Petersham loved Question 3. We went looking for answers.

Résumé détaillé

This heavily forested town of roughly 1,200 people is smack dab in the middle of the state, and, in some ways, Massachusetts history.

PETERSHAM — On Election Day, voters in virtually every city and town across Massachusetts rejected a proposal to upend state elections.

This heavily forested town of roughly 1,200 people is smack dab in the middle of the state, and, in some ways, Massachusetts history — including now for holding the distinction as the only Massachusetts municipality that unofficial results show voted for Question 3 and embraced a new way of picking state primary candidates.

But why Petersham (pronounced Peter’s Ham)? What is it about this Worcester County town nestled on the banks of the Quabbin Reservoir that made it the lone holdout on a relatively wonky electoral policy? Why were hundreds of people here so amenable to changing how voters in Massachusetts vote when those in hundreds of other towns and cities weren’t?

At The Country Store, a café-slash-general store that first opened in 1840, you can find everything from toy microscopes to a culinary curiosity known as The Gobbler — “basically turkey dinner in a sandwich,” said Craig Chernov, the store’s cashier.

The store drew a stream of customers Thursday, most stopping through to grab something from the café. “We’re kind of the only show in town,” said Chernov (which appeared to be — maybe literally — true).

He suggested one of the made-to-order sandwiches. For answers to why voters here liked Question 3, he was out of stock.

But he did suggest trying the library across the street, where one of the librarians, Fifi, a born-and-bred Petersham resident, has “a ton of town knowledge.”

But if Fifi or the books inside the stone building somehow hold the answer to Question 3’s success in the sleepy town, we’ll never know. The library is closed on Thursdays.

Perhaps some hints lay in the Harvard Forest, the 4,000-acre plot the Cambridge university uses for its forestry program? Or at the associated Fisher Museum, which boasts 23 meticulously designed models that describe in detail the history of the landscape across 230 years?

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