Mother Brook Canal

Mother Brook was created from 1639 to 1641 by digging a canal from the Charles River to what was then Easte Brook which flowed to the Neponset River in the Hyde Park. Mother Brook was also known variously as East Brook and Mill Creek in earlier times. Dug by the English settlers starting in 1639 to power a grist mill, it is the oldest such industrial canal in North America. Mother Brook was important to Dedham as its only source of water power for mills, from 1639 into the early 20th century and was a thriving mill community for close to 300 years. 

The Mother Brook canal in Dedham, Massachusetts is an approximately 30-acre, 3.8 mile long, 18-foot wide corridor following a west/easterly route connecting the Charles River in Dedham and the Neponset River in Hyde Park. Mother Brook lies in the northeastern part of the Neponset Watershed. Mother Brook has been known in the past as East Brook or Mill Creek. To create Mother Brook a canal was to be dug between the Charles River and a small stream called East Brooke. The cut for the canal was hand dug beginning in 1639 to provide waterpower for Dedham’s earliest settlers, making it one of the first man-made industrial canals in the United States. The residents of Dedham created the canal to take advantage of a nearly 40-foot fall in topography between the Charles and Neponset Rivers. The new channel provided them with the waterpower required to build corn and lumber mills. In addition to agricultural products, Mother Brook manufactories produced paper, leather and coins during the 18th century. By 1841, five privileges had been granted by the Town of Dedham and various manufacturing operations existed at each site. A cotton manufactory began operation along Mother Brook beginning in 1807 with several large textile manufacturers occupying privileges by the middle of the 19th century. The need for worker housing followed the success of the factories, which employed hundreds of employees each. Residential development was also driven by various transportation improvements during the 20th century, including rail lines leading into the Readville section of Hyde Park and the advent of the streetcar system. By the turn of the 20th century, East Dedham had been transformed into a thriving and self-sustaining area of town with two large neighborhood schools, several churches, and a commercial district centered around the intersection of High and Bussey streets. After Mother Brook ceased to power the town’s factories, it was used by residents for recreational purposes with a large bathhouse serving the public near Washington Street.

Prior to English colonists coming to Dedham, the Neponset were the indigenous people of is area. Just to the east of current day Dedham and Mother Brook is the site of a Native American relocation. In 1633 following a series of devastating plagues and the death of a leader, Chickataubut, the Neponset people moved further inland and began to relocate to the area now known as Milton which bordered Dedham at that time. This forceful relocation culminated in 1650 when they were attacked with military force by an ever-encroaching population of English settlers. After these attacks the Neponset had lost their planting fields, and the Blue Hills. A preacher, John Elliott, who translated the first Massachusett language bible, advocated that land be set aside permanently for independent Neponset usage. The Town of Dorchester set aside what was called Ponkapoag, but it was “not to exceed 6000 acres.” The Neponset would have hunted, fished and foraged as this area was their seasonal home and hunting ground. Although the town of Dedham was granted the land after the Massachusetts Bay Colony bought it from Chickatabut and Sachem John, the Indigenous People were free to hunt, fish, and plant on all the land.

One nineteenth-century Indigenous resident of Dedham was Sally Freedman Johnson. She lived on what is today, Washington Street and owned her own medicinal business and gathered a lot of her materials such as nuts, roots, herbs and berries along Mother Brook and its marshes. She was also a brewer, and held a reputation for a Spruce beer which innkeepers were jealous of.

Another story connected to this area and Mother Brook is the immigrant story, Scots were the first to arrive in numbers in the 1820s followed by the Irish in the 1840s and 50s then Germans and Eastern European and Middle Eastern immigrants.

A few key highlights of the history:

•  Dedham was settled in 1635 and in the initial years of settlement hand mills were brought over from England to grind corn. This quickly grew old and the colonists looked to water sources to power their mills.
• In 1639 the town appointed a committee to locate a mill. Each spring a portion of low-lying land now roughly defined by High, Harvard and Washington streets would be flooded forming a kind of spillway between through the meadowlands east of the Charles River and East Brook. East Brook was a natural “stream which began about 100 rods East of Washington Street in the rear of what is now Brookdale Cemetery. The residents recognized that a canal connecting to East Brook and eventually to the Neponset could result in the necessary source of power. The diversion of water was also sought to protect farmers’ lands from flooding.
• In 1639 the Town Selectmen Ordered “Ordered yt a Ditch shalbe made at a Comon Charge through purchased medowe vnto ys East brooke yt may both be a ptieon fence in ye same; as also may serue for a cCourse vnto a water mill; yt it shalbe fownd fitting to set a mill vpon ye sayd brooke by ye Judgement of a workman for yt purpose.”
• In July 1641 water flowed through Mill Brook or Mother Brook for the first time.
• Also in 1641 John Elderkin built a corn mill near present day Condon Park, the first privilege.
• A privilege was granted to allow for a dam and mill to be constructed with rights to use the water and the land for that purpose. 

Erastus Worthington. “Historical Sketch of Mother Brook, Dedham, Mass.” Dedham, MA: C. G. Wheeler, 1900

Frank Smith, History of Dedham, Dedham, MA: The Transcript Press, 1936,