On the Massachusetts North Shore
The Embargo Act of 1807 put New England ports at a standstill and its towns into a depression. The Ipswich Town Meeting petitioned the President to relieve "the people of this once prosperous country from their present embarrassed and distressed condition." The town found Jefferson's answer "Not Satisfactory."
Many of our founding fathers had little trust in the instincts of the common man. John Adams observed that "Pure democracy has also been viewed as a threat to individual rights," and warned against the “tyranny of the majority.” Alexander Hamilton, one of the three authors of the "Federalist Papers" defended the system of electors by which we choose a President today.
However benign John Winthrop’s intentions were, the system he tried to construct rested on the discretion, or will, of individual magistrates. However, he was defeated by the Ipswich Connection’s campaign for the “skill” or “rule” of written law; and if we still prize the ideal that government should operate based on laws, not men, we owe that partly to their promotion of the Body of Liberties.
The voters of the Town of Ipswich resolved on August 11, 1768, that "Thanks be given to the worthy and much esteemed ninety-two gentlemen of the late Honorable House of Representatives for their firmness and steadiness in standing up for and adhering to the just rights and Liberties of the Subjects when it was required of them at the Peril of their political existence."
On December 17, 1847 the brig Falconer, loaded with bituminous coal, wrecked at Crane Beach during a fierce winter storm. A dozen of the crew and passengers are buried in a common grave at the Old North Burying Ground.
The Great Migration brought nearly 14,000 Puritan settlers, unprepared for the hardships and trauma that awaited them. Building a new society in the wilderness induced transgenerational post-traumatic stress culminating in the Salem Witch Trials, which some professionals describe as mass conversion disorder.
An estimated 18,000,000 Native Americans lived in North America before the 17th century. The arrival of 102 Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower at Plymouth in 1620, and the settlements by the Massachusetts Bay Colony Puritans a decade later were accompanied by the demise of much of the native population of North America.
In 1642, it was ordered that every Ipswich householder shall have a ladder in constant readiness for fire. For the next 150 years, the town relied on the men in town to hurry to the alarm with buckets to save people and goods, and to fight the fires. In 1785, fire wardens were chosen to… Continue reading History of the Ipswich Volunteer Fire Department
The town voted in 1861 to build County Street and its stone arch bridge, connecting Cross and Mill Streets. A Woolen mill, saw mill, blacksmith shop and veneer mill operated near the bridge.
Daniel Denison became Major General of the colonial forces and represented Ipswich in the general court. He was remembered with high esteem by the people of Ipswich well into the 19th Century. You can visit Denison's grave at the Old North Burial Ground.
At about 1:30 am, Police gave the alarm that Central Street was on fire.The citizens of Ipswich tumbled out from their beds and faced as wicked a night as the town has ever seen. Four months later the other end of downtown burned.
Inventory No: IPS.9009: Ipswich Mills Hosiery Manufacturing Company Dam. Survey Form F (structure) submitted to the Massachusetts Historical Commission, Recorded by: Ted Dattilo for the Public Archaeology Laboratory, Inc., May 2024. Received by the Mass. Historical Commission on Nov. 12, 2024 Year Constructed: 1908; Architect: Stickney, Stephen A. Company Recommended for listing in the National… Continue reading Historic Survey of the Ipswich Mills Dam
"I feel unutterable anxiety. God grant us wisdom and fortitude! Should the opposition be suppressed, should this country submit, what infamy and ruin! God forbid. Death in any form is less terrible!"
Lillian Eden, one of the founders of Olde Ipswich Days recalls the work and effort that went into running the original fairs.
The Knobbs is a small beach in a stretch of salt marsh on the west side of the Ipswich section of Plum Island. On the Atlantic side was the Kbobbs Beach Life-Saving Station, replaced in 1947 by a camp for children who had been victims of polio.
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
Historic Ipswich 