On the Massachusetts North Shore
In a northeasterly storm in December, 1786 Samuel Pulsifer and Samuel Elwell of Rowley were digging clams on Plum Island, got caught in the storm, and took refuge in a stack of salt hay for the night. In the morning they found they had been set afloat.
When Parliament laid a tax on tea, the British locked all the tea that had arrived in Newburyport into the powder house. Eleazer Johnson led a group of men who shattered the door and burned the tea in Market Square.
Madame Shatswell loved her cup of tea, and as a large store had been stored for family use before the hated tax was imposed, she saw no harm in using it as usual. News of the treason spread throughout the town.
On Dec. 16, 1773, the tea brought into Boston harbor was thrown into the sea. A week later, Ipswich citizens met in the most violent mood, and adopted a series of resolutions,
Rockport experienced one of the oddest invasions in U.S. history during the War of 1812 when the town's fearless residents stopped the British with rocks and anything they could get their hands on.
The Quartermaster's house became the scene more than once of violent disorder. The company's behavior was so scandalous that the whole lot were summoned to Ipswich Court on May 1, 1672.
A document known as the “Boston Pamphlet” was distributed throughout the colony, asserting the colonists’ rights. Ipswich held a Town Meeting, established its own “Committee of Correspondence," passed a series of resolves, and gave instructions to their reresentative in the General Court, Michael Farley.
In 1957, John Updike moved to Ipswich, where he and his family lived in the Polly Dole house on East Street for seventeen years. Updike's 1968 novel Couples and several of his short stories were based in the fictional community Tarbox, which everyone knew was really Ipswich.
Dec. 23, 1839 two days before Christmas a storm caught the schooner "Deposit" on her passage out of Belfast, Maine. Capt. Cotterall was lost, and several of the crew were buried at the Old South Cemetery.
The town of Ipswich is fortunate to have a considerable number of barns still standing behind the houses in its Architectural Preservation District. While many of the barns date to before the 20th Century, this barn appears to be one of the oldest.
By Harold Bowen: The monument was first erected by the town in 1871 as a memorial to those who died in the Civil War. It had an iron fence all around it and inside the enclosure was a stack of cannon balls in each corner where a flag was inserted.
Known in Colonial times as Mile Brook, the Miles River is a major tributary of the Ipswich River but has been diminished in volume by upstream use as a water supply. Evidence of the old Potter and Appleton mills can still be found near County Rd.
In 2019, Essex County Greenbelt worked with the Town of Ipswich and the Massachusetts Department of Fish and Game to create the Castle Neck River Reservation, the Pony Express soccer fields, and the Castle Neck River Wildlife Management Area.
Grape Island was once a small but thriving community, and briefly a popular summer resort. In 1941, 3000 acres of Plum Island including Grape Island were purchased by the U.S. government to establish the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge.
The fascinating history of stage and railroad travel was written in 1878 by Cyrus Mason Tracy in the "Standard History of Essex County."
Howard R."Taffy Hill "was a familiar sight at his iconic store on Market Street, in operation since 1929 when it was opened by his father as Hill’s Men’s Store.
Historic Ipswich 