Dudley Town Common
⎯⎯⎯
Center Road

Dudley Town Common, also, Center Road. . Dudley Town Common , The town of Dudley was created by an Act of the General Court passed February 2, 1732, at the request of inhabitants living between Oxford to the north and Woodstock to the south. They were “remote from any place of public worship of God”, and petitioned the court “to be erected into a separate township.” On June 20, 1732, the inhabitants of the new town named for the Dudley family, owners of large portions of the area, assembled on the property of William Carter and held the first town meeting. The Pegan (Nipmuck) Indians owned “five square miles”, including part of this hilltop, and deeded a parcel of four acres for the location of a meeting-house, in return for convenient seating for worship. You are standing within the original parcel, on which the first meeting-house was erected in 1734. A Congregational Church has been on this site ever since. , The Town Common was the heart of the village community. A “common” is land provided for many communal uses, including militia drills, town events, and memorials. All that remains of the original town common is this small green area which contains memorials to veterans and founders of the town. It still supports community activities like the Memorial Day parade and the annual Strawberry Festival frog jumping contest! Some of the common is still evident looking south, on the Nichols College campus. , [Captions] , . Top left: This is the picture of the second Congregational church built in 1824, which was destroyed by fire in 1890. , . Top right: The current church was built in 1890-1891 by patron Hezekiah Conant, and has Tiffany glass windows! , . Bottom left: A primary school (1849) was adjacent to the church, and was later expanded by adding a second floor called “Washington Hall” which provided space for large meetings and special town events. After the church was destroyed, the building was moved to its present location north of the church, and purchased by the Dudley Grange in 1891. In its place, the town built a brick building to house the Dudley Hill Grammar and Primary School, which is now owned by Nichols College. , Center Road , [Captions] , . Top: This view is to the east and includes The Black Tavern, Dudley's first structure listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was built in 1804 and called Healy's Inn, for its owner-builder Hezekiah Healy. A stage coach operated from Boston to Hartford and came up Tanyard Road, stopping at the Inn, then traveled west, just to the north side of the church on Rattlesnake Road, no longer in use. , . Bottom: To the north of the Tavern, a shop and barn, the Methodist church, the Bemis Store and Bemis House were prominent. On the west side of the street, the Grange, the Moses Barnes General Store and houses and barns completed the pastoral scene. Many of these historic buildings still remain. , Memorials , The first memorial erected on the common was the 1909 Soldiers Monument, with its distinctive bronze eagle and four bronze panels. The World War Memorial, a simple boulder with a bronze plague listing the soldiers of the World War 1917-1918, was placed on the west side in 1919. , The area you are standing on was created in 2017 using local granite stones, originally part of a Stevens Mill warehouse. The “Dudley Town Common” monument dedicated to the six Dudley “boys” who were incarcerated at the notorious Andersonville prison during the Civil War, was placed near an existing anniversary monument from 1987 to which a listing of Dudley's founding families was inscribed in 2016.