Directly across from Wolf Hill Garden Center at the corner of Linebrook Road and Rt. 1 (61 Turnpike Road) is an uninhabited building known as the Corporal John Foster Inn. The original construction is dated to about 1780, although the name of the original builder is uncertain. Stories told about John Foster and the tavern he operated there offer very entertaining records of the ancient Linebrook neighborhood.
The Legend of a Very Eccentric Man
In A Pen Ramble in Linebrook, 1884, M.V.B. Perley wrote, “This is ancient territory….Early in the present century, there was the very eccentric sign of a very eccentric man. It has found its way into literature and has been told as an entertaining story by travelers far and wide. His title was corporal, his trade blacksmith, his business landlord, and his sign read:
I shoe the horse, I shoe the ox
I carry the nails in my box
I make the nail, I set the shoe
And entertain some strangers too
At times he would not reply when questioned unless addressed by his title. He was as obliging and generous as he was eccentric.”
The sign that hung at Foster’s Tavern has been stored in a barn at the Ipswich Museum for a century.
From The Diary of Rev. William Bentley:
“Oct. 30, 1811: I left Salem with Mr. H. Crowinshield to see Line Brook, vulgarly known as Firetown, a section of Ipswich, Topsfield & Rowley at the acute angle in which they meet. Never did I find so many opinions about the distance & the course of any place… I returned to the former road from which I had turned, and in about a mile, I crossed Newbury turnpike at a Tavern kept by one Foster in Linebrook. Foster by trade was a blacksmith, by business a landlord. His sign hanging near the tavern door read as follows: ” I shoe the horse, I shoe the ox, I carry the nails in my box, I make the nail, I set the shoe, And entertain some strangers too”. As it is the last place I have visited, it is the most destitute of the means of enriching a farmer, and if the tastes of the people can be guessed by the rhymes on Foster’s sign, their minds are of higher improvements than their barren country I found.”
Thomas Franklin Waters noted for the Ipswich Historical Society that ”
Who Was Corporal John Foster?
Corporal John Foster was a blacksmith and taverner, born in Ipswich in 1777, died in 1841, and is buried at the Old Linebrook burying ground. Perhaps he was the son of John Foster, who was a member of Captain Whipple’s Company, which suffered greatly during the 1757 siege of Fort William Henry during the French and Indian War. It is more likely that he was the son of Jonathan Foster, who was the son of Caleb Foster, both of whom lived in Linebrook. The senior John Foster was born in 1704 and died in 1799. In the late 19th and early 20th century, this was the home of John Swift Spiller, “a farm and market man.”
Photos from the John Foster House
Historic Ipswich 
There are some things that for whatever reason seem to get stuck in the eddy’s of time. The Corporal John Foster House is certainly one of them. What a historic treasure! Always remember seeing it as my parent’s made their way up Rte 1 to Mcintire’s.
Why not turn it into a welcoming/information center like the Hall/Haskell house downtown.
It would be a shame to lose this colorful property and history. “And entertain some strangers too.”