At Merry Mount, in that part of Braintree which is now Quincy, a settlement was established by Thomas Morton in 1625, but the gay life of the settlers and their selling rum and firearms to the Indians greatly offended the Pilgrims of Plymouth, who in 1627 arrested Morton; soon afterward Governor John Endecott of Massachusetts Bay visited Merry Mount, rebuked the inhabitants and cut down their Maypole.
The country is rolling and hilly, the Blue Hills (with the exception of a part included in Braintree in 1712 and now in Quincy) lying in Milton.
In 1712 the Blue Hill lands were divided between Milton and Braintree, and in 1868 part of Milton was included in the new township of Hyde Park.
The son graduated at Brown University in 1826, was a teacher at Braintree for two years, and in 1831 graduated from Andover theological seminary.
The New York, New Haven & Hartford railway crosses the town and has stations at its villages of Braintree, South Braintree and East Braintree, which are also served by suburban electric railways.