Sycamores (1788)

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Colonel Benjamin Ruggles Woodbridge, of South Hadley, was a physician, merchant, entrepreneur and politician, who led a regiment at Bunker Hill and was a representative to the General Court. In 1788, Col. Woodbridge built his house on Woodbridge Street in South Hadley. After his death, in 1819, the house became the Woodbridge Scientific School for boys. It was later owned by the Montague family and was purchased, in 1900, by Rose Hollingsworth, who had the (recently restored) Water Tower on the property constructed. For much of the twentieth century, the house served as a dormitory for students at Mount Holyoke College. Having fallen into disrepair, in 1996 it was purchased by the Sycamores Committee of the South Hadley Historical Society, who are restoring the house to become a museum. In 2004, the 1733 Rawson House, home of South Hadley‘s first minister, Grindall Rawson, which originally stood on the Sycamores property, was donated to the Sycamore Committee. It was then moved to its current location, attached to Sycamore‘s rear ell.