The town was originally called "Huntstown" for Captain Ephraim Hunt, who died in King William's War, and who had inherited the land as payment for his services.

The town was renamed upon reincorporation, although there is debate over its namesake; it is either for the ash trees in the area, or because Governor Bernard had friends in Ashfield, England.

[3] Ashfield is the birthplace of prominent film director Cecil B. DeMille (whose parents were vacationing in the town at the time); Alvan Clark, nineteenth century astronomer and telescope maker; and William S. Clark, member of the Massachusetts Senate and third president of Massachusetts Agricultural College (now UMass Amherst).

Ashfield is bordered by Buckland to the north, Conway to the east, Goshen to the south, Cummington to the southwest, Plainfield to the west, and Hawley to the northwest.

The northern outlying section of town includes the historic neighborhoods of Beldingville and Baptist Corner.

Near the center of town, Ashfield Lake feeds into the South River, and is a recreational site.

The population density was 44.7 inhabitants per square mile (17.3/km2), which ranked seventeenth in the county and 314th in the Commonwealth.

[21] The town is patrolled by the Second Barracks of Troop "B" of the Massachusetts State Police, headquartered in Shelburne Falls.

Massachusetts is currently represented in the United States Senate by Ed Markey, and Elizabeth Warren.

Ashfield is a member of the Mohawk Trail / Hawlemont Regional School District, along with Buckland, Charlemont, Colrain, Hawley, Heath, Plainfield, Rowe, and Shelburne.

"The Ashfield Library Association was formed in 1866, through the influence of Prof. Charles Eliot Norton and Hon.

[26][27] At the time, Belding's gift was considered particularly generous: "The announcement that the little town of Ashfield in Western Massachusetts—a town once famous for its summer colony of learning and culture ... is to be presented with a 30,000-dollar public library by a filially affectionate native of the place, Mr. M. M. Belding of New York, prompts the query whether a little farming community of less than a thousand inhabitants, barely making its rock-ribbed acres yield it a livelihood, will thoroughly enjoy the prospect of maintaining the splendid institutions whose marble walls, bronze doors, pedestal lamps, and other luxurious appurtenances, will present an appearance so strikingly at variance with their simple rural environment.