Wendell was first settled by Europeans in 1754. Originally a part of the town of Shutesbury, in 1781 it was separated to form the town of Wendell. It was named after Oliver Wendell (1733-1818), president of the Union Bank in Boston and a large landowner in the area. Wendell funded the local church, first organized in 1774. For the next hundred years the town’s industry consisted of agriculture and logging. Steady logging, though, deforested the town by the 1890s, particularly during the surge of logging after the 1870s. Its sole manufacturing came from the village of Farley on the Millers Falls river. There, a paper and pulp mill was built by the Farley Paper Company in 1881 that operated for seventy years. In 1950, it burned and was not rebuilt. Wendell now is dominated by the Wendell State Forest, which covers the majority of its western half. The town today is lightly populated and almost entirely forested.