Quick History Stops: Sutton Center Historic District, MA, Part 2

Back in late June 2026, I visited the Sutton Center Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places, part of the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor (BHC) in Massachusetts. So many historic buildings, monuments, and stories were packed into this highly walkable area that I am dividing my adventure into three parts. The first part focused on a church, town common, municipal building, and several houses. The second part will focus on the little school house, cemetery, town pound, and a house. Aiding in my trip were easy-to-follow walking tours created by BHC over a decade ago and by Sutton Historical Society as part of America250.

Constructed in 1823, the little white building in the parking lot of the rambling municipal building originally served the Masons as Olive Branch Lodge. After the Masons left some time between 1815 and 1820, the building became a school house in 1851 and then the library after 1910. Since 1982, Sutton Historical Society has preserved the building as the General Rufus Putnam Museum.

Down the street at 4 Uxbridge Road is Sutton Center Cemetery, currently undergoing a project led by Sutton Historical Society. Beginning in 2024, the cemetery was cleaned of debris, and grave markers wear cleaned using special conservation techniques, including D/2 Biological Solution and gentle plastic tools. For gravestones that could not be repaired, replicas were printed and attached to the stone, allowing visitors to easily read the information. Like all local cemeteries, this one has a few odd stories. I found two grave stones for James Taylor. One had a plain stone also engraved with the names of his three wives; this reported that he died on January 22, 1797 at age 77. Directly beside it was a fancier gravestone with an angel carved at the top claiming that he had actually died on January 20, 1797, still age 77. The two day discrepancy seemed odd to me, but maybe calendars were not as popular back then.

Another interesting gravestone belonged to Mary Harbach Marble, Hannah Greenwood Marble, Adeline Marinda Lumbard, and Nancy Tenney. The four young women, ranging in age from 14 to 23, drowned in Singletary Pond on May 29, 1822. Their shared marker is carved with an open bible at the top. I was struck by the late colonial angel face and wings carved on the top of the gravestone of Deacon Benjamin Morse, who died in 1776 just before the start of the American Revolutionary War. I made sure to get a photo of the highly decorated gravestone of local tavernkeeper Lazarus LeBaron, whose prosperity likely afforded him the intricately carved urn, willow, and palm-inspired designs around his stone from 1827. For stones now covered by printed replicas, two stood out to me. One gravestone was dedicated to Captain Reuben Sibley Sr. and Ruth Sibley Sibley, married second cousins, who had a veterans plaque and little flag beside their stone. I was also struck by the wording on a pair of gravestones, the one on the right belonging to Dr. Nathaniel Fry Morse and the one on the left belonging to his consort Rebeckah Hall Putnam Morse. It seems unclear why she was given this title rather than that of wife; the first partner of Dr. Morse, Hannah Gibbs Morse, was also noted as a consort in town records even though they had married in 1774.

The next stop was the town pound, a stone-walled enclosure for stray animals, which stands next to an 1864 shed that still holds equipment for the cemetery. I saw a similar town pound in Charlton, MA, next to the cemetery where Grizzly Adams is buried. Just down the street at 328 Boston Road, I found a house built in 1820 and seemingly undergoing renovation, as the shutters had been recently removed. It stood across the street from the house constructed by David Harvard Hall, son of Dr. David Hall the longtime minister of First Congregational Church in Sutton, around 1753 and bought by Massachusetts politician Thomas Hancock, uncle of more famous Massachusetts politician John Hancock, as a rental property.