Place:Florida, Berkshire, Massachusetts, United States

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NameFlorida
Alt namesSerpentine Ledgesource: USGS, GNIS Digital Gazetteer (1994) GNIS25000304
Barnardstone's Grant
Bullock's Grant
TypeTown
Coordinates42.667°N 73°W
Located inBerkshire, Massachusetts, United States     (1805 - )
See alsoStoughton, Norfolk, Massachusetts, United StatesParent
Walpole, Norfolk, Massachusetts, United StatesParent
Clarksburg, Berkshire, Massachusetts, United States1848 gain and 1852 loss

Florida was founded in 1805. Its parent towns were Barnardstone's Grant and part of Bullock's Grant, Stoughton and Walpole.

  • June 15, 1805, incorporated as a town.
  • May 2, 1848, part of Clarksburg annexed.
  • May 20, 1852, part annexed to Clarksburg.


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Modern Florida

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Florida is a town in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. It is home to the east portal of the Hoosac Tunnel, as well as Whitcomb Summit (elevation ), the highest point of the Mohawk Trail. Florida contains the village of Drury. At the 2020 census the town had a total population of 694.

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History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

The area was first settled by Europeans as part of the Equivalent Lands (specifically, the "Berkshire Equivalent"). Most of what is now Florida was originally a grant to the town of Bernardston, Massachusetts made sometime before 1771. The first settler, Dr. Daniel Nelson, arrived around 1783. The town was incorporated in 1805 and named "Florida", perhaps because Spanish Florida was a topic of conversation at the time.

The town was mostly agrarian, with maple syrup, wool, and potatoes its main products for many years. However, in the mid-nineteenth century, the town was a boom town for the workers involved in the construction of the Hoosac Tunnel, a rail tunnel which begins on the town's eastern border and extends through the Hoosac Range to neighboring North Adams.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his American Notebooks, names the town as Lebrida, not Florida, and speaks of the Hoosac Range as "the Green Mountain" in the singular. It is possible that the name Lebrida was a corruption of Florida; or the other way around. While the reference to "the Green Mountain" evidently reflects local tradition of the time (1838), and may in fact be what gave the name Green Mountains to the entire range, as another mountain in Vermont also bears the name Green Mountain. Today the town is sparsely populated, with most residents working in neighboring towns.[1]

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Resources

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
source: Family History Library Catalog
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