History

Most of the land of Erving was purchased by the eldest son, John Erving II (1727-1816), of Boston Merchant John Erving I (c.1690-1786) from the General Court in 1752. The 11,016 acre parcel north of the Millers River that makes up the bulk of the town was sold on December 14th, 1752 by a Committee of the General Court, to Isaac Royall and Isaac Freeman, agents for John Erving I of Boston, for the sum of 315 pounds lawful money.  The deed for the parcel was issued to Erving on December 28, 1752 by John Chandler, James Minot, Thomas Hubbard and J. William Lawrence, a majority of the Committee, and was subsequently recorded at Springfield on April 25th, 1753. 

Several other tracts were purchased by speculators, but Erving remained unsettled until 1802, when Asaph White (1748-1828) of Heath built a home there. Other settlers followed. Its borders were established in 1828 and the town was incorporated in 1838, one of the last in the state to do so.

Erving is defined by the long, high ridge rising north of the Millers Falls River, with the vast majority of the population clustered in the valley of the river. The available waterpower defined the character of the town, and from the beginning supported grist mills and a tannery. There are two villages in the town, Erving Center and Millers Falls. Manufacturing at Millers Falls began in the 1860s. Although the official center of Millers Falls is in Montague, early on the majority of the manufacturing occurred on the Erving side, assisted by a canal used to shunt water for power to the factories there.

Today, more than a half of the town is defined by a state forest on its eastern edge, and on its western the reserve of the Western Massachusetts Electric Company, which generates power from a large reservoir it constructed atop Northfield Mountain in 1967. (From www.memorialhall.mass.edu).