Get To Know DUXBURY - #1

English settlers/Pilgrims established their colony in Plymouth, just south of what is today Duxbury, MA in 1620. The land was parceled out up the coast in 1627 and settlers came to work their new farms just in the warmer months and returned to Plymouth during the winter. Before long they began to build homes on their land, and soon requested permission to be set off as a separate community with their own church. Duxbury, was incorporated in 1637.

Captain Myles Standish, the military leader of the Plymouth colony lived in Duxbury which was primarily a farming community throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. A large majority of able bodied men in Duxbury served the Revolutionary War.

The most remarkable period in Duxbury’s history, the shipbuilding era, began immediately after the Revolution. By the 1840s, Duxbury boasted about 20 shipyards and was the largest producer of sailing vessels on the South Shore. Few physical traces of this remarkable industry remaining today. The town is fortunate, however, in that an unusual number of federal period houses have survived. One can view the homes of Duxbury shipwrights, sailors, master mariners and merchants. Many of the homes are in a remarkable state of preservation.

By the 1870s, Duxbury’s rural character and unspoiled bay began to attract summer visitors as an idyllic summer resort. This pattern continued in Duxbury well into the 20th century and with the construction of Route 3 the town’s population exploded with the arrival of thousands of year-round residents