Groton is a town in northwestern Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, within the Greater Boston metropolitan area.

Historic tribes were the Algonquian-speaking Nipmuc and Nashaway Indians, who established trails connecting the area to Massachusetts Bay.

[3] The European presence in the era began when John Tinker established a trading post with the Nashaway tribe at the confluence of Nod Brook and the Nashua River.

The town was named for Groton in Suffolk, England, the hometown of Deane's father, the Massachusetts governor John Winthrop.

Lydia was taken to Montreal where she was ransomed, converted to Catholicism, and joined the Congregation of Notre Dame, a non-cloistered order.

In 1704, during Queen Anne's War, an Abenaki raiding party kidnapped Matthias Farnsworth III from his home and brought him to Montreal.

The raiders took them overland and by water to the Mohawk mission village of Kahnawake (also spelled Caughnawaga) south of Montreal.

[7] They were among the founders in the 1750s of Akwesasne, after moving up the St. Lawrence River from Kahnawake to escape the ill effects of traders.

The brothers' older sister Sarah Tarbell was ransomed by a French family, and converted to Catholicism.

Renamed as Marguerite, she followed Lydia Longley in joining the Congregation of Notre Dame, and served with them for the rest of her life.

[7][8][9] In the late nineteenth century, a plaque was installed about the Tarbell children at the site of the family's former farm in Groton.

[10] In 1775, local minutemen assembled on the common in front of the First Parish Church of Groton before marching to the Battles of Lexington and Concord.

[16] Job Shattuck, a former Continental Army officer and Groton's largest landowner,[17] organized an early tax revolt in 1782.

[18] He escaped with a fine, but rose up again in 1786 and led a mob that shut down the Middlesex County Courthouse in Concord, Massachusetts.

[17]Early Groton developed a strong economy, assisted by its location near the confluence of the Nashua and Squannacook Rivers.

[26] Historian Jeremy Belknap wrote that "a negro man belonging to Groton" fired the shot that killed Major John Pitcairn at the Battle of Bunker Hill.

[27][28] Starting in the 1840s, Catholic immigrants (mainly Irish, but also some French Canadians) began moving to the Nashoba Valley in large numbers.

[34] Local schoolmaster Endicott Peabody summarized the movement as follows: "There is an astonishing tendency among some of the respectable people in this part of the world to justify [the Klan's] existence on the ground that the Jews and Roman Catholics are taking possession of the country.

[33] In 1927, the local Klan chapter endorsed a full slate of candidates for the town elections, with partial success.

[39] In 2020, Groton unanimously approved a measure denouncing racial bigotry and advocating equality in recognition of earlier violence and the contemporary social justice movement.

[40] Starting in the 1950s, the town of Groton enjoyed an economic revival as Boston's high-tech sector expanded along the Route 128 beltway.

[47] In the 2000s, Geotel Communications founder Steven Webber purchased the 338-acre Gibbet Hill Farm to prevent residential development on the site; the town meeting reportedly greeted his intervention with a standing ovation.

[48] Town representatives state that they welcome tourists and seek to encourage "a constant trickle rather than a deluge of visitors.

[49][50] In 2017, the nation's largest Shirdi Sai Baba temple opened in Groton; it cost approximately $11 million to build.

[51] The 126,000-square-foot Groton Hill Music Center opened in 2022 and includes a 1,000-seat (expandable to 2,300) concert hall, a 300-seat secondary performance hall, a professional orchestra, and a community music school;[52][53][54] it was the gift of an anonymous donor, posthumously revealed to be Sterilite owner Albert Stone.

Groton has a hot-summer humid continental climate (Dfa) bordering on Dfb and monthly averages range from 23.8 °F (−4.6 °C) in January to 71.8 °F (22.1 °C) in July.