Beckett Town Pound (1767)
Becket, Berkshire County, Massachusetts
Marker Inscription
Beckett Town Pound 1767
The Story
In colonial New England nearly every town maintained a "pound" — a stout stone or timber enclosure where stray cattle, hogs, and sheep were confined until their owners paid a fine to reclaim them. Raised in 1767, this pound in the Berkshire hills dates to the years just before the Revolution, when Becket was a young hilltown newly carved from the Massachusetts frontier. An elected "pound keeper" tended it, and the fees he collected helped enforce the fencing laws that kept the peace among neighboring farmers.
Why it matters
The town pound is a tangible trace of how self-governing New England communities regulated everyday life and shared civic responsibility long before the United States existed.
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