Barre, MA

Barre is a Worcester County town on the Ware River drainage, on land with Nipmuc history and European settlement beginning in the early 1700s. It was part of Rutland, became the Town of Hutchinson in 1774, and took the name Barre in 1776 after Colonel Isaac Barré. Barre Common dates to 1740 and became the town's early civic center, with a town house, churches, inns, and a stagecoach stop around it. Barre is a central Massachusetts place where a renamed colonial district grew around a common.