Northampton, MA news and local guide

The Pocumtuc called the area Norwottuck or Nonotuck, "the midst of the river." Accounts differ on the English name, given either by or in honor of John A. King, one of the first white settlers, who is believed to have come from Northampton, England. The Algonquian Pocumtuc confederacy held the Connecticut River Valley from southern Vermont and New Hampshire into northern Connecticut and was allied with the Mahican, whose defeat by the Iroquois by 1628 cut off trade to the west. After a major smallpox epidemic in the 1630s, most of the land of modern Northampton was sold to settlers from Springfield in 1653. A petition for a township was approved on May 18, 1653, and the settlers arrived in early spring 1654. Mohawk attacks on the Pocumtuc after 1655 forced many weakened Algonquian groups into defensive alliances.

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Northampton's territory was later enlarged and then divided, as Southampton was incorporated in 1775, Westhampton in 1778 and Easthampton in 1809. In 1734 and 1735 a religious revival under the minister Jonathan Edwards reached such intensity that it threatened the town's business, and its fame spread to England and Scotland. It was followed in 1739 and 1740 by the Great Awakening under Edwards's leadership, and Edwards is considered one of the founders of evangelical Christianity. On August 29, 1786, Daniel Shays and a group of Revolutionary War veterans stopped the civil court from sitting in Northampton, in the uprising known as Shays' Rebellion. Sources Wikipedia: Northampton, Massachusetts