. It still stands as of May 2022 at 88–90 Summer Street. Maynard, located on the
Assabet River, was first settled as a farming community by
Puritan colonists in the 1600s who acquired the land comprising modern-day Maynard from local
Native American tribe members who referred to the area as Pompositicut or Assabet. In 1651
Tantamous ("Old Jethro") transferred land in what is now Maynard to
Herman Garrett by defaulting on a mortgaged mare and colt, and in 1684 Tantamous' son
Peter Jethro, a
praying Indian, and Jehojakim and ten others transferred further land in the area to the settlers. In 1676 during
King Philip's War, Native Americans gathered on
Pompasitticut Hill (later known as Summer Hill) to plan an
attack on Sudbury. Residents of what is now Maynard fought in the Revolutionary War, including
Luke Brooks of Summer Street who was in the Stow militia company which marched to Concord on April 19, 1775. In 1851 transcendentalist
Henry David Thoreau wrote about his walk through the area in his famous journal. and he
published a poem about
Old Marlboro Road, part of which runs through Maynard. During the American Civil War, at least thirty-six residents of Assabet Village fought for the Union. Formation of new towns carved out of older ones was not unique to Maynard. Nearby
Hudson, with its cluster of leather processing and shoe-making mills, seceded from
Marlborough and
Stow in 1866. In fact, the originally much larger Stow formed in 1683 lost land to
Harvard,
Shirley, Boxborough, Hudson and Maynard. The usual reason to petition the State's Committee on Towns was that a fast-growing population cluster—typically centered around mills—was too far from the schools, churches and Meeting Hall of the parent town. The community was named after
Amory Maynard, the man who, with William Knight, had bought water-rights to the
Assabet River, installed a dam and built a large carpet mill in 1846–1847. The community grew along with the
Assabet Woolen Mill and made wool cloth for U.S. military uniforms for the Civil War. Further downstream along the Assabet, the
American Powder Mills complex manufactured gunpowder from 1835 to 1940. The woolen mill went bankrupt in 1898; it was purchased in 1899 by the
American Woolen Company, a multi-state corporation, which greatly modernized and expanded the mill complex from 1900 through 1919. of Maynard and its sights (1879) There was an attempt in 1902 to change the town's name from "Maynard" to "Assabet". Some townspeople were upset that Amory Maynard had not left the town a gift before he died in 1890, and more were upset that Lorenzo Maynard, Amory's son, had withdrawn his own money from the Mill before it went bankrupt in 1898. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts decided to keep the name as "Maynard" without allowing the topic to come to a vote by the residents. "The Mill", as locals call it, was renovated in the late 1990s and renamed "Clock Tower Place" (2000–2015), and then renamed "Mill & Main Place" by new owners in 2016. The site houses many businesses, including the headquarters of
Powell Flutes. Acacia Communications, one of the larger tenants, was acquired in 2021 by
Cisco Systems for $2.6 billion. The mill complex is also home to the oldest, still-working, hand-wound clock in the country (see image). The clock tower was constructed in 1892 by Lorenzo Maynard as a gift to the town. The weights that power the E. Howard & Co. tower clock and bell-ringing mechanisms are wound up once a week – more than 6,000 times since the clock was installed. The process takes one to two hours. The four clock faces have always been illuminated by electric lights. For three months a year the Mill parking lot adjacent to Main Street is used on Saturdays for the Maynard Community Farmers' Market.
The Maynard family John Maynard, born 1598, emigrated from England with his wife Elizabeth (Ashton) Maynard around 1635. Five generations later, Isaac Maynard was operating a mill in Marlborough. When he died in 1820 at age 41 his teenage son, Amory Maynard, took over the family business. The City of Boston bought Amory's water rights to Fort Meadow Pond in 1846. He partnered with William Knight to start up a woolen mill operation on the Assabet River. Amory and his wife Mary (Priest) Maynard had three sons: Lorenzo (1829–1904), William (1833–1906) and Harlan (1843–1861). Amory managed the mill from 1847 to 1885 (Knight retired in 1852). Lorenzo took over from 1885 to 1898. William had less to do with the family business—he lived in Boston a while, then Maynard again, then off to Pasadena, California, in 1885 for reasons of ill health (possibly tuberculosis). He recovered and moved back east to Worcester in 1888 for the remainder of his life. Harlan died at age 18. Lorenzo married Lucy Davidson and had five children, but all of them died without issue—the four daughters passing away before their parents. William married Mary Adams and had seven children. Descendants of two—Harlan James and Lessie Louise—are alive today, but not living locally. William's granddaughter, Mary Augusta Sanderson, who died in 1947, was the last descendant to live in Maynard. The Maynard Crypt is a prominent feature on the north side of Glenwood Cemetery, within sight of passers-by on Route 27. It is an imposing earth-covered mound with a granite facade facing the road. The mound is across and about tall. The stonework facade is approximately across. The ceiling of the crypt has a glass skylight surmounted by an exterior cone of iron grillwork. The granite lintel above the door reads "MAYNARD." Chiseled above the lintel are the year 1880 and the Greek letters Alpha and Omega entwined with a Fleur-de-lis Cross. Amory Maynard, his wife, Mary, and twenty-one of their descendants or spouses thereof are interred in the crypt. At one point in time Amory's first son, Lorenzo, along with Lorenzo's wife and their four daughters, were also in the crypt, but in October 1904 Lorenzo's son arranged to have his six family members moved to a newly constructed mausoleum in
Mount Auburn Cemetery,
Cambridge, Massachusetts. Lorenzo had contracted for the mausoleum while still alive but died before it was completed. William, Amory's second son, was buried in the
Hope Cemetery in
Worcester, along with his wife and four of their seven children. ==Geography==