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Indian
tribes who called the area “Agawam” originally inhabited the land on
which the Town of Ipswich was founded.
Beginning as a tribal village, the location was settled by
colonists in 1633. Little has
been known about these Indian tribes until recently; however, it is now
believed that these tribes had been living along these coastal and
riverine areas for thousands of years.
A very important discovery about Indian history was made in 1951 at
the site of Bull Brook. Carbon
dating proved that artifacts found at this site belonged to inhabitants of
the Paleo Indian period, about 9000 years ago.
Other collections discovered at Great Neck and along the riverbanks
have been analyzed as they belong to the later Archaic and Woodland
periods. To researchers it
became obvious that we are only the latest in a long history of peoples
who have inhabited this area.
Agawam
remained an uncolonized part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony until 1633
when Governor John Winthrop sent his son, John, Jr., to establish a
settlement to be called Ipswich. With
twelve men in tow, John Winthrop Jr. sailed up the Ipswich River and began
a settlement on the banks of the river near the present wharf.
It was
a extraordinary group of settlers who came to Ipswich, men of substance
and education, who were among the key founders of the Puritan
Commonwealth: Thomas Dudley, Deputy Governor; Magistrates Simon
Bradstreet, Richard Saltonstall and Samuel Symonds; an Ministers Nathaniel
Ward, John Norton, William Hubbard and Nathaniel Rogers.
One of the first descriptions of Ipswich was made by Captain John
Smith in 1614, which is still popular today, “…there are many sands at
the entrance of the Harbor….Here are many rising hills, and on their
tops and descents are many corn fields and delightful groves….plain
marsh ground, fit for pasture, or salt ponds.
There is also Okes, Pines, Walnuts and other wood to make this
place an excellent habitation, being a good and safe harbor.”
On
August 4,1634 the village was incorporated and renamed Ipswich for the
town in Suffolk County, East Anglia, England, the locale where most of its
first settlers originated. These
first settlers set the tone for this community for this remote frontier
village was a cultural center of the 17th century.
Today it is still well known due to more than forty houses built
prior to 1725 still standing and occupied.
Town
records indicate that one Thomas Hart was the first recorded citizen of
Ipswich in 1637. The Hart
House was built in 1640, portions of which are still standing, and was
home to Ipswich’s first selectman.
The house, one of the oldest in the country, remains one of the
prime examples of early American architecture with an English college
influence. The current
tavern, built in the 1800’s, was the “only” place to go outside of
New York or Boston for “ale and spirits”.
So popular in fact that First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and actor
James Cagney were regulars. Not
without its mysteries, witchcraft hit home when Thomas’s mother was
accused of being a witch and removed to Boston where she was tried and
released. At the death of
Thomas, history has it that his body was buried in the cellar but never
found. The original “keepers room” of the house was dismantled
and sold to a museum in New York, the reason never being fully explained.
Still in operation today the Hart House Tavern remains a large symbol of
Ipswich’s history.
The
town became know as “the Birthplace of American Independence” when in
1687 Ipswich citizens protested a tax that English Governor Sir Edmond
Andros attempted to impose on the colony.
Ipswich residents, under the leadership of Reverend John Wise, led
the protest, arguing that as Englishmen they could not abide taxation
without representation. The citizens were jailed and fined for their action, but in
1689 Andros was called back to England and the Colonists received a new
charter from the new sovereigns, King William and Queen Mary. Principal among the players in this drama was Jacob Perkins,
son of John Perkins and Judith Gater, and his son John Perkins.
The
early residents of Ipswich were farmers, fishermen, shipbuilders and
traders. Lace making
developed as a home industry, as did the making of stockings.
The first stocking machine, which had been smuggled from England,
arrived in Ipswich in 1822. Local
yore relates that small parts of the original knitting machines were
secreted from England in pots of Yorkshire butter and brought to Ipswich
in defiance of English export regulations.
For several years, small and fitfully successful textile industries
came and went. Then, in 1868,
the Ipswich Hosiery Mills was begun by Amos A. Lawrence, which by the turn
of the century had become the largest stocking mill in the country.
Although shipbuilding and fishing were the dominant business
activities of Ipswich in the 17th Century, the town also became
known tongue ‘n cheek as “The Birthplace of American Hosiery”
One of
the most endearing products to seafood lover’s nation wide is the famous
“Ipswich Clams” which are still shipped around the country today.
In the
days of the clipper ships, Ipswich shared, to some degree, in the great
riches that came to the deeper water ports of neighboring Newburyport,
Beverly and Salem. The famous
Heard Family made their home in Ipswich, though their ships sailed
principally out of Boston.
Ipswich
remained a small country town through the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. This accounts for
the well-preserved seventeenth and eighteenth century houses, which still
exists today. The growth and
development of Ipswich as a larger town, never a suburb, came only after
1945 with the great outward expansion of population from Boston.
As
happened in many New England towns where industrial growth put new demands
on communities, small waves of immigrant workers for the mills and fishing
boats found their way to Ipswich. As
a result Ipswich has a rich heritage of English, Irish, Nova Scotian
French Canadian, Polish and Greek citizens today.
Ipswich has left its mark on the twentieth century also with the
Crane Estate at Castle
Hill. Built in 1926 for
industrialist Richard t. Crane, Jr. and designated a National Historic
Landmark in 1998, this estate takes its place along with other great homes
in keeping with the Vanderbilt’s, Rockefeller and Dupont’s.
Pictured at left is the view from the estate towards the ocean and
beach. The buildings and
grounds are maintained as they were and provide the famous Crane’s Beach
area. Its Crane Beach is reputed to be one of the most beautifully scenic
beaches in all New England. Ipswich
is replete with colonial architecture having over forty houses built prior
to 1725 still standing and occupied. (See section on Historical Sites)
 In addition,
Appleton Farms, Ipswich is the nation’s second oldest operating farm,
established in 1638.
Created by Samuel Appleton, the Town of Ipswich granted 770
acres of meadow and upland “to him, his heirs and assigns forever”.
Thus began the operation, which continues to be run to this day by
the original family
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