Brockton - Massachusetts - History

The land is now occupied by the city, were sold by Native Americans in 1649 to Myles Standish and John Alden and became part of the Plymouth colony. The original farming community was part of the town of Bridgewater until 1821 and was called North Bridgewater until being renamed Brockton.

The city of Brockton is a major urban community south of Boston with a rich industrial history. Brockton was the shoe-manufacturing center of the region from the late 18th century through the 1950's.  In the Civil War, it was claimed that half of the Union Army wore boots made in Brockton and at the height of the shoe industry in 1929, more than 30,000 people were employed by shoe manufacturers in a city, which dominated the world footwear market until after World War II.

The city was the site of pioneering in electrical power in 1883 when the third electric power station in the country was opened under the supervision of Thomas Edison. In 1884, Edison returned to witness the opening of the City Theater, the first in the world to be lighted from a central power station.

The city, which was one of the first to adopt electric street lighting (1884), also pioneered in operating electric-powered streetcars and the first fire station and introduced a widely copied municipal system of inland sewage disposal in 1893.

William H. McGunnigle, less well-known but of great importance, was a Brockton resident credited with inventing the first baseball glove.