On the Massachusetts North Shore
Thomas Paine In 1776, Thomas Paine's 47-page pamphlet "Common Sense" inspired the American Revolution. The following excerpts still speak true today: "The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances have, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all lovers… Continue reading January 10, 1776: Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” is Published
The important events I shall describe were a mere tradition in the town where I was born. It was almost a revelation, when, in later years, I found unquestioned historical records deserving of national attention.
"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!"
On June 10, 1913, police fired into a crowd of protesting immigrant workers at the Ipswich hosiery mill. A young Greek woman named Nicholetta Paudelopoulou was shot in the head and killed by police.
It was a sad day for Ipswich when on June 13, 1965, lightning hit the steeple on the sanctuary of the First Church on Meeting House Green and the building was destroyed by fire. The building was over a century old and considered to be one of the best examples of Gothic church construction in… Continue reading First Church Burns, June 13, 1965
The concepts of freedom about which Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence originated from the pen of the Rev. John Wise of Ipswich: "The origin of civil power is the people...and when they are free, they may set up what species of government they please."
Bull Brook originates in Willowdale, crosses Linebrook Rd. and merges with Dow Brook at the Ipswich Utilities site on Rt. 1A. From that point the combined stream becomes the Egypt River.
In the early 1950s, a group of young amateur archaeologists men discovered one of the largest Paleo-Indian sites in North America along the banks of Bull Brook and the Egypt River in Ipswich, with over 6,000 artifacts uncovered.
On May 23, 1692, a complaint for witchcraft was filed against Sarah Buckley and her widowed daughter Mary Witheridge. The "bewitched" girls of Salem Village claimed that the women's specters had attacked them. Held in shackles in the cold crowded jail, both were acquitted in January,1692
On March 24, 1682. a child, Dorothy Good of Salem was taken custody, and interrogated by the local magistrates for two weeks. Hungry, cold and missing her mother, Dorcas broke down and told the inquisitors what they wanted to hear, that her mother was a witch, and consorted with the devil.
Links to two dozen wars that Ipswich men fought in from the town's settlement in 1633, through the Vietnam War.
In 1778, sixteen-year-old Ezra Ross of Ipswich was condemned to death for the murder of Joshua Spooner of Brookfield. Spooner's wife Bathsheba became the first woman executed in the newly-created United States of America. Ezra Ross is buried in an unmarked grave at the Leslie Road Cemetery.
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."
Historic Ipswich 