Great Barrington, Massachusetts
town in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States
Great Barrington is a town in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 7,172 at the 2020 census. Both a summer resort and home to Ski Butternut, a ski resort, Great Barrington includes the villages of Great Barrington, Van Deusenville, and Housatonic.
History
1676–1995
The Mahican Indians called the area Mahaiwe, meaning "the place downstream". It lay on the New England Path, which connected Fort Orange near Albany, New York, with Springfield and Massachusetts Bay.
The first recorded account of Europeans in the area happened in August 1676, during King Philip's War. Major John Talcott and his troops chased a group of 200 Mahican Natives west from Westfield, eventually overtaking them at the Housatonic River in what is now Great Barrington. According to reports at the time, Talcott's troops killed twenty-five Indians and imprisoned another twenty. Today, a plaque for John Talcott marks the spot where the massacre is believed to have happened.
“Great Barrington, Massachusetts” enters the record as town in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Great, Barrington and Massachusetts can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Great Barrington, Massachusetts” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Great, Barrington and Massachusetts provides the most credible route into that argument.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1144518. VIAF identifies the subject as 128705695. The Library of Congress control number is n82017881. Authority coordinates are 42.196, -73.362. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2020, 1676 and 1995.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
- Routes into maps and plans
Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Great Barrington, Massachusetts”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Great Barrington, Massachusetts primary sources, Great Barrington, Massachusetts archive and Great research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Great Barrington, Massachusetts”?
- Which earlier names or jurisdictions may reveal additional records?
- What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Great Barrington, Massachusetts” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.