Though the years, the common remained the focus of town life.
As one of the English judges who sentenced King Charles I to death, he had fled to hide in New England when the English monarchy was restored in 1660. Goffe, later known as “The Angel of Hadley,” became the subject of many legends. Legend has it that, during that conflict, the town was saved from destruction when, at a critical moment, William Goffe-one of judges who had helped execute the King of England, now hunted as a regicide-who showed up in the midst of the townspeople, warned them of the danger, and led the town in fending off the assault, disappearing shortly afterward. In 1675-76, during King Philip’s War, to guard against Indian attacks, a palisade that ran far enough behind the houses to include most of the barns and farm buildings enclosed the street and common. Eight-acre home lots were ranged along both sides of the common, with farmlands behind. The common measured 20 rods wide and one mile long, with the Connecticut River defining both ends, and was reportedly based on the original plan of Wethersfield, Connecticut. The first settlers laid out this area, formerly known as the Norwottuck Meadow, as the center of the new settlement before their arrival, with the Town Common, referred to as “the Broad Street,” as the central feature. John Pynchon purchased the site of the new settlement, a fertile peninsular plain defined by a bend in the Connecticut River, from the Nolwotogg community on behalf of those settlers. John Russell in 1659 founded Hadley as an agricultural community on the east bank of the Connecticut River. A dissenting Connecticut congregation under the leadership of Rev. In time, English colonists driven in part by a search for religious freedom began to settle the Connecticut Valley.
By the sixteenth century A.D., the Valley sustained Algonkian peoples who hunted and fished here.Īs early as 1614, the residents of the Valley began to encounter the first representatives of European nations exploring North America. Once covered by a vast glacier that gave way in time to a large glacial lake (Lake Hitchcock), the Connecticut River Valley around 10,000 BC became home to Paleo-Indians who initiated centuries of human occupation. For thousands of years, people have been settling in this bend of the Connecticut River, drawn here by the rich soil, access to the water, and scenic vistas.
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