Captain Jabez Treadwell purchased two and a quarter acres of Lieut. Simon Wood’s estate on Nov 17, 1744 (85:205), and Moses Kimball sold an adjoining acre and a quarter to Treadwell on July l, 1747 (90:124). Capt. Treadwell built the earliest part of this dwelling. When he died in 1803, his will bequeathed the house and land to his son, Daniel Treadwell, who sold it to Ephraim Fellows on April 9, 1814 (206: 97).
Ephraim Fellows’ son, Ephraim, inherited the farm. Ephraim Fellows Jr. was born in Ipswich on July 17, 1811, and was a carpenter by trade. He married Anstice Giddings, daughter of Major Joshua and Abigail Giddings, on July 2, 1846, and their marriage was childless. The 1872 map shows the owner as Ephraim Fellows. When he died in 1894, the farm was sold to George Haskell and was transferred by him to Frank A. Stackpole. The 1910 map shows the owner as George Smith.
Daniel Treadwell
Daniel Treadwell was born on the 10th of October, 1791, in Ipswich. His father, Captain Jabez Treadwell, also born in Ipswich, was a descendant of Thomas Treadwell, one of the first settlers of Ipswich, from Oxford in England. His mother, Dodge, was a descendant of Major Isaac Appleton of Ipswich and Priscilla, granddaughter of Lieutenant Governor Samuel Symonds.
In 1820, Daniel Treadwell invented the first powered printing press in America. In 1822, he co-founded the Boston Journal of Philosophy and the Arts and was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1823. In 1826, he devised a system of turnouts for railway transportation on a single track. He invented a machine for spinning hemp for cordage in 1829 that was capable of spinning 1,000 tons a year, which he furnished in 1836 to the Charlestown Navy Yard. From 1834 to 1845, he occupied the chair of Rumford Professor at Harvard University. From 1834 to 1845, he occupied the chair of Rumford Professor at Harvard University. The Ipswich Public Library and the first books were a gift to the town from Augustine Heard. and a large endowment by Professor Daniel Treadwell. A house owned by the descendants of Nathaniel Treadwell originally sat at that location.
Excerpt from Daniel Treadwell’s Biography
“My mother, Elizabeth Dodge, was the second wife of my father, and died when I was two years old, leaving me and two older brothers (Isaac Dodge and Jabez), the oldest of eight years, without any female relation to care for us. My early years were, therefore, no doubt, much neglected, as my father’s housekeeper, however well disposed, possessed neither the education nor the affection required to make the most of a child, and my father, who was fifty-two years old at the time of my birth, was occupied in the care of his farm.
“My father—I can remember him well, although he died when I was but eleven years old, was a staid and sensible man, a model farmer, and punctual in all his affairs. The active period of his life fell upon the hard times of the Revolution, during the greater part of which his three brothers were engaged in the army. Of the bravery of one of these brothers, Captain William Treadwell of the Artillery, I remember hearing many stories when I was a boy. My father, by his industry and prudence, with but little assistance from his sons, acquired a property in land which at the time of his death was valued at about seven thousand dollars. I was placed at my father’s death under the guardianship of Colonel Nathaniel Wade, an old Revolutionary soldier, who was esteemed in Ipswich for his honesty and good sense, and went to board with his family.”
Sources
- Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony by Thomas Franklin Waters
- Findagrave: Capt. Jabez Treadwell
- Memoir of Daniel Treadwell
- Historic Ipswich: 25 North Main Street, the Ipswich Public Library
- Wikipedia: Daniel Treadwell
- Appleton’s Cyclopædia of American Biography/Treadwell, Daniel
Historic Ipswich 