Living in Millbury, MA

About Millbury

Millbury was settled in 1716 and spent nearly a century as the north parish of Sutton. On June 11, 1813, Governor Caleb Strong approved the act that made the North Parish a separate town named Millbury. Water power set its course. John Singletary began running a mill in 1735 on Singletary Brook, which flows out of Singletary Lake, and in 1808 Asa and Elijah Waters built an armory on the Blackstone River that became the core of Armory Village and made bayonets and parts for Springfield muskets during the Civil War. The Blackstone Canal carried boats through the valley by 1829 and closed in 1848; a branch railroad reached Millbury Center in 1838, and the Providence and Worcester line came through in 1847. Josiah Holbrook founded the first formal lyceum here in 1826.

The center grew around the Town Common, at Main and Elm Streets, and the armory village on the north side of the Blackstone, where Asa Waters built a Federal mansion on Elm Street between 1826 and 1832 to a design by Asher Benjamin. The Greek Revival meetinghouse of 1828 at 20 Main Street is now the Millbury Federated Church. Rivulet Village, on Dorothy Pond, added 20 worker tenements in 1878, and the Cordis Mill expanded in 1914. Bramanville, on Singletary Brook, had seven factories by 1870 and kept its double-chimney worker housing; West Millbury had three wool scouring mills on Ramshorn Brook by 1875. The S & D Spinning Mill, built around 1753, is cited as one of the oldest continuously operated mills in the United States. Millbury was named a Preserve America community in 2004.

Millbury's 2019 Comprehensive Master Plan, prepared by BSC Group, counted 5,621 housing units (2012 to 2016 American Community Survey) and found residential use on 38% of the town's land. The plan names the Shoppes at Blackstone Valley, with more than 750,000 square feet of retail, restaurant and entertainment space reached from Routes 122A and 146, as the town's largest economic development project, and cites the Cordis and Felter's mills as examples of adaptive reuse. The state approved a Millbury Housing Production Plan under Chapter 40B on May 27, 2025, for the five years to May 26, 2030. Under the MBTA Communities law, Millbury is classed as an adjacent community that must zone for at least 750 multi-family units on at least 50 acres, and the state's compliance list (as of October 21, 2026) includes Millbury.

Homes in Millbury

The 2019 master plan counted 5,621 housing units, with 73% of households owning their homes and 27% renting (2012 to 2016 American Community Survey). About 26% of units were built before 1940, and the plan describes the stock as largely traditional detached single-family homes. It counted about 220 units, or about 4%, on the state's Subsidized Housing Inventory.