COLUMN: A thumbnail history of the Town of Needham

Every week I try to highlight some small corner of Needham’s history – an interesting fact or place, or a picture, or some other detail that does not usually figure into the larger narrative.This week, Needham historian Gloria Greis updated a summary she wrote, "a while ago, that covers the town’s whole history. That’s 320 years in about 1,000 words, so hang on tight."Prior to the arrival of the Europeans, the area of Needham lay within the territory of the Massachusett, an Algonkian-speaking tribe related to the Wampanoag and Nipmuc. Artifacts excavated near the Charles River banks in Needham showed that Native American communities had lived here for nearly 9,000 years.The landscape was temperate forest, rich in a variety of smaller game – deer, beaver, rabbit, turkey – as well as plentiful fish in the rivers and plants for food and tools. Rivers such as the Charles were ideal for hunting, fishing, and gathering during the warmer months.The European settlement of Needham began in the...