Long before Wilbraham became a separate town in 1763, and long before Hampden followed in 1878, this region was known as the Outward Commons of Springfield, a stretch of fertile farmland that would later include Main Street, Wilbraham Road, Stony Hill Road, Somers Road, and scattered homesteads. By the mid-18th century, the Outward Commons was emerging as a community of its own, settled by hardy farmers and skilled craftsmen. Though somewhat isolated from the bustle of Spring

The story of Dr. Samuel Fisk Merrick is inseparable from the long course of Wilbraham’s history itself, a family line reaching back to the earliest days of Massachusetts settlement and a life that spanned the colonial era, the American Revolution, and the young republic that followed. Samuel Fisk Merrick was born on September 13, 1751, in Wilbraham, Hampden County, Massachusetts, the fourth child of Reverend Noah Merrick and Abigail Fiske. His father was forty years old at th

Among the many sons of South Wilbraham who quietly shaped the course of American industry, few left a mark as enduring as Edwin Marcus Chaffee (1805–1877). Born in this town at the opening of the nineteenth century, Chaffee came of age during a period when New England was emerging as a center of mechanical skill, experimentation, and manufacturing innovation. While South Wilbraham remained largely agricultural, it did support small industries along the Scantic River and in ot