[1] A year-round resort area, Stockbridge is home to the Norman Rockwell Museum, Naumkeag, a public garden and historic house, the Austen Riggs Center (a psychiatric treatment center), and Chesterwood, home and studio of sculptor Daniel Chester French.

Sergeant was succeeded in this post by Jonathan Edwards, a Christian theologian associated with the First Great Awakening.

Although the Massachusetts General Court had assured the Stockbridge Indians that their land would never be sold, the agreement was rescinded.

Despite the aid by the Tribe to the American Patriots during the Revolutionary War, their lands in Stockbridge were stolen by white townspeople.

With the arrival of the railroad in 1850, Stockbridge developed as a summer resort for the wealthy of Boston and other major cities.

Many large houses, called Berkshire Cottages, were built in the area before World War I and the advent of the income tax.

Since 1853, Stockbridge has benefited from the presence of the Laurel Hill Association, a village beautification society.

The former slave engaged the attorney Theodore Sedgwick to file a freedom suit on her behalf, based on the statements in the new state constitution in 1780.

In the case with a slave named Brom, the county court ruled that they were both free under the constitution.

Freeman transferred as a free woman to work in the household of Sedgwick, who became a state judge.

Catharine Maria Sedgwick, a daughter of Theodore and his wife, became a renowned 19th-century literary figure.

In the Curtisville area, now known as the Interlaken part of Stockbridge, Albrecht Pagenstecher, an immigrant from Saxony, established the first wood-based newsprint paper mill in the United States, in March 1867.

The sculptor Daniel Chester French lived and worked at his home and studio called Chesterwood.

Set among the Berkshire Mountains, Stockbridge is drained by the Housatonic River, which runs through the center of town.

The Housatonic Railroad, the main rail line between Pittsfield and Great Barrington, passes through the town and lies mostly on the southern bank of the river.

The town lies along a Berkshire Regional Transit Authority (BRTA) bus line, which provides service between Pittsfield and Great Barrington.

Stockbridge is governed by open town meeting, held annually on the third Monday in May, and by an elected three-member Board of Selectmen.

The first school in Stockbridge was opened in 1737 under the direction of John Sergeant, a missionary to the local Mohican Indians.

During the pre-American Revolutionary War years, several small schools were established to serve the children of new settlers scattered further outside the village.

[21] The founding of the semi-private Academy after the Revolutionary War marked the beginning of a more structured commitment to secondary education in the town.

All educated in Stockbridge, Stephen Johnson Field,[22] Henry Billings Brown[23] and David Josiah Brewer[24] served together as Associate Justices from 1891 to 1897.