...Click here to view information on the Coes Wrench Factory!
The Tatnuck Brook Watershed is the last watershed in Worcester that still remains above ground, and despite a huge increase in development activities still remains largely forested much as it was 100 years ago. The watershed extends for approximately four miles; from the Holden Reservoirs in the north to Webster Square in the south and is one of the major headwaters of the Blackstone River. The elevation of Tatnuck Brook at the Holden line is approximately 680 feet above sea level and drops an average of 45 feet per mile, with a total elevation change of 180 feet before entering into Beaver Brook in the southern area of the watershed.
Prior to the settlement of European colonists, the Blackstone Valley was home to the Nipmuc Native American tribes. Archeological records show this tribe dating back possibly as far as 15,000 to 20,000 years. The Nipmuc were an agricultural people who supplemented their diet with fish, game and wild foods. These tribes are thought to have lived in the valleys along the streams and were able to carry out their fishing, hunting and gathering activities accordingly. In the area that we know today as Worcester, Massachusetts, the Nipmuc tribes lived in villages scattered throughout a region then known as Quinsigamond, which means "pickerel fishing place: or "enclosed place at the long brook". The Tatnuck Brook valley, with its steadily flowing brook, fertile valley soil and upland woodlands, naturally became an ideal place of habitation for families of the Quinsigamond Nipmucs.
Upon the arrival of European settlers, the Nipmuc tribes began to experience increased difficulty in being able to live the life they had previously known. The native population began to die out due to persistent pressure by the settlers to buy, or to take by force, the best farmland and causing the Nipmuc tribes to continuously move away from their major sources of food and water. Other factors contributing to the demise of the Native tribes included smallpox epidemics in the 1670's, a high casualty rate in the war of 1675 and the savage determination of the settlers to exterminate or drive out the remaining members of the tribes by fair means or foul. In 1674 members of the Nipmuc tribes sold a deed that comprised of eight square miles, including part of what is now Holden, Tatnuck, and the northern part of Auburn, to four of the earlier settlers of Worcester for the sum of 12 pounds; lawful money.
The first order of business for the settlers was the necessity of growing food. Early settlers found, as the Nipmucs before them had learned, that the valley with its brook and relatively fertile soil was a natural environment for their food and protein needs. Eventually the grain that they harvested led to the construction of storage barns and it was not long before the farmers of the Tatnuck area produced more then the local market could consume. Goods produced in the Tatnuck area were soon exported to the broader community and beyond, as transportation of the day would allow.
...continue with history: commodities of the era