Residents of South Deerfield, Massachusetts, petitioned to be set off from nearby Deerfield in 1809, after communicants of the First Church of Deerfield living in the Bloody Brook area of South Deerfield withdrew from the church in 1807. They were probably responding to both the distance from the meetinghouse in (Old) Deerfield and to the theology of the new minister, the Reverend Samuel Willard. However, this petition was not granted and South Deerfield is, to this day, part of Deerfield. The municipal offices and retail and industrial areas are all concentrated in South Deerfield.