Sutton was born among fertile hilltops and well-watered valleys of the Nipmuc country, where, in the early 1700s, a group of London proprietors established a new foothold in America. In the wake of Indian wars, English farmers built a town on their guns, plows, and Congregational sensibilities, a place echoed today through the images in Sutton. No Massachusetts town sent more of its native sons to fight for independence, and Sutton secured that liberty through hard work. French Canadian workers built the mill villages of Manchaug and Wilkinsonville and turned out cloth, hats, and shuttles. Sutton raised prize-winning cattle and grew the Sutton Beauty apple. As the twentieth century brought growth, Sutton blended highways and subdivisions with eighteenth-century homes, farms, and a working blacksmith shop.
