Tantasqua Regional High School - Tantasquan Yearbook (Sturbridge, MA)

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Where did we get our name “Tantasqua?”’ The name was selected by the school committee from many names suggested. The word is an Indian word which has had many spellings, in accord with the way the word sounded to those pronouncing it. Our spelling was chosen as the one most easy to pronounce and to spell. The region in the vicinity of an old graphite mine near Sturbridge was called by the name, in its various spellings, in records early in the seventeenth cen- tury. The deeds recording the sale of the mine to Governor Winthrop’s son in 1644, so named the region (one of the men negotiating those deeds was Stepherr Daye, first printer in America). The whole Quinebaug valley was given the name; the villages around the present Sturbridge were grouped under the clan name; and the village itself (where the open theater is now in Sturbridge), was given that name. The Old Fordway at the present exit of Old Sturbridge Vil- lage was designated as in that region. The name had been used so often that a lake or pond which had been known as Walker Pond was renamed “Tantiusque Lake’ at the annual meeting of the town of Sturbridge in 1894. A nearby brook came to be called by the name, also. The meaning of the word is of no great importance to us, since the historical associations with the name made it seem significant enough to be selected. In 1893 Mr. Levi Chase, who wrote much accurate history of the region, wrote to Mr. Albert S. Gatschet of the Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C., for the meaning in the Indian dialect of the name ‘“Tan- tousque, stating it to be a territory near Sturbridge. The reply was that it means “located between two breast shaped hills.” Mr. W. R. Carlton of Spring- field wrote in a letter to the School Committee on March 11, 1955, ‘‘To me, the word seems to carry a meaning to the effect of ‘Near the Green Meadow’ ‘Near where green things grow’...”’ Mrs. William Reynolds, Town Clerk of Sturbridge, who first suggested the name ‘‘Tantas- qua’’ to the school committee.

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STURBRIDGE