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Originally, Stoughton was a part of old Dorchester and the land set aside for the Punkapoag Indians. First settled by Colonial families from Dorchester, Braintree, and Dedham, the town has had many generations of descendants who have helped build this thriving community. Stoughton grew with the arrival of various industries, from home shoe shops on family farms and water-powered mills to emerging smokestacks of mammoth shoe and boot factories. At the close of the nineteenth century, both the old Yankee families and recent European immigrants in search of new opportunity called the town of Stoughton home. In Stoughton, many rare photographs from the archives of the Stoughton Historical Society have been carefully selected to illustrate this book. Within these pages, you will see Stoughton's own namesake, Lt. Gov. William Stoughton, who was the presiding chief justice over most of the Salem witchcraft trials; images from the Great Fire of 1880, which nearly destroyed Stoughton Center; the famous clock-towered granite train station, on Wyman Street; the Stoughton Volunteer Firemen's Association's famous hand tub; the majestic Stoughton Town Hall; George E. Belcher's Shoe Last Factory; and the house of Stoughton's own victim of the RMS Titanic disaster in 1912.
