by David Thayer
“My grandparents, William and Violet Thayer, viewing a solar eclipse in Ipswich, ca. 1934. The second man from the right is William G. Thayer. The woman on the left is Violet. Next to her is her sister, Daisy Otis Smith. The man on the far right is Uncle John Suydam, married to Margaret Thayer. He taught at St. Mark’s and was a member of the class of 1905. The man on the left and the woman sitting next to Grandpa are espoused, and he was also a teacher at St. Marks.”
This house was built by William and Violet Thayer in 1897. Rev. John Cotton Smith and his wife, Harriette, were my grandfather’s uncle and Aunt. My grandfather’s mother was Harriette’s sister, Hannah Fuller Appleton. John Cotton Smith was the rector of the Church of the Ascension, on 10th St. & 5th Avenue, in Manhattan. They summered in Ipswich and lived at Briar Hill, a house at Appleton Farms that was demolished in the 1920s.
John Cotton Smith founded Ascension Church in Ipswich. His son, Roland Cotton Smith, became an Episcopal minister, as did my grandfather. Uncle Roland and Grandpa shared summer sermons at Ascension around the turn of the last century. Uncle Roland married my grandmother’s sister, and the two families bought 50 acres on Mill Road in 1896.
Holiday Hill was built the next year, and the Smiths’ summer home, Cottonfield, at 30 Mill Rd., was built in 1905. These were both summer homes. My grandfather was headmaster of St. Mark’s School in Southborough, and Uncle Roland was first chaplain at Smith College, then rector of St. John’s Church in Washington, DC.
Historic Ipswich 