On the Massachusetts North Shore
The above painting by Louis S. Glanzman is courtesy of the National Park Service. The siege of Boston by Patriot forces began on April 19, 1775, in the aftermath of the battles at Lexington and Concord. In June the British technically won the Battle of Bunker Hill, but suffered heavier casualties, with no effect on the Continental… Continue reading Evacuation Day, March 17, 1776
The manner in which residents of Ipswich celebrated the end of hostilities was recorded in "The Life, Journals and Correspondence of Rev. Manasseh Cutler."
Nathan Dane, a native of Ipwich was a Massachusetts delegate to the Continental Congress, where he helped draft the Northwest Ordinance, which was enacted in 1787. Dane’s amendment banning slavery in the territory, which would become five new states was accepted into the Ordinance. His amendments to the Articles of Confederation helped lead to adoption of the United States Constitution and a Bill of Rights.
Notifications were posted in Salem to gather at the Town House to appoint representatives to meet at Ipswich, on September 6, 1774 along with the representatives of the other towns in the county, to consider "to consider and determine on such measures as the late acts of Parliament, and our other grievances render necessary and expedient."
Delegates from 67 towns arrived in Ipswich on Tuesday, Sept. 6, 1774 "to consider and determine on such measures as the late acts of Parliament" and declaring support for a Provincial Congress. They reconvened four years later to debate a draft constitution for Massachusetts.
American colonists argued that the British constitution guaranteed that British subjects could not be taxed without their consent. Legislatures in Massachusetts and Rhode Island responded by appointing Committees of Correspondence to coordinate information and organize responses.
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,
John Freeman, son of enslaved Peter and Jane Freeman of Ipswich, enlisted into the militia of the Revolutionary War in the year 1777, and served in Rhode Island, Providence and Cambridge.
In 1777, the Ipswich Selectmen and the Committee of Correspondence and Safety, acting under the authority of the General Court, issued a schedule of prices covering all articles of food, clothing, wages of labor of every kind, entertainment at hotels, shipping rates etc.
In our struggle for Independence, the British military received its first setback from the inhabitants of Salem in an episode that could not have been more ludicrous or entertaining if it had been written for Monty Python.
On the cold icy morning of December 13, 1774, Paul Revere headed out on a 60 mile gallop from Boston along the Old Bay Road through Ipswich to warn the citizens of Portsmouth that British troops may be landing.
On Christmas Day 1823, Gen Benjamin Pierce of Hillsborough, NH held a reunion of twenty-two citizens who had served in the War of Independence. The oldest attendee was Ammi Andrews, born in Ipswich, MA, aged 89 years.
"In Worcester, they keep no Terms, openly threaten Resistance by Arms, have been purchasing Arms, preparing them, casting Ball, and providing Powder, and threaten to attack any Troops who dare to oppose them....the flames of sedition spread universally throughout the country beyond conception.” -Gen. Thomas Gage
Despite the failure of the Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts, the British Parliament responded to the "Boston Tea Party" by passing even more restrictive acts to punish the American extremists.
Historic Ipswich 