page_title: Milton, Massachusetts
section_title: Before independence
hierarchical_section_title: Milton, Massachusetts / History / Before independence
caption_attribution_description: English: Lower Mills Village, Massachusetts, spanning both sides of the Neponset River between Milton (on the right) and City of Boston (Dorchester) (on the left). These buildings were once part of the Walter Baker Chocolate Factory.
context_page_description: Milton is a town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States, and an affluent suburb of Boston. The population was 27,003 at the 2010 census. Milton is the birthplace of former U.S. President George H. W. Bush and architect Buckminster Fuller. In 2007, 2009, and 2011, Money magazine listed Milton as 7th, 5th, and 2nd, respectively, on its annual list of the "Best Places to Live" in the United States.
  Milton is located between the Neponset River and the Blue Hills. It is bordered by Boston's Dorchester and Mattapan neighborhoods to the north and its Hyde Park neighborhood to the west; Quincy to the east and south; Randolph to the south, and Canton to the west.
context_section_description: Milton was settled in the 1630s as a part of Dorchester by Puritans from England. Richard Callicott, one of the first settlers, built a trading post near the Neponset River and negotiated the purchase of Milton from Sachem Cutshamekin. Many of the settlers arrived during the 1650s, fleeing the aftermath of Oliver Cromwell's deposition from power and the English Civil War. It was referred to as Unquity, the term used by the Neponset Tribe of the Massachusetts Indians meaning "Lower Falls." This was adapted as "Lower Mills" after the establishment of the Israel Stoughton Grist Mill in 1634. In 1662, "that part of the Town of Dorchester which is situated on the south side of the Neponset River commonly called 'Unquatiquisset' was incorporated as an independent town and named Milton in honor of Milton Abbey, Dorset, England."
  Many early Puritan families of Milton became influential in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, such as: the Sumners, Houghtons, Hutchinsons, Stoughtons, Tuckers, Voses, Glovers and Babcocks.
  A powder mill established in 1674 may have been the first in the earliest in the colonies, taking advantage of the town's water power sites. Boston investors, seeing the potential of the town and its proximity to the city, provided the capital to develop 18th-century Milton as an industrial area, including an iron slitting mill, paper and sawmills, and the first chocolate factory in New England (the Walter Baker Chocolate Factory) in 1764, which was converted from the old Stoughton Grist Mill. Laying of streetcar lines fueled the rapid expansion of residential development.
  Between 1870 and 1915, Milton grew into the community it is now: a streetcar suburb with some chocolates, biscuits, and market produce to remind residents of the past. By 1929, many of the big estates were broken into subdivisions as the town's residential growth continued.
  The Suffolk Resolves were signed in Milton in 1774, and were used as a model by the drafters of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. The Suffolk Resolves House, where the Resolves were passed, still stands and it is maintained as the headquarters of the Milton Historical Society. At the time of the Resolves it was owned by Capt. Daniel Vose, a well-known businessman, and later a representative to the Provincial Congress. The house was moved to a new location at 1370 Canton Avenue in West Milton in order to save it from demolition at its previous location in "Milton Village" at Lower Mills. They were the "Suffolk Resolves" because Milton was part of Suffolk County until 1793, when Norfolk County split off, leaving only Boston and Chelsea in Suffolk County.
  Two royal governors of Massachusetts, Jonathan Belcher and Thomas Hutchinson, had houses in Milton. The Governor Belcher House dates from 1777, replacing the earlier home destroyed in fire in 1776, and it is privately owned on Governor Belcher Lane in East Milton. Although Hutchinson's house was demolished in the 1940s, Governor Hutchinson's Field, owned by the Trustees of Reservations today is a wide expanse of greenery on Milton Hill, with a view of the Neponset River estuary and the skyscrapers of Boston six miles (10 km) away. Both Governor Belcher's house and Governor Hutchinson's field are on the National Register of Historic Places.
caption: Milton's Walter Baker Chocolate Factory to the right
exif: {}