North Attleborough Town, MA

North Attleborough’s manufacturing story reaches to 1780, when a figure remembered only as “the Frenchman” established what the town’s open-space plan identifies as America’s first jewelry-making business near present-day Chestnut and South Washington streets. Metal buttons, cotton mills, leather goods, and later jewelry factories clustered near streams and ponds; surviving factory buildings and Victorian houses remain in Downtown and Attleboro Falls. The municipality separated from Attleborough and incorporated in 1887, though settlement dates to 1669. Located in Bristol County, North Attleborough had 30,834 residents in 2020. Its documented industrial and architectural record includes the National Register–listed Attleborough Falls Historic District and Old Town Historic District.