41 Turkey Shore Road, the William Howard House (c. 1680/1709)

William Howard was born about 1634 and married Tabitha Kinsman, daughter of Robert Kinsman. He was granted “liberty to fell trees” in 1670. In 1679, he bought this lot from Daniel Rindge, with the earlier home of Thomas Emerson probably standing on it. Architectural evidence indicates that the left side of this house was built the following year. The house has framed overhangs, which were popular during the “post-medieval revival” era of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Howard died in 1709 at age 75. His son inherited the property, and it was at this time that the right side was added. The house stayed in the Howard family until 1769.

From 1891 to 1906, Arthur Wesley Dow and his wife, Minnie Pearson, ran the Ipswich Summer School of Art from this house. In the 20th Century, the house was obtained and restored by the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA), now known as Historic New England, and is now a private residence with a preservation agreement. The Ipswich Historical Commission presented the 2021 Mary Conley Award for historic preservation to the owners. 

The Ipswich Historical Commission presented the 2021 Mary Conley Award for historic preservation to Tess & Tom Schutte, owners of the William Howard house at 41 Turkey Shore Rd. The house has a strict preservation agreement with Historic New England (formerly called S.P.N.E.A), and is located across from the intersection with Green Street.

The house was built about 1680 by William Howard on land owned by Thomas Emerson in 1638 and was once known as the Emerson-Howard House. (Read The Ipswich Emersons. A.D. 1636-1900: a genealogy of the descendants of Thomas Emerson of Ipswich, Mass., with some account of his English ancestry published in 1900 by Benjamin Kendall Emerson.)

According to the book Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony by Thomas Franklin Waters, Thomas Emerson bought this lot in 1638 and built a house. He sold the house and land to Daniel Ringe in 1648 (1:169), and William Howard, felt maker and hatter, bought the same in 1679 (4:289). Architectural evidence indicates that the left side of the present house was built about 1680. Thus Howard must have removed the ancient Emerson or Ringe house and built a new structure (the left half of the house) shortly after 1679. The right side was added in 1709.

On the left downstairs room, which had once been updated with Federal woodwork and plaster, restoration uncovered massive timbers with remnants of early whitewash. The large summer beam has wide hand-planed chamfers and is supported at the hearth end by a massive girt. This room and the two upstairs rooms are divided by plank walls that once compartmentalized the house into smaller rooms. The only remainder of the original chimney is a large stone base that now supports 19th-century Rumford fireplaces and a corresponding brick chimney.

William Richard Cutter wrote about Thomas Emerson in his book, Historic Homes and Places and Genealogical and Personal Memoirs, Volume 4.

Thomas Emerson, son of Robert Emerson³ was baptized at Bishop’s Stortford, England, Hertfordshire, July 26, 1584. Major General Denison, famous in the early military history of the colonies also came from Bishop’s Stortford, and Deputy Governor Symonds resided in the neighboring towns of Great Yeldham and Upsfield, County Essex. The children were all baptized as given below in St Michael’s Church, Bishop’s Stortford.

According to family tradition, Emerson came over on the ship Elizabeth Ann in 1635. He was at Ipswich as early as 1638, when he had eighty acres granted to him adjoining the land of Goodman Muzzey. He was a baker by trade, but after coming to America was generally called a yeoman. In 1638, Samuel Greenfield, a weaver who had married Susanna Wise, widow of Humphrey Wise of Ipswich, sold a farm of one hundred and twenty acres formerly owned by Wise to Thomas Emerson. This property extended from Turkey Shore to Labor in Vain and Goulds Creek and remained in the hands of the Emerson family for several generations. He was a commoner in 1641 and a selectman in 1646. He conveyed his farm to his son John.

Thomas Franklin Waters recorded the early history of the land and house in Volume 1 of Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, page 481:

Beyond the Lane, anciently known as Wood’s Lane, now Fruit St., to the road to the Labour-in-vain fields, several grants were made, chiefly for tillage lands. Henry Wilkinson received three acres in 1635 and Robert Hayes the same. Hayes sold to Wilkinson, and the latter conveyed the six acres to Thomas Emerson in 1638. It was bounded by the planting lot of Robert Cross on the east, the house lot of John Dane on the west, the lot of William Wildes on the south, and the Town River on the north. The highway was only a cart path at this period. Mr. Emerson built a house and sold house and land, six acres, to Daniel Ringe, “lying next the dwelling house and land of John Dane towards the south” in 1648 (Ips. Deeds 1: 169). Uzall Wardell, whose son had married Susanna Ringe, acquired the Ringe homestead and sold it to William Hayward or Howard on April 7, 1679 (Ips. Deeds 4: 289). John Dane is mentioned as abutting on the southwest and southeast. John Howard sold his interest in his father’s house and land, three acres only, to his brother Samuel, on March 20, 1714 (41: 188). The bounds are northwest, the highway, northeast, Philemon Dane, south, Walter Fairfield, west, highway (then known as Wood’s Lane). Dr. Philemon Dane seems to have acquired part of the original six-acre lot of Emerson, Ringe, and Howard. Stephen Howard succeeded to the ownership, and Daniel Ringe and others sold to Ebenezer Caldwell, their interest in one half of the house and two acres, our “father Samuel Ringe, bought of Stephen Howard,” April 1, 1769 (129: 22 1).

Abbott Lowell Cummings

Abbott Lowell Cummings, writing in Architecture in Colonial Massachusetts, conjectured that the house may have been erected on a portion of the land conveyed by John Dane in an unrecorded 1683 deed to a son: “It is the latter conveyance which informs us that Howard was then in possession of the balance of the lot at the corner of the present Turkey Shore Road and Wood’s Lane. Style and character of construction of the original left-hand portion of the existing house of single-room plan with chimney bay suggests a date towards the end of the seventeenth century when the builder was already middle-aged. William Howard, by his will executed July 23, 1709, left to his son John “ye New End of my House which is not yett Fully Finished, with one half ye Stack of Chimnye built in sd New End,” and to his son Samuel, “my Old Mansion House. And also one half of ye Stack of Chemnye built in sd New house.” The property was acquired in 1902 by the Ipswich artist/antiquarian Arthur W. Dow, and conveyed by his widow on December 16, 1929, to the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities. The present chimney dates probably to about 1800. The older half of the house was restored in 1943–1944 by William Sumner Appleton and Frank Chouteau Brown.”

William Howard was born about 1634 and died at age 75 in Ipswich. He was granted “liberty to fall trees” in 1670. His gravestone reads: “Here Lyes ye Body of William Houeard who died July ye 25th, 1709 in ye 74 year of his age.” The descendants of William Howard can be found on the WikiTree site

Arthur Wesley Dow

Arthur Wesley Dow was born in Ipswich on April 6, 1857. After studying art in Worcester and Boston, he enrolled at the Académie Julian in Paris. From 1891 to 1906, he and his wife, Minnie Pearson, ran the Ipswich Summer School of Art from his home (the 1680 Emerson-Howard house) on Turkey Shore Road. He is said to have saved the house from destruction.

In 1899, Dow produced an album of 41 photographs entitled “Ipswich Days” and later published “By Salt Marshes: Pictures & Poems of Old Ipswich.” Dow is known for incorporating Japanese techniques into his work and for his inventive teaching style. He experimented with various forms and styles, producing oil paintings, photographs, ink-wash drawings, and Japanese woodblock prints. One of his many students was the famous artist Georgia O’Keeffe.

In 1899, Dow created a teaching manual entitled Composition: Understanding Line, Notan, and Color (Dover Art Instruction. In this very popular book, he combines the best of Eastern and Western ideas, exploring the creation of images based on relations between lines, colors, and light patterns.

Dow served as the assistant curator of Japanese Art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and taught at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, then was the director of the Fine Arts Department at the Teachers’ College at Columbia University in New York City until his death in 1922.

Dow bequeathed eighteen acres of land on upper Spring Street to the town of Ipswich to create Dow Park, adjoining Daniel Boone Park. His widow donated the home on Turkey Shore Road to the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, but it was returned to private ownership in 1981.

Stephanie Gaskins is the curator of the Arthur Wesley Dow collection at the Ipswich Museum, which includes oil paintings, photographs, woodblock prints, and other archived elements by the famous native son of Ipswich.

4. Historic American Buildings Survey Arthur C. Haskell, Photographer (c) .

.2. Historic American Buildings Survey Arthur C. Haskell, Photographer (a) …

3. Historic American Buildings Survey Arthur C. Haskell, Photographer (b) …

Sources and further information:

• T.F. Waters, Ipswich in the Mass. Bay Colony, vol.1, p. 481
• Archipedia New England
• MACRIS
• Historic American Buildings Survey: Howard-Emerson House
• WikiTree: William Howard
• William Howard genealogy