Old Rochester
When originally settled by the English, Old Rochester included the present towns of Rochester, Mattapoisett, Marion, and a portion of Wareham. More on this later.
The first documented description of the area comes from two sources, both members of the 1602 expedition to the area by Bartholomew Gosnold, who attempted to establish a settlement on nearby Cuttyhunk Island. As they traveled up Buzzards Bay, crew members Brereton and Archer noted seeing many shell middens, small harbors, and "open woods, kept open of underbrush by the Indians." Paradoxically, the "wilderness" often described by early European explorers was from its earliest times a land fully utilized and carefully sculpted by human hands.
Rochester's first property grant from Governor Bradford of the Plymouth Colony was made in 1640. However, it only allowed settlers to negotiate with the Natives and purchase the property from them. Although there was much negotiation, there is little evidence that much land was actually purchased for the next 38 years. Nonetheless, settlers trickled in, first occupying the harbors, ponds, and river bottoms to trade and fish. This all changed following the Natives' defeat in King Philip's War (1675-78), when Indigenous lands became "open by conquest." In 1679, the Colony approved the "Rochester Township Grant," which permitted the small settlements to come together and incorporate a town. Once this finalized in 1686, family farms increased in the area. In 1704, the first corn mill was established in this part of the Colony by the Handy Family.
Fishing, trading, whaling, and shipbuilding also grew in importance, causing rapid growth of the sections of town on Buzzards Bay. Meanwhile, the inland portion of town benefitted from logging and timber production. The Town of Wareham split off from Old Rochester and was incorporated in 1739.
A prosperous area by 1775, Old Rochester gave early support to the campaign for American independence from England, voting to sustain the Continental Congress and support the revolution. In fact, Rochester provided a greater proportion of its men to serve in the war than any other town in Plymouth Colony. One notable Rochester son born in 1792 was Joseph Bates, who went on to found the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Yet Rochester suffered a significant setback in 1816, when its 1,500 residents were hit hard by an epidemic of spotted fever epidemic, a disease associated with typhus and several tick-borne infections.