One of the first laws instituted by the Massachusetts Bay Colony was a bounty on wolves, and in early Ipswich, a rather disconcerting aspect of entering the Meeting House was the site of wolf heads nailed to the door. Even in 1723, wolves were so abundant and so near the meeting house, that parents would not suffer their children to go and come from worship without some grown person.
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Police Open Fire at the Ipswich Mills Strike, June 10, 1913
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.
350 years on Grape Island
Grape Island was once a small but thriving community, and briefly a popular summer resort. In 1941, 3000 acres of Plum Island including Grape Island were purchased by the U.S. government to establish the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge.
Samuel Symonds, Gentleman: Complaint to Salem Court Against His Two Servants, 1661
Philip Welch and William Downing, both children, were kidnapped from Ireland in 1654, and sold to Samuel Symonds in Ipswich. After 7 years they refused to continue working on his farm and demanded their freedom. They were arrested and brought to trial.
Anne Dudley Bradstreet, the Colony’s First Published Poet
Often alone in Ipswich while her husband Simon was engaged in government, Anne Bradstreet wrote a collection of poems published in London in 1650 titled, "The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America...by a Gentlewoman in these Parts."
Sketches of Ipswich by William Gordon Keyworth
Early in his artistic career, William Gordon Keyworth (1927 - 2017) lived in Ipswich and worked as an art teacher at Shore Country Day School in Beverly. During his years in Ipswich, he painted a series of sketches and watercolors of historic buildings and scenes. Their first home in Ipswich was on Meeting House Green,… Continue reading Sketches of Ipswich by William Gordon Keyworth
The Devil’s Footprint
Imprinted into the rocks in front of the First Church in Ipswich is the footprint of the devil, left there forever in a legendary encounter with the traveling English evangelist George Whitefield in 1740.
Indigenous Peoples of the North Shore
A Brief History of Native Americans in Ipswich Before English Colonization Native Americans began moving into New England after the retreat of the Laurentide ice sheet. In the early 1950s, a group of young amateur archaeologists, men now known as the “Bull Brook Boys,” discovered one of the largest Paleo-Indian sites in North America along… Continue reading Indigenous Peoples of the North Shore
Ipswich and the American Revolution: The Breach with Britain
In John Adams’ 1765 opposition to the Stamp Act, he referenced the citizens of Ipswich who resisted a tax imposed by the Crown in 1687. An Ipswich town meeting on August 11, 1768 approved of "the Conduct of those Gentlemen of the late House of Representatives...when it was required of them at the Peril of their Political Existence." The Town meeting on Dec. 28, 1772 supported the rights of the Colonists as British subjects, and established a Committee of Correspondence to communicate resistance with the Committees of other towns. Delegates from throughout Essex County arrived in Ipswich on Tuesday, Sept. 6, 1774, and by unanimous vote, bound themselves together in establishment of the Provincial Congress for the common safety.
Historic Ipswich 