Braintree

Market town on the River Blackwater in Essex, England, 18 km/11 mi north of Chelmsford; population (2001) 19,200. The town has engineering and printing works and textile factories. Braintree merges with the nearby town of Bocking. In medieval times Braintree was a centre for the woollen industry. The church of St Michael the Archangel dates from the 13th century.

Nicholas Udall, the author of the first known English comedy, was vicar here 1537–44.

Braintree

Town in Norfolk County, eastern Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston and Quincy, on the Weymouth Fore River (an inlet of Hingham Bay), 16 km/10 mi southeast of Boston; population (1998 est) 35,000. The town has had diversified manufacturing plants since the mid-19th century, and is also largely residential. Now a commuter settlement for Boston, Braintree is the site of the South Shore Plaza, one of the largest shopping malls in northeast USA.

Named after Braintree, Essex, England, colonists from the Braintree Company founded the town in 1640. Quincy and Randolph were once parts of Braintree. South Braintree village was the site of the 1920 robbery and murder that led to the Sacco-Vanzetti case.

Braintree was the birthplace of two US presidents: John Adams, president 1797–1801, and his son John Quincy Adams, president 1825–29. It was also the birthplace of General Sylvanus Thayer, founder of the West Point Military Academy. Thayer's house is one of Braintree's two entries on the national register of historic places.