Buckland is a small Franklin County hill town of about 1,800, set against the south bank of the Deerfield River opposite Shelburne. The town has two centers: the village of Shelburne Falls, which Buckland and Shelburne share across the river (the Buckland side has the Bridge of Flowers’ south landing, the truss bridge, and most of the village’s shops and restaurants), and Buckland Center, three miles up the hill in farm country, with the white-spired church pictured above on its village green. The town was first settled in 1742 (for years bookmarked on early maps as “No Town,” its half-joking provisional name) and incorporated as Buckland on April 14, 1779.
Buckland Center
Buckland Center sits on the high ground in the south-central part of town. It is a quiet upland village: a few houses around a common, the First Congregational Church (the building pictured above, completed in 1800, remodeled and raised onto a town- hall basement in 1846, and now also known as the Mary Lyon Church because Lyon was baptized here in 1822), the brick Buckland Public Library, and the small Buckland Historical Museum. Working dairy farms, hayfields, and orchards spread out from there in all directions.
Shelburne Falls (south side)
The village of Shelburne Falls, which Buckland and Shelburne split across the Deerfield River, is the town’s commercial and tourist center. Bridge Street, State Street, and the run of brick storefronts on the south bank are all within Buckland’s lines. The 1908 Bridge of Flowers lands on the Buckland side, though its 2026 gate status has been changing during repair and replanting work; the 1890 Shelburne Falls Truss Bridge carries Route 2A across to Shelburne; and the Glacial Potholes at the dam are visible from a small park on Deerfield Avenue, on the Buckland end.
Mary Lyon
Buckland is the birthplace of Mary Lyon (1797–1849), founder of Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in 1837, one of the first institutions in the United States chartered for the higher education of women (Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia, chartered 1836, has the parallel claim), and what is now South Hadley’s Mount Holyoke College.
Lyon was born on a hill farm in Buckland on February 28, 1797, one of seven children. Her father died when she was five, and her mother managed the farm and family through her childhood. After teaching in several local schools through her twenties, Lyon ran the Buckland Female Seminary here through the late 1820s and early 1830s, teaching Latin, science, and history to young women in the third-floor ballroom of the Major Joseph Griswold House on Upper Street, known locally now as the Mary Lyon House and documented in the federal Historic American Buildings Survey. It was her first attempt at a serious girls’ school, and a direct precursor to Mount Holyoke. She left Buckland in the mid-1830s to organize and fundraise for Mount Holyoke, which opened in 1837 and which she ran until her death.
The town carries the Mary Lyon legacy quietly: the Mary Lyon House still stands on Upper Street, the church on Buckland Center common is named for her, and a few exhibits at the Buckland Historical Museum trace her early life.
Sources
- Town of Buckland
- Buckland, Massachusetts — Wikipedia (2020 U.S. Census population: 1,816)
- Mary Lyon’s Childhood — Mount Holyoke College