Shrewsbury, Massachusetts
Worcester county. This is an agricultural town of a pleasing variety of surface, and good soil, 36 miles W. by S. from Boston and 6 E. from Worcester. Quinsigamond or Long Pond lies principally in this town. It is nearly four miles in length and from 40 to 250 rods in width. It empties into the Blackstone river and canal, and produces a considerable hydraulic power. A floating bridge crosses this pond for the accommodation of the Worcester turnpike, 525 feet in length, built in 1818, and cost $6,000.
The manufactures of Shrewsbury consist of clothing, guns, hats, chairs, straw bonnets, leather, boots, shoes, &c.: the value of which, during the year ending April 1, 1837, was $211,287. The town was incorporated, 1727. Population, 1830, 1,386; 1837, 1,507.
Levi Pease, the father of mail stages in this country, was a native of this town. He died here in 1824, aged 86. Mr. Pease was a man of great enterprise; he projected the first turnpike road in New England, and to his zeal and sacrifices the public is more indebted than to any other man for its excellent mail establishment. At the time Mr. Pease started his first line of mail stages between Boston and New York, in 1784, the mail between those places passed only once a fortnight, on horseback, in a pair of saddlebags.
