Conway — Villages
Extracted from "History of the Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts, Volume II," by Louis H. Everts, 1879.
The two villages in the town—Conway Centre and Burkeville—adjoin each other, and are usually regarded as one.
The Centre
The Centre occupies a deep valley shut in by towering hills, and is, in the mild seasons of the year, an inviting spot. It contains numerous handsome dwellings, two stores, a bank, hotel, public library, high school, three churches, and a fire-engine company, called Protection, No. 1, organized in 1858, and now numbering upward of 80 members.
Just east of the village centre is the cotton-mill of Tucker & Co., and, beyond that, BURKEVILLE, so called because Edmund Burke created the village in 1837, when he built a. mill there. Here Delabarre & Hackstaff have a cloth-mill and a store, and their mill-operatives comprise the village population.
Pumpkin Hollow
Pumpkin Hollow, half a mile east of Conway Centre, was the chief village for some years after the town's first settlement, which was made at that point. It now contains a store, school-house, and half a dozen dwellings.
An effort was once made to expunge the name of Pumpkin Hollow, which was then thought severely unpoetical, and at a christening-party held by residents of the place the village received the new designation of Church Green; but modern innovation has been unequal to the task of beating down tradition, and thus the old name has continued to assert itself.
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