North America -- United States of America -- Commonwealth of Massachusetts -- Worcester County -- Grafton {Id= 1018}

The area known as Hassanamessit fell within Nipmuc territorial homeland.  In 1660, John Eliot established a Praying Indian village there, the third of its kind, and built an Indian church there the following year.  While English colonists settled the town as early as 1724, the Hassanamisco sold the land to the settlers in 1727 and 1728, leaving twelve hundred acres to be divided among the remaining tribal families into several separate parcels in what was to become the Town of Grafton. The Town of Grafton incorporated in 1734.  Pierce, History of Grafton, 20-21, 35-41.  Rae Gould, Eric Johnson, and Betsy Friedburg, National Register of Historic Places Program: National American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month, Hassanamsico Reservation, Worcester County, Massachusetts.  National Park Service.

Native Place Names

* “George’s Hill” is a rise near Misco Brook named for George Misco, who lived there. Kinnicutt,  Indian Names of Places in Worcester County, Massachusetts, 24.

* Hassanamessit (“at the place of the small stones”) is the Native name for what became Grafton, Masschusetts. Douglass-Lithgow, Indian Place Names in Massachusetts, 16.

*Hassanamisco is the modern spelling of Hassanamessit and used to denote the post contact-reservation of the Native community living there.  It presently includes the Hassanamisco Homestead Museum.  For images of the Museum, Click Here

* Misco is the name of a brook at the eastern boundary Grafton.  Also known as George’s Brook. Kinnicutt,  Indian Names of Places in Worcester County, Massachusetts, 24.