In celebration of Charter Day on Wednesday, we are going to take a brief look at the history of how Bridgewater came to be.
The first settlers in the area now known as Bridgewater arrived in the 1740’s and were of Scotch-Irish descent. They were soon followed by German settlers. The area became known as McGill’s Ford around 1759 because John and William McGill owned approximately 350 acres on either side of the North River. Several early families built mills along the North River.
Around 1800, John and Jacob Dinkle arrived with their families and started a sawmill, a gristmill, a cording mill, and a stave mill. Jacob Dinkle’s tavern, built in 1815 on South Main Street, and John Dinkle’s two-story brick house, built around 1820 on Wynant Place, are still standing. The settlement soon became known as Dinkletown.
A bridge was built across the river in 1820, and the settlement soon came to be known as Bridgeport after this bridge and the flatboat port used to ship products down the river.
Around 1830, the Warm Springs Turnpike was chartered, connecting Harrisonburg to Warm Springs and crossing the North River at Bridgeport. The Turnpike brought more traffic through the growing community and connected it more readily to the outside world by wagon.
On February 7, 1835, the settlement was chartered as the Town of Bridgewater. The name was derived from its proximity to the North River, the bridge’s prominence, and the port’s ceasing to be a major part of the community. The original land area within the town was approximately twenty acres.