The town was settled by men from Ipswich as part of the Quaboag Plantation lands.

For two days the townsfolk, consisting of 80 people, sought shelter in the garrison house while the rest of the town was completely destroyed.

[2] During the winter of 1776, General Henry Knox passed through the town with cannon from Fort Ticonderoga to end the Siege of Boston.

[3] In March 1778, Joshua Spooner, a wealthy farmer in Brookfield, was beaten to death and his body stuffed down a well.

Bathsheba was the mother of three young children, and in her own words felt "an utter aversion" for her husband, who was known to be an abusive drunk.

Divorces were all but impossible for women at that time, and adulteresses were stripped to the waist and publicly whipped.

Bathsheba's pregnancy occasioned a series of desperate plots to murder her husband, finally brought to fruition with the aid of two British deserters from General John Burgoyne's defeated army.

As the daughter of the state's most prominent and despised Loyalist, Bathsheba bore the brunt of the political, cultural, and gender prejudices of her day.

When she sought a stay of execution to deliver her baby, the Massachusetts Council rejected her petition, and she was promptly hanged before a crowd of 5,000 spectators.

It seems his party would have spent the night in Brookfield except that the innkeeper, Mrs. Bannister, was in bed with a terrible headache.

The town is located in the southwestern part of Worcester County, along the Quaboag River.

This line is also the Lake Shore Limited route of Amtrak's rail service between Worcester and Springfield, though there is no stop between the two cities.

[17][18] In fiscal year 2008, the town of Brookfield spent 1.49% ($106,066) of its budget on its public library—approximately $35 per person.