Worthington is a small Hampshire County hill town of about 1,200 in the high country on the eastern edge of the Berkshires, north of Cummington’s sister hill towns and well above the Connecticut River valley floor. The town was settled in 1764 and incorporated in 1768, and its village center sits at roughly 1,400 feet above sea level, among the highest town centers in the eastern Berkshire foothills. Most of Worthington outside the four small village clusters is woods, hill farms, and upland brooks feeding the Westfield River system.
The villages
Worthington is functionally four small village clusters scattered across a large rural town:
- Worthington Center: the civic center, with the white Greek Revival town hall pictured above and the small green at the meeting of the main town roads.
- Worthington Corners: a half-mile west on Route 143, the commercial center of town and home to the Corners Grocery, a member-owned community store that serves as the town’s de facto general store and gathering place.
- South Worthington: the music village, home to the historic Academy building and Sevenars Concerts (below). The South Worthington village area is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
- West Worthington and Ringville: smaller scattered settlements at the northwest and southeast corners of town.
Sevenars Concerts
The South Worthington Academy (built in 1895 by Russell Conwell, the founder of Temple University and author of the “Acres of Diamonds” lecture) has hosted Sevenars Concerts every summer since the festival outgrew the Methodist church across the street and moved into the Academy in 1976. Sevenars itself was founded in 1968 by the pianist Robert Schrade and his wife, the pianist and composer Rolande Young Schrade, as a series of family concerts featuring the two of them and their five young pianist children, all of whose names started with the letter R: Robelyn, Rhonda Lee, Rolisa, Randolph, and Rorianne. “Seven Rs” became “Sevenars”. The festival has run continuously since, with the next generation of the Schrade family still on the program, and was once named by Time magazine as one of the country’s best small music festivals. Concerts are on Sunday afternoons through July and August.
Geography and roads
Worthington borders Cummington to the north and Chesterfield to the east, Huntington to the southeast, Chester (Hampden County) to the south, Middlefield to the southwest, and Peru (Berkshire County) to the west. Route 112 crosses the town north-to-south, running from Cummington down to Huntington, and Route 143 crosses east-to-west through Worthington Corners, east toward Chesterfield and Williamsburg, west toward Peru and the Berkshires. Most of the town drains east or south into the Westfield River watershed.
Other notes
- The town’s elevation, isolation, and lack of a 19th-century railroad are the reason Worthington never industrialized the way the Mill River and Westfield valley towns did; the population peaked in the early 19th century and has been a rural farming and second-home town ever since.
- The Hilltown Artisans Guild, a local crafts cooperative, draws on Worthington and the surrounding hill towns.
- The Worthington town center is roughly equidistant from Northampton (east) and Pittsfield (west), and the drive in either direction is mostly two-lane road through hill country.
Sources
- Town of Worthington
- Worthington, Massachusetts — Wikipedia (2020 U.S. Census population: 1,193)
- Sevenars Concerts
- Corners Grocery