History:

Although Stockbridge was the second town in the Berkshire County to be incorporated , it enjoys the distinction of being unique in its origin.

Most towns, including Sheffield, were settled by white men from without the county who were intent on establishing themselves as farmers on virgin land purchased from, and displacing, the Indians who had preceded them; but Stockbridge began as a mission, the purpose of which was to Christianize those Native Americans and ensure that their land would be theirs forever.

That it didn't work out quite that way was no fault of the missionary but must be laid to the insatiable hunger for land coupled with man's avarice.

Initially the people who settled the town established themselves around the church, always a locus for people in a new land, and so the mission church was responsible for the concentration of population which became the village of Stockbridge.

As later arrivals spread into the countryside, they felt the natural tendency to form neighborhoods, and in time smaller centers of population became the villages we know as Interlaken and Glendale.

Other less well-defined attributes of Stockbridge, such as the natural beauty of the countryside, including a large lake, drew a type of resident that made the town a mecca for men and women of cultural distinction, who shaped its character.