Groton, MA news and local guide

For thousands of years the area around Groton was home to Native peoples who settled along its rivers, and the historic tribes were the Algonquian-speaking Nipmuc and Nashaway, whose trails connected the area with Massachusetts Bay. The European presence began when John Tinker set up a trading post with the Nashaway where Nod Brook meets the Nashua River, at a place the Nashaway called Petapawag, "swampy land." In 1655 Groton was settled and incorporated by a group including Deane Winthrop and named for Groton in Suffolk, England, hometown of his father, Governor John Winthrop. The Plantation of Groton covered present Groton and Ayer, most of Pepperell and Shirley, large parts of Dunstable, Littleton and Tyngsborough, and the New Hampshire towns of Nashua and Hollis.

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On March 13, 1676, during King Philip's War, Native warriors burned every building except four garrisons, killing among others the selectman John Nutting, and survivors fled to Concord and elsewhere, returning two years later to rebuild a heavily fortified town that had a garrison of 91 men by 1692. In the Raid on Groton of 1694, during King William's War, Abenaki warriors killed much of Lydia Longley's family and carried her and two siblings captive to Montreal, where she was ransomed, became a Catholic and joined the Congregation of Notre Dame. In 1704 Abenaki raiders also took Matthias Farnsworth III captive to Montreal. Sources Wikipedia: Groton, Massachusetts