John Proctor Senior was an early settler of Ipswich and received a grant of land along what is now Elm Street. His son, John Proctor, and his wife, Elizabeth, moved to Salem in 1666. They were both charged and imprisoned in the Salem Witch Trials. Elizabeth was pregnant, and her sentence was never executed, but John Proctor was hanged. The Boston minister Cotton Mather came to watch and congratulated the crowd of spectators for their diligence.
Samuel S. Baker, active in real estate, bought the lot at 16 Elm Street and built a house in 1835 (272:150). He became an “insolvent debtor,” and the house was sold to shoemaker William S. Tozer (1804-1860) and his wife Adeline Mears in 1841 (327:165). Their son, John M. Tozer, died in Newport News of “Congestive Chills” (pneumonia) while serving in the Civil War, and his name is inscribed on the Civil War Monument at Meetinghouse Green. The other son, Joshua, shares a tombstone with John at the Old Burying Ground and is assumed to have also died in the Civil War. Thomas Franklin Waters recorded that William H. Tozer was one of over 300 Ipswich volunteers in the Civil War, and at the end of the 19th Century, he owned the Daniel Lummus House on High Street. There was once a Tozer’s Grocery on Hammatt Street, and the family name continues in Ipswich today.
The house consists of two combined structures. The side facing Elm Street is the house constructed or moved to this location by Samuel S. Baker, and the other end of the house was added later. The house has a fine central staircase, and the full-height basement features a chamfered summer beam from a first-period home. The 1832 Ipswich map doesn’t show any houses on this side of Elm Street other than the Benjamin Grant House at the intersection with County Street, but the 1856 map shows it lined with houses.
Enhanced 911 renumbering of houses gave this house, formerly #17, the address 16 Elm Street. No houses are shown on this side of the street in the 1832 map of Ipswich, other than the Benjamin Grant House at the intersection with County Street. Elm Street is not in the National Register of Historic Places, but is included in the Ipswich Architectural Preservation District.
Sources
Historic Ipswich 
