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Concept
Blandford, Massachusetts
Summary
Blandford is a town in Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 1,215 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. It was the home of the Blandford Ski Area.
Blandford was first settled in 1735 primarily by Scots-Irish settlers and was officially incorporated on November 10, 1741. Because of these Scots-Irish families, Blandford was originally called "New Glasgow" after Glasgow, Scotland, but was renamed "Blandford" at the time of incorporation. While the petition of incorporation from the settlers asked that the town be named "Glascow" (as misspelled in source document), William Shirley, the newly appointed governor of the province of Massachusetts, ignored their request and named the town "Blandford" after the ship that brought him from England.
The name change came at a cost to the townspeople. The people of Glasgow, Scotland, had promised the settlers a gift of a church bell if they named the town after their city. With the town now named Blandford, the bell was never sent. Today, Glasgow Road near the center of Blandford is a silent reminder of these events.
Settlement came to Blandford and other "hilltowns" some 75 years after the more fertile alluvial lowlands along the Connecticut River were cultivated with tobacco and other commodity crops. In contrast, farming in the hilltowns was of a hardscrabble subsistence nature due to thin, rocky soil following Pleistocene glaciation and a slightly cooler climate, although upland fields were sometimes less subject to unseasonal frosts. Initial settlement in the nearby Pioneer Valley was by English Puritans, whereas Blandford's Scots-Irish settlers were Presbyterian, and their English was still somewhat influenced by Gaelic. Thus there were significant ethnic, religious, economic, and linguistic differences between these adjacent regions of settlement.
Hugh Black was the first settler to arrive in the fall of 1735. James Baird came shortly thereafter.
Official source
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