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Pittsfield is the largest city and the county seat of Berkshire County,〔(【引用サイトリンク】accessdate=2011-06-07 )〕 Massachusetts, United States. It is the principal city of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses all of Berkshire County. The population was 44,737 at the 2010 census. Although the population has declined in recent decades, Pittsfield remains the third largest municipality in western Massachusetts, behind only Springfield and Chicopee. In 2005, Farmers Insurance ranked Pittsfield 20th in the United States as “Most Secure Place To Live” among small towns with fewer than 150,000 residents. In 2006, ''Forbes'' ranked Pittsfield as number 61 in its list of Best Small Places for Business. In 2008, ''Country Home'' magazine ranked Pittsfield as #24 in a listing of "green cities" east of the Mississippi. In 2009, the City of Pittsfield was chosen to receive a 2009 Commonwealth Award, Massachusetts' highest award in the arts, humanities, and sciences. In 2010, the ''Financial Times'' proclaimed Pittsfield the "Brooklyn of the Berkshires", in an article covering its recent renaissance. In 2012, the city was listed among the 10 best places for single people to retire in the U.S. by ''U.S. News'', due to the high number of single older residents and higher likelihood of finding companionship or a partner.〔(The 10 Best Places to Retire in 2012 )〕 ==History== The Mahican (Muh-hi-kann) Native American nation, an Algonquian people, inhabited Pittsfield and the surrounding area until the early 1700s, when, the population greatly reduced by war and disease, many migrated westward or lived quietly on the fringes of society. In 1738, a wealthy Bostonian named Col. Jacob Wendell bought of lands known originally as ''Pontoosuck'', a Mohican word meaning "a field or haven for winter deer", as a speculative investment. He planned to subdivide and resell to others who would settle there. He formed a partnership with Philip Livingston, a wealthy kinsman from Albany, New York, and Col. John Stoddard of Northampton, who already had claim to here. A group of young men came and began to clear the land in 1743, but the threat of Indian raids around the time of King George's War soon forced them to leave, and the land remained unoccupied by Englishmen for several more years. Soon, many others arrived from Westfield, Massachusetts, and a village began to grow, which was incorporated as Pontoosuck Plantation in 1753 by Solomon Deming, Simeon Crofoot, Stephen Crofoot, Charles Goodrich, Jacob Ensign, Samuel Taylor, and Elias Woodward. Mrs. Deming was both the first and the last of the original settlers, dying in March 1818 at the age of 92. Solomon Deming died in 1815 at the age of 96.〔 〕 Pittsfield was incorporated in 1761. Royal Governor Sir Francis Bernard named Pittsfield after British nobleman and politician William Pitt. By 1761 there were 200 residents, and the plantation became the Township of Pittsfield. By the end of the Revolutionary War, Pittsfield had expanded to nearly 2,000 residents, including Colonel John Brown, who began accusing Benedict Arnold as a traitor in 1776, several years before Arnold defected to the British. Brown wrote in his winter 1776-77 handbill, "Money is this man's God, and to get enough of it he would sacrifice his country." Pittsfield was primarily an agricultural area, because of the many brooks that flowed into the Housatonic River; the landscape was also dotted with mills that produced lumber, grist, paper, and textiles. With the introduction of Merino sheep from Spain in 1807, the area became the center of woolen manufacturing in the United States, an industry that would dominate the community's economy for almost a century. The town was a bustling metropolis by the late 19th century. In 1891, the City of Pittsfield was incorporated, and William Stanley, Jr., who had recently relocated his Electric Manufacturing Company to Pittsfield from Great Barrington, produced the first electric transformer. Stanley's enterprise was the forerunner of the internationally known corporate giant, General Electric (GE). Thanks to the success of GE, Pittsfield's population in 1930 had grown to more than 50,000. While GE Advanced Materials (now owned by SABIC-Innovative Plastics, a subsidiary of the Riyadh-based Saudi Basic Industries Corporation) continues to be one of the city's largest employers, a workforce that once topped 13,000 was reduced to less than 700 with the demise and/or relocation of the transformer and aerospace portions of the General Electric empire. General Dynamics occupies many of the old GE buildings, and its workforce is expanding. Much of General Dynamics' local success is based on the awarding of government contracts relating to its advanced information systems. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Pittsfield, Massachusetts」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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