Anne Mattina has lived in Hopkinton for 30 years. A lover of local and Irish history, she has channeled her enthusiasm into engaging residents to explore the richness of Hopkinton’s past.

This fall, the Hopkinton Historical Society is celebrating its 75th anniversary with several events.

Mattina explained she enjoys delving into Hopkinton’s history “just because it’s so varied.” She is serving her second term as its president and also is a member of the town’s Historical Commission.

The town started out as a small community based around farming, she told the Independent recently. It turned toward industrialization in the mid-1800s with the addition of 11 shoe factories. After several of them burned down and others moved to Worcester, Hopkinton returned to its agrarian base.

“Once [Interstate] 495 went in, the whole place changed,” she said. “But there are so many more stories than that.”

Personal discovery inspires research

Mattina’s research into many of Hopkinton’s renowned people and sites initially was sparked by the purchase of her first house on Claflin Street 25 years ago.

“The deed itself said that it was built sometime before 1920,” she said. “I thought that was kind of odd, because most places do have a build date.”

She asked the librarian at the time for assistance and was surprised by what she learned.

“This could only happen in Hopkinton,” Mattina teased with a bright smile. “A woman literally popped out of the stacks and said, ‘Oh, that was my house.’ ”

Mattina learned that the original house burned down along with the Claflin-Coburn shoe factory in 1876.

After the house was rebuilt, Mattina noted that “some maps actually show the house facing Walcott Street, and then later it’s shown facing Claflin Street.”

“Then I found out all those houses were built for workers in the shoe factories” she said..”I wondered what all those people did when everything started burning down. I just kept digging and digging.”

In her research, Mattina later learned that Brigham Young, an early leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, had a Hopkinton connection. His parents lived on Chestnut Street.

Past successes inspire events

In 2012, Mattina said she was asked by town staff to be the chair of Hopkinton’s 300th Anniversary Celebration Committee. At that point, she connected with the Hopkinton Historical Society.

The anniversary committee partnered with the Historical Society, the Hopkinton Women’s Club and the Hopkinton Garden Club to organize a historic house and garden tour in June 2015 that Mattina described as “a fantastic success.” Also held that year were fireworks, a parade and smaller events.

While the Historical Society’s actual anniversary was in April, Mattina explained that several autumn events will celebrate its role in town.

One of the main attractions will be guided motor coach tours of the town on Oct. 17, she said. Tickets are $25 and are available for the 1:30 p.m. tour only. Residents Chuck Joseph and John Ritz will highlight 14 historic town landmarks as they narrate the two-hour tours.

“We’re going to make a big loop all around town,” said Mattina. “We’re going to see a lot of different sites that people may have some familiarity with but want to know more about.”

Participants will receive a booklet containing information and pictures of what was explored, she added.

“We really hope to get people excited through the tour and the other events,” stressed Mattina.

The Historical Society recently participated in two popular annual Hopkinton events. It held sack races at Hopkinton Family Day on Sept. 19 and was represented at the PolyArts festival the previous weekend.

“I was trying to think of something historic that we could do,” Mattina said of the sack races.

On Sept. 16, Joseph began teaching the second installation in his series of courses on the town’s history. Mattina noted that the first course was extremely popular, and this one sold out quickly.

“The previous course was on Hopkinton in the 1700s,” said Mattina. “This one will cover Hopkinton from 1787-1848.”

Because of the copious amount of material, there will be a subsequent course on the second half of the 19th century, she added.

Talk planned on Shays’s Rebellion

The centerpiece event will be a discussion by author Daniel Bullen about his book on Shays’s Rebellion at the Historical Society’s headquarters at 168 Hayden Rowe Street on Oct. 28 at 6:30 p.m. “Daniel Shays’s Honorable Rebellion: an American Story” explains that Shays, a Hopkinton native and Revolutionary War veteran, led an uprising to protest the debt and tax burdens returning veterans encountered.

“Daniel Shays was actually born in Hopkinton,” Mattina pointed out. “But he became famous after he left town with Shays’s Rebellion.”

She explained that the state imposed a tax on farmers after the war. Those who could not pay went to debtors’ prison. Many returning veterans were impacted because they could not work their farms for income during the Revolutionary War.

“And so Daniel Shays formed a rebellion against that,” said Mattina. “He just took a page from the Revolutionary War and continued the fight — only this time, it was against Massachusetts. It actually led to Massachusetts creating a constitution.

“I think it’s really exciting because a lot of people from Hopkinton don’t know that connection,” Mattina noted. “It was important to the birth of the state.”

Slave plaque set for installation

Mattina shared that a plaque honoring the town’s Black enslaved residents is nearing its planned October installation on the Town Common. The project is a joint effort of the Historical Society and the Historical Commission and was paid for by the Historical Commission.

The plaque is the culmination of a decade of research by member Linda Connelly. She sifted through wills, court documents and property records to find the names of formerly enslaved residents and their immediate descendants to honor them for their contributions to Hopkinton, Mattina said. About 40 were found.

“Many of the first residents were quite wealthy,” she said, “and they owned slaves.”

When the state outlawed slavery in 1783, there was “a system of servitude,” Mattina explained. Formerly enslaved people tended to stay on as indentured servants to their former owners.

Learning with HHS encouraged

People who want to learn about Hopkinton can visit the Historical Society year-round on Monday afternoons. It has a “small museum and tons of archives,” Mattina said.

This month, it also is debuting a new website with increased information, she shared.

The Historical Society also has been digitizing many of the town’s older records, she added. One of the first Town Meeting records asked members for their position “about whether to let pigs roam free in the streets,” Mattina said with a laugh.