Names of Massachusetts Communities is a town in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 15,350 at the 2020 census.
The town includes the census-designated place of Belchertown. Belchertown was formerly the home of the Belchertown State School. The land on which the school sat is, as of 2016, being redeveloped for mixed uses including residential, commercial and recreational. This includes the Lampson Brook Farm, used for community and sustainable agriculture, outdoor recreation, and wildlife preservation.
History
The area encompassing the Town is part of a crossroads of Native trails in the Connecticut River Valley of Western Massachusetts that indigenous people traveled including the Nipmuc and Norwottuck, or Nonotuck and Nolwotogg, among others.Brooks, Lisa. Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip's War. Yale University Press, 2018. Artifacts found in the early 20th century just south of Dwight, near Lake Metacomet, suggest, "evidence of Native American occupations in Belchertown" that began some 7,000 years ago.T. Binzen, UMass Archaeological Services. "Native American Sites in Belchertown", cited in "A Conference on New England Archaeology", Newsletter, Vol. 22, April 2003.
In 1658, land in present-day Belchertown (and other Towns) was negotiated between the Nonotuck Sachem named Chickwalloppe, other Sachems and John Pynchon, son of Springfield founder William Pynchon. In August 1662, land in present-day Belchertown (including South Hadley and Granby) was negotiated by Awonunsk, a Nonotuck, with her husband Wequagon and son Squomp, in a deed with Pynchon. "They reserved continued Native rights to freely hunt, fish, set up wigwams, harvest wood etc. on these lands."(Wright, Indian Deeds of Hampden County, 51-54)
Few interactions between people, both the indigenous and non-indigenous, were recorded within the modern-day boundaries though on July 29, 1704, Thomas Battis, of Brookfield, "coming to Hadley as a post, was killed in the present Belchertown," by Native Americans.
In 1716, the Equivalent Lands were sold by Connecticut Colony to residents who reside in present-day Connecticut and Massachusetts.Vermont: The Green Mountain State Some of these lands were granted to Jonathan Belcher, the future Royal Governor of Massachusetts who served between 1730 and 1741.
The Equivalent Lands, from Hadley to Brookfield, became known as "Cold Spring township" before Amherst, Belchertown, Pelham, Prescott, Ware and parts of Enfield were incorporated as towns. There was "much buying and selling of the 'Equivalent Lands' at Cold Spring." In 1722, twelve men bought about 8,400 acres at Cold Spring, seven of the buyers were Northampton farmers. They paid "3 shillings per acre, in bills, or at about 25 cents in real value."
Five years later, in 1727, Connecticut sold its rights to the territory, now Belchertown, to seven persons residing in or near Boston, in six equal divisions, the fifth to Jonathan Belcher. During October and November 1727, Col. Timothy Dwight of Northampton surveyed and plotted the territory. His lines included 27,390 acres.Payson W. Lyman, Historical Address Delivered at the Centennial Celebration, in Easthampton, Mass., July 4, 1876 (Springfield, Mass: Clark W. Bryan & Company, 1877).That same year, the area was said to be settled by non-indigenous people, with several families recorded there by July 1731, and was known variously as "Cold Spring," "Cold Spring plantation" and "Cold Spring township." It was named for "a large fountain" that indigenous people used before it became a popular watering hole for non-indigenous travelers on the Hadley Trail section of the Old Bay Path.
For a number of years, there was no house between Hadley and Brookfield and a traveler, from Hatfield, named "Cowles" was said to have discovered the spring, and it was named "Cowles Spring," according to an early 20th century newspaper article (without primary sourcing).Thomson, Lucy D. The story of a Yankee trade: Belchertown history surveyed. The Springfield Republican, April 8, 1900. The earliest mention of "Cold Spring" found to date is denoted on a map accompanying a deed to Benjamin Stebbins dated 1719.Belchertown Historical Association, Stone House Museum, Research performed in 2025.
The actual spring "afforded a convenient place for refreshment to the traveler in his solitary journey through the wilderness," according to a history. "As the communication between the towns upon the river and the eastern section of the State grew more frequent the spring became a celebrated watering-place for travelers, and finally gave the first name to the township."Everts, 1879, vol I, p. 521
There were soon "twenty families with more expected soon." The first community church was organized in 1737 with the election of its first deacon, John Smith (1687–1777), who had arrived the previous year. Rev. Edward Billings was appointed the first minister in 1738, the year construction began on the Town's combined church and meeting house. Finances delayed its completion until 1746. Rev. Billings was dismissed by the Town in April 1752 for opposition to the half-way covenant. Rev. Justus Forward was the Town's second minister.
The first meeting for the Cold Spring precinct was held on April 28, 1740, and was authorized by the Massachusetts General Court to be called by Deacon Smith. This meeting was for police purposes, electing officers, and raising money to support the gospel and other prudential matters.
Over the following two decades, citizens sent several petitions to State officials to become incorporated. Finally, on June 23, 1761, the "plantation called Cold Spring" became "Belcher's Town," named after the then former governor of Massachusetts, merchant and landowner though he is said to have never "set foot" in the place. The name was later shortened to Belchertown.
The first town meeting was held September 30, 1761. It is interesting to note that two of the elected officials were a deer reeve and a hog reeve, the latter being required to round up stray hogs and care for them in the town pound. Deer reeves were expected to control the illegal killing of deer as these animals were then becoming scarce in this area. Early town meetings were also religious affairs. Laws were passed on attending and supporting the church and observing the Sabbath.
There are about 10 cemeteries in Belchertown.Belchertown Historical Association, Stone House Museum. The South Cemetery, on Mill Valley Road south of the Common, was established 1742. A cemetery to the northwest, referred to Pond Hill Cemetery, now as Lake Vale Cemetery, was established in 1755 though some unmarked graves date to 1730. The Town purchased the cemetery, then two acres, in 1766.
The Town's historic villages include Dwight's Station (Dwight), Bardwell Village (also called Skeetersville and Tylerville), Barrett's Junction and Slab City.
The actual "Cold Spring" is still active and located in south-central Belchertown, on the north side of Cold Spring Road, to the west of Sabin Street on lands owned by the University of Massachusetts.
Old Bay Path There was an extension from a 1673 road from Boston known as the Old Bay Path, that, at West Brookfield, ran west and was called the "Hadley Trail" or "Hadley Path" that dated to "soon after 1660." This ran through Ware, Belchertown, Hadley, Northampton, and eventually to points west toward Albany, New York. The Path roughly followed routes that were begun and used by Native Americans for centuries. Another road, known also as the Old Bay Path or Pynchon's Path, split off in West Brookfield and headed south towards Springfield.
The Hadley Trail, later simply called the Old Bay Path or the County Road, at one time entered southeastern Belchertown and traversed the Town to the northeast, exiting just south of the Pond Hill or Lakes region. From the Town of Ware, the Trail crossed the Swift River and roughly followed today's Cold Spring Road to today's Mill Valley Road (Route 181) by the South Cemetery, and up through the Common and out Federal Street (Route 9), into South Amherst and Hadley. It was purported for a time to run north on Sabin Street then west across Cordner Street or west across Aldrich Street to meet Mill Valley Road.Belchertown Historical Commission Report, 1982. Various maps held by the Stone House Museum, Belchertown, MassachusettsCool, Nolan. "A Stone's Throw to Belchertown: Milestone Markers Along a Massachusetts Bay Path." Historical Journal of Massachusetts, vol. 48, no. 1, 2020, pp. 1-27.
Part of the colonial post road system for mail delivery, three extant markers were placed in Belchertown by 1765, according to one researcher.
The Path was romanticized by a 19th century writer. "It was marked by trees a portion of the distance and by slight clearings of brush and thicket for the remainder," wrote J. G. Holland, the author born at Dwight (North Belchertown), in his first novel, which was about life along the Path. "No stream was bridged, no hill was graded, and no marsh drained. The path led through woods which bore the marks of the centuries, over barren hills that had been licked by the Indian's hounds of fire, and along the banks of streams that the seine had never dragged. . . ."
"A powerful interest was attached to the Bay Path. It was the channel through which laws were communicated, through which flowed news from distant friends, and through which came long, loving letters and messages. . . . That rough thread of soil, chopped by the blades of a hundred streams, was a bond that radiated at each terminus into a thousand fibres of love and interest, and hope and memory. Every rod had been prayed over, by friends on the journey and friends at home."Holland, Josiah Gilbert. The Bay-Path: A tale of New England colonial life. New York: G.P. Putnam & Co., 1857, p. 70.
Today's Bay Road follows the approximate route of the Hadley Trail for about 11 miles, from central Belchertown into west Hadley.
Non-indigenous settlers Benjamin Stebbins, Sr. (1687-1769), of Northampton, is listed as a "nonresident proprietor," on a deed of 300 acres in Belchertown in 1719, with the "Cold Spring" in the southwest corner, according to a survey made by Timothy Dwight.Belchertown Historic Commission. Along the County Road: Belchertown Discovered. [Belchertown, MA]: Belchertown Historic Commission, 1982, p. 75. He had married Mary Ashley in 1709 in Northampton.Familysearch.org Benjamin Stebbins 15 October 1687-7 September 1769. with 33 sources. 9V31-S4G. Some sources place the first date of settlement in July 1731, but 1727 is the year that the Stebbins are said to have built a homestead along today's Stebbins Street, just south of Bay Road, or the Pond Hill/Lakes region. The property was at the "southern foot of the eastern spur" of the Holyoke Range. According to the family genealogy, Stebbins received from Jonathan Belcher five hundred acres of land in 1727, "as an inducement … to settle [Belchertown]" and was "said to have been the first … to make a permanent residence" though it was likely his son Benjamin Stebbins, Jr. (1711–1789) who first settled here; he married Rebecca Day (1713-1769) on September 26, 1733. They both died and were buried in Belchertown.Greenlee, Ralph Stebbins, and Greenlee, Robert Lemuel. The Stebbins Genealogy, Vol. 1. United States, Priv. Print. [M.A. Donohue], 1904, p 159.