Whitinsville is an unincorporated village within the town of Northbridge in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. Whitinsville is a census-designated place (CDP) and its population was 6,750 at the 2020 census. Whitinsville is pronounced as if it were spelled “White-ins-ville”. It was founded by the Whitin family, after whom it is also named. It is a post office jurisdiction, with a ZIP Code of 01588. It is located on the Mumford River, a tributary of the Blackstone River.

Whitinsville has been designated as a mill village of national historic significance to America’s earliest industrialization, and is one of only four villages selected by the John H. Chaffee Blackstone River Valley National Historic Corridor Commission to receive this designation. Hopedale is the only other Massachusetts mill village to achieve this designation by the corridor commission.

History

This village was originally Nipmuc native lands, and was first settled as part of Mendon in 1662. From 1662 to 1727 it was part of Mendon, then later it became part of Uxbridge from 1727 to 1772. In 1772 Northbridge finally became a separate town. The village’s early name was “South Northbridge”, before the Whitin family’s rise to prominence. Col. John Spring led a militia training company from Uxbridge which fought in the American Revolution. Col. Spring was from the section that became South Northbridge.

Today a visitor can see much of the original village, including the housing for workers and their families, churches, and the Whitin Community Center. The textile machine company and industrial village were written up as one of the Harvard studies of history in business. Whitin Machine, founded in 1831, became the largest manufacturer of textile machinery in the world before its closing in 1964.

A 1936 Berlin Olympics champion backstroke swimmer, Alice Bridges, then of Uxbridge, trained in the local gym pool (Whitin Community Center) in Whitinsville. The Whitinsville Savings Bank was involved in a precedent-setting case in the U.S., involving tort and contract law, known as “Swinton vs. Whitinsville Savings Bank (1942)”. A real estate transaction two years earlier had failed to disclose termites in a building.

Education

Since it is officially a part of the town of Northbridge, Whitinsville is served by the Northbridge Public Schools system. Also in the town is Whitinsville Christian School, a preK–12 interdenominational Christian school.

Demographics

As of the census of 2010, there were 6,704. The population density was 1,840.2/mi. Females comprise 52.1% of the population. The racial makeup of the CDP was 95.2% White, 0.8% African American, 0.2% Native American, 1.1% Asian, and 1.7% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 3.8% of the population. 4.6% of households speak a language other than English.

There were 2,613 housing units with 44.4% of these in multi-unit structures. The homeownership rate is 58.9% with 85.9% of persons residing in the same housing unit for 1 year or more. The median value of owner-occupied housing unit was $341,000.

There were 2,452 households. The average household size was 2.87. In the CDP, the population was spread out, with 7.4% under the age of 5, 28.1% under the age of 18, and 12.0% who were 65 years of age or older.
85.9% of persons over the age of 25 are high school graduates with 27.2% having a bachelor’s degree or higher. The average commute to work is 29.2 minutes.

The median income for a household in the CDP was $55,950. The median income for individuals was $27,531. 6.5% of the population were below the poverty line.

Ethnic groups

The 19th-century expansion of the Whitin mills attracted many Irish immigrant workers, and Irish currently make up 21.4% of the town’s population. Other nationalities represented in Whitinsville include Armenians, English, Italians, French-Canadians, and Dutch.