BlockNorth Village, Massachusetts
43 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1887 and the latest in 1997. It stands in Lancaster town. It lies in ZIP code area 01523. It stands on Ponakin Brook. The Survey maps it on the Clinton quadrangle.
Then and now
1887 to 1997The same ground, surveyed 110 years apart. Drag the handle to wipe between them. Both sheets are United States Geological Survey originals; neither has been altered.
Compare 1887 against another survey:
On record in North Village
Buildings and businesses the archive holds for this place. Each opens its own page, with the source record it came from.
On the National Register within a mile 6 records
The National Register names another town for these. They stand within one mile of this settlement's coordinate.
First Church of Christ, LancasterNational Historic Landmark · listed 1970 · 1.0 miles away
North Village Historic Districtlisted 1977 · 0.2 miles away
Anthony Lane Houselisted 1976 · 0.5 miles away
Center Village Districtlisted 1977 · 0.9 miles away
Centre Village Historic Districtlisted 1979 · 0.9 miles away
Ponakin Bridgelisted 1979 · 1.0 miles away
Topographic sheets covering this place
20 surveys from 43 printed sheetsMatched by testing this settlement's coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet in the United States Geological Survey's historical collection. Each opens the scanned sheet at the Survey.
- 1887 USGS Marlboro quadrangle1:62500
- 1889 USGS Marlboro quadrangle1:62500
- 1896 USGS Marlboro quadrangle1:62500
- 1898 USGS Marlboro quadrangle1:62500, 8 printings
- 1908 USGS Quinsigamond quadrangle1:125000, 3 printings
- 1943 USGS Clinton quadrangle1:31680, 3 printings
- 1943 USGS Quinsigamond quadrangle1:125000
- 1948 USGS Boston quadrangle1:250000, 2 printings
- 1950 USGS Clinton quadrangle1:24000, 2 printings
- 1950 USGS Clinton quadrangle1:31680, 2 printings
- 1956 USGS Boston quadrangle1:250000, 6 printings
- 1958 USGS Boston quadrangle1:250000, 2 printings
- 1961 USGS Boston quadrangle1:250000, 2 printings
- 1965 USGS Clinton quadrangle1:25000
- 1965 USGS Clinton quadrangle1:24000
- 1975 USGS Clinton quadrangle1:25000
- 1985 USGS Boston quadrangle1:100000
- 1988 USGS Hudson quadrangle1:25000, 2 printings
- 1989 USGS Boston quadrangle1:100000, 2 printings
- 1997 USGS Hudson quadrangle1:25000
What happened here
An account from the chapter on Lancaster town. The inset identifies its exact source book and publication year.
History Op W0R0E3Ter County, Massachusetts
of war, generally proved faithful to the English, and their services as scouts were invaluable. Among these none deserves better to be honored in Lancaster story than James Wiser, alias Quanapaug or Quanapohit, whose courage and fidelity would have saved the town from the massacre of 1676, had not his timely warning been unwisely discredited by the apparently lethargic Governor and his slumberous Council.
In the county-history sources
29,485 words on this townshipHistory of Worcester County, Massachusetts, published 1889 names this settlement in its chapter on Lancaster Town. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.
Monoco gave no quarter. The foray was made in the afternoon of Sunday. The house of Mordecai McLeod, which was the northernmost in the town situated somewhere near the North Village Cemetery, was burned, and McLeod with his wife and two children were murdered. The same day three other men were slain, and a day or two after a fourth, all of whom were mangled in a barbarous manner. Two of these victims, George Bennett and Jacob Farrar, Jr., were heads of Lancaster families; the others, William Flagg and Joseph Wheeler, were probably soldiers detailed for service here from Watertown and Concord. This massacre was but the prelude to a more terrible tragedy, the most sanguinary episode in Lancaster history.
Passage source: History of Worcester County, Massachusetts, published 1889.
In the year 1823 the town dared a temporary departure from the old style of bridge construction. For twenty years the subject had been anxiously discussed by special committees and town-meetings. One committee had presented and advocated a plan for a double arch stone bridge, but the cost was great and there was a well-founded fear that the central pier would seriously obstruct the passage of ice. The town also seriously considered a curiously unscientific wooden structure, in which the planking was to be laid upon the toji of seven timber arches, unbraced and without chords. Almost yearly one or more of the trestle bridges yielded to ice or freshet, and was whirled down stream. Daniel Farnham Plummer, a wheelwright of South Lancaster, exhibited for several years a model of a wooden arch bridge, which he claimed to have invented. This model, three or four feet in length, made of hickory sticks about as thick as one's finger, readily bore the weight of a man ; and the town, when the Atherton and Centre bridges next went seaward, voted to adopt riumnier's principle. The new bridge was out of the reach of flood, but had in itself sufficient elements of instability, and the wonder is that it stood ten years. The town returned to the stereotype trestle form again, except at the Centre, Ponikin and North Village, where covered lattice girders were built, which did good service for from thirty-five to forty years. The river bridges were all finally replaced between 1870 and 1875 with iron structures, for which, including the thorough rebuilding of most of the stoue abutments, the total expenditure was thirty-five thousand eight hundred and fifty dollars.
Passage source: History of Worcester County, Massachusetts, published 1889.
Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.
Fires near this place
125 since 2002Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 125 fires within 5 miles of North Village between 2002 and 2020, burning about 2,730 acres in total. None started naturally. 3 were recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
| Reported cause | Fires |
|---|---|
| Debris and open burning | 59 |
| Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 30 |
| Recreation and ceremony | 17 |
| Smoking | 9 |
| Equipment and vehicle use | 4 |
| Arson/incendiarism | 3 |
| Misuse of fire by a minor | 2 |
| Railroad operations and maintenance | 1 |
The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.
| Date | Cause | Size | Reported by | Name on the report |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 September 2015 | Debris and open burning | under an acre | Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control | not named |
| 20 September 2015 | Railroad operations and maintenance | under an acre | Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control | not named |
| 1 September 2017 | Smoking | under an acre | Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control | not named |
| 30 August 2015 | Recreation and ceremony | under an acre | Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control | not named |
| 27 August 2017 | Smoking | under an acre | Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control | not named |
| 22 August 2016 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | under an acre | Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control | not named |
| 18 August 2016 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | under an acre | Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control | not named |
| 18 August 2016 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | under an acre | Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control | not named |
Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:
Specimens collected near this place
12 of 2,108 shownRegional context, not property-specific evidence. Museums hold 2,108 specimens collected within 10 miles of North Village between 1859 and 1974: 1,237 Animalia, 524 Plantae, 328 Fungi, 10 Unrecorded, 8 Chromista, 1 Protozoa. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by A. B. Seymour, A. C. Gibson, A. Ferrett and others. Each is a physical object with a catalogue number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be concluded from a species being absent.
| Image | Species | Year | Collected by | Where, as recorded |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Chrysosplenium americanum Schwein. ex Hook. | 1899 | E. F. Williams | |
 | Condylura cristata cristata (Linnaeus, 1758) | 1859 | E S Wheeler | BERLIN |
 | Dryobates pubescens medianus (Swainson, 1832) | 1861 | not recorded | Bolton |
| Clemmys insculpta Fitzinger, 1835 | 1864 | Agassiz | ||
 | Bromus sterilis L. | 1879 | C. E. Faxon | |
 | Merulius lacrymans (Wulfen) Schumach. | 1879 | Howes, A. | Massachusetts |
 | Hypericum gentianoides (L.) Britton, Sterns & Poggenb. | 1881 | Fredrick L Sargent | Lunenburg |
 | Icterus galbula (Linnaeus, 1758) | 1881 | G. L. Brigham | Bolton |
| Nitella megacarpa (T.F.A.) R.D.W. | 1881 | T. F. Allen | Nashua River | |
| Arthuriomyces peckianus (Howe) Cummins & Y.Hirats. | 1892 | W. B. Hosmer | ||
| Tyrannus tyrannus (Linnaeus, 1758) | 1892 | G.L. Brigham | Bolton | |
| Mniotilta varia (Linnaeus, 1766) | 1894 | Collector(s): James Lee Peters | Littleton |
All 2,108 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.
Mines and quarries near this place
10 of 11 shownRegional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 11 workings within 5 miles of North Village: 5 past producers, 4 producers, 1 prospect, 1 unknown. 4 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Stone, Crushed/Broken, Iron, Zinc. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
| Where | Site | Commodity | Status | Recorded |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sterling Prospect | Iron, Zinc | Prospect | ||
| Keating Quarry & Mill | Stone, Crushed/Broken | Unknown | ||
| Keating Quarry and Mill | Stone, Crushed/Broken | Producer | ||
| Bolton Pit | Sand and Gravel, Construction | Past Producer | ||
| Kanis Pit | Sand and Gravel, Construction | Producer | ||
| Lancaster Pit | Sand and Gravel, Construction | Producer | ||
| Landfill Pit | Sand and Gravel, Construction | Past Producer | ||
| Landfill Pit | Sand and Gravel, Construction | Past Producer | ||
| Spratts Pit | Sand and Gravel, Construction | Past Producer | ||
| Sterling Pit | Sand and Gravel, Construction | Producer |
Nearest settlements
The eight closest, with where each one stands in the county. Distances are straight-line, computed from the Geographic Names Information System coordinates.
| Map | Place | Distance | Sheets |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lancaster | 1.0 miles | 43 | |
| Ponakin Mill | 1.0 miles | 43 | |
| Five Corners | 1.8 miles | 43 | |
| South Lancaster | 1.8 miles | 43 | |
| Ebenville | 2.7 miles | 43 | |
| Fullerville (historical) | 3.0 miles | 43 | |
| Still River | 3.4 miles | 43 | |
| Pratt Junction | 3.5 miles | 43 |
Provenance
This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 610882. The sheet list is computed by point-in-boundary test against the United States Geological Survey's historical topographic inventory. Both are works of the United States government and carry no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.