1 AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASS.
“I know histhry isn’t thrue, Hinnissy, because it ain’t like what I see ivry day in Halsted Street. If any wan comes along with a histhry iv Greece or Rome that’ll show me th’ people fightin’, gettin’ dhrunk, makin’ love, gettin’ married, owin’ th’ grocery man an’ bein’ without hard coal, I’ll believe they was a Greece or Rome, but not befur.” — Dunne, Finley Peter, OBSERVATIONS BY MR. DOOLEY, New York, 1902
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
1. “It was a word applied by the Aborigines to several portions of Massachusetts. It seems to have denoted places, where fish of passage resorted.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
11,500 BCE
Toward the end of the last Ice Age, most of what is now New England was still under an immense sheet of very slowly melting ice, like a mile in thickness, retreating from an edge that at one point had reached as far south as New Jersey. Vegetation was appearing on exposed surfaces: mainly tundra plants such as grasses, sedge, alders, and willows. NEW ENGLAND
However, nearly all areas of the globe had climates at least as warm and moist as today’s. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
10,500 BCE
In this “Paleo Period,” humans began to occupy the New England region sparsely, hunting mastodon and caribou. Spruce forests began to appear, followed by birch and pine. This period would last to about 8,000 BCE. NEW ENGLAND
The beginning of the Younger Dryas. Abrupt cooling in Europe and North America, return of near glacial conditions; in the Near East, an abrupt drought, leading to retreat to oases, possibly related to development of agriculture as a coping strategy. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
10,000 BCE
About 12,000 years ago, the end of the most recent Ice Age and the beginning of our current Interglacial Era. A glacial erratic was left lying in an esker in what would become Weymouth in New England.
Bone-tipped harpoons began to appear in Newfoundland, Iberia, and Central Equatorial Africa. The aboriginal inhabitants of Japan were manufacturing ceramic pottery, not for cooking but for storage of cosmetics and perfumes. New grasslands were springing up while many animal species were going extinct. These ecological changes were causing the people living along the banks of the world’s rivers to establish the first permanent horticultural (literally, “hand-farming”) settlements. We can note, in remains found in agricultural settlements in northeastern Africa, the appearance of small pox. According to one popular theory, early villages provided homes for the young, infirm, and elderly. The rebuttal to that theory is that hand-farming is more time- consuming and at higher risk from ecological or military disaster than either hunting or gathering. Invention of the bow and arrow. Dogs and reindeer were being domesticated. Regardless of why horticulture happened, its impact on the human race was profound, as over the next 2,800 generations the Earth’s human population would be increasing from 4,000,000 to 100,000,000.
In the Mojave Desert, a seed sprouted that would give rise to this creosote bush Larrea tridentata that is still alive (since the plant has been dying toward the center and sending out shoots outward, it is the diameter of its HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
circle that reveals to us that it has now been alive in this same generation for 12,000 years):
“Hey, good enough for me. Why don’t you go away?” HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
8,000 BCE
Little information is available for the New England region during the Early Archaic Period. We know that oaks, pitch pines, and beeches were beginning to flourish. As the glacier melted, it deposited scraped up erosional debris atop the bedrock. Streams stemming from the melting glaciers formed valleys such as the Mill Brook valley. Enormous buried blocks of ice would eventually be creating water-filled depressions in the landscape. These “kettle ponds” would include not only Walden Pond, Fair Haven Bay, and White Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, but also Spy Pond, the Mystic Lakes, and Fresh Pond in Cambridge. NEW ENGLAND
Walden
White
Fair Haven HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
6,000 BCE
A stone projectile period has been found in the New England region, dating to this Middle Archaic period. Clearly, nomadic tribes of Paleo-Indians were moving into New England. Their spear points were made of flint imported from the valleys of the Mohawk River and Hudson River. They were traveling in dugout canoes along the coast of New England and following tributaries far inland. (At this point maize was beginning to be cultivated in Mexico. The flexible-shaft spear, thrown with a stone-weighted spear thrower now termed the “atl-atl,” was the common projectile.) NEW ENGLAND HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
4,000 BCE
During the Late Archaic period, humans were hunting game (caribou?) and marine mammals (seals, etc.), and fishing and gathering, in the region of New England. A warmer, drier climate had been encouraging the seeding of white pine, red pine, oak, and beech trees, which slowly had replaced the post-glacial jack pine, fir, and spruce that had been covering the area. NEW ENGLAND HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
3,000 BCE
The vegetation of what is now New England has become predominantly hardwood, the fresh growth attracting increasing numbers of white-tail deer, moose, black bear, beaver, and turkey. A new tribal people had been attracted to homestead in this environment, the “Late Archaic Indians,” builders of circular homes that ranged from 30 to 66 feet in diameter. NEW ENGLAND HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1,700 BCE
From this point until about 700 BCE on the North American continent, during what we refer to as the “Terminal Archaic” period, there was manufacture and use of soapstone pots, and widespread trade connections. It is possible that a northward migration of Iroquoian-speaking peoples caused separation between eastern and central Algonkian-speaking peoples. NEW ENGLAND HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
700 BCE
During the Early Horticultural period encompassing what some call the Early and Middle Woodland Periods, a period which would last from this point until circa 1,000 CE, there was in the New England area an increased use of ceramics and, in some local areas on western Long Island, the beginnings of a corn/beans horticulture. Trade was widespread throughout the Eastern Woodlands. Shellfish and deer were important food resources. Shell beads and copper beads appeared. Tobacco and pipes became common. Chestnut trees were naturalized in the area. NEW ENGLAND HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
366 BCE
The temple to Concordia was erected in Rome. CONCORD HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
300 BCE
New England natives began growing corn and producing clayware. This period is known as the Ceramic- Woodland period and the tribespeople are termed Algonquians. They constructed wigwams of woven mats and also long houses that might harbor several families. Sizable villages grew around cleared fields; stockades were often erected as a defense against neighboring tribes. NEW ENGLAND HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1000 CE
There appears to have been some population shifting from southwestward, possibly caused by hostile conflict with Iroquoians. During this Late Woodland period there was widespread adoption of horticulture in southern New England. The Wampanoag who were encountered by the European intrusives of the 16th and early 17th centuries were in this phase of their culture.
NEW ENGLAND
During the Late Prehistoric tradition, several cultures arose in different parts of Ohio. People lived in large villages surrounded by a stockade wall. Sometimes they built their villages on a plateau overlooking a river. They grew different plants in their gardens. Maize and beans became the most important foods (squash, another important plant, had been being grown since the Late Archaic).
In what is now North Carolina, people of the Mississippian culture in what we describe as the Piedmont region, were continuing to construct earthwork mounds or add onto existing ones. In the five to seven centuries HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
preceding the initial European contacts, this Mississippian culture would produce large, complex cities and maintain farflung regional trading networks. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
Ipswich, Massachusetts “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1611
Captain Edward Hardie and Nicholas Hobson sailed for North Virginia but touched at Agawam, and the people there met them with kindness. Since this was prior to the plague year of 1617, the population must have been far more numerous at the time of this initial visit, than subsequently they would be. “...The conflicts of Europeans with American-Indians, Maoris and other aborigines in temperate regions ... if we judge by the results we cannot regret that such wars have taken place ... the process by which the American continent has been acquired for European civilization [was entirely justified because] there is a very great and undeniable difference between the civilization of the colonizers and that of the dispossessed natives....” — Bertrand Russell, THE ETHICS OF WAR, January 1915
NO-ONE’S LIFE IS EVER NOT DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HAPPENSTANCE
Ipswich, Massachusetts “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1614
One of the first descriptions of Ipswich was made by Captain John Smith — a description still accurate enough today: “...there are many sands at the entrance of the Harbour... Here are many rising hills, and on their tops and descents are many corn fields and delightful groves ... plain marsh ground, fit for pasture, or salt ponds. There is also Okes, Pines, Walnuts, and other wood to make this place an excellent habitation, being a good and safe harbour.”
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
Ipswich, Massachusetts “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1620
Of what may have been as many as 12,000 Penacook in 30 villages, at the time of the English settlement in the territory of the Massachusett group after devastating epidemics, there remained at this point only a population of about 2,500.2 The small pox had swept through their river villages in three separate waves with at least 75% and sometime with 100% mortality. In language and in lifestyle these natives were virtually identical with the Abenaki of southern Maine, and indeed some classification schemes consider the Pennacook to be the southernmost group of the Abenaki, but at this point the Pennacook still constituted a large, independent confederacy of villages tending to view their Abenaki relatives to the north as actual or potential enemies. This distinction would persist for several generations after the arrival of the white intrusives but, by the beginning of the 18th century, alliances due to conflict with the Bay colonists would have rendered Pennacook and Abenaki indistinguishable not only in language and lifestyle but in politics as well. Regular contact between the Pennacook and English began shortly after the settlement of Plymouth in this year. Although they had met with very few Europeans previous to this, the Pennacook were not entirely unfamiliar with the English, due to the brief attempt by the Plymouth Company to establish a colony on the Kennebec River in 1607 and due to the exploration of the New England coast in 1614 by Captain John Smith. The
2.This name Penacook (or Penicoke, or Penikook) is derived from the Abenaki word penakuk “at the bottom of the hill.” The group was also termed the Merrimack as this was the name of the river along which most of their villages were initially located. Although an alternative form of Wamesit, Pawtucket was commonly used for all Pennacook on the lower Merrimack, while Saco could sometimes mean the Pennacook on the upper river (as well as Pigwacket, Kennebec, and Androscoggin of the eastern Abenaki). Other names for Pennacook were: Nechegansett Opanango They were called the Owaragee by the Iroquois. after 1680, St. Francois Indians (St. Francis)
The Pennacook Confederacy included the following tribes and villages: Accominta Agawam Morattigan (Monchiggan) Nashua (Nashaway) (sometimes said to be Nipmuc) Natticook Naumkeag (Amoskeag, Naimkeak, Namaoskeag, Namaske) Newichawawock (Newichawanoc) Pennacook (Merrimac) Pentucket Piscataqua (Pascataway, Pinataqua, Piscataway) Souhegan (Souheyan, Nacook, Natacook, Natticook) Squamscot (Squam, Squamsauke, Wonnesquam) Wachusett Wamesit (Pawtucket) Weshacum Winnecowet Winnipesaukee (Wioninebesek, Maunbisek, Muanbissek) HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
Pennacook had, unfortunately, gained a favorable impression from such initial encounters with small numbers of visiting white who were on their best behavior. As the Pilgrims began to explore the area north of Plymouth in 1621, they did not have to travel far before they encountered Pennacook. For the most part, these first meetings were friendly. At the time the Pennacook were a confederacy ruled by Passaconnaway from his capital of Naumkeag at the falls of the Merrimack River (Manchester NY). Because of the recent warfare, Passaconnaway exercised considerable authority over the other Pennacook, and had he chosen, his opposition would probably have been fatal to Plymouth. However, the Pennacook lands had been emptied by epidemic and, with his memories of Micmac raids still fresh, this headman decided to ally with the English for mutual protection and for trade. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1621
In the grant of land between the Naumkeag River and the Merrimack River in what is now New Hampshire to Captain John Mason (now known as the Masonian claim of 1621, awarded by a “Council of New England” established in Plymouth, County of Devon, in the name of King James I of England) there appeared a clause clearly having to do with Plum Island: “The great Isle, henceforth to be called, Isle of Mason, lying near or before the bay, harbour, or river of Agawam.”
We are told that the plumbs, which are found on Plumb Island, were plenty, many years since, in various parts of the town. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1628
May 1, Thursday (Old Style): There were only seven whites at Thomas Morton’s trading post (Mount Wollaston or Merrymount). Morton had transformed an 80-foot pine into a maypole, upsetting the authorities at Plymouth. William Bradford complained that at this trading post they “would entertaine any, how vile soever, and all ye scume of ye countrie or any discontents would flock to him from all places,” but Morton would be attacked in June not because he sold firearms but because he had “gone native.” It was an issue of style. Captain Myles Standish would be put in charge of the attack on the settlement (William Jeffrey and Burslem of Agawam would be assessed £2 towards the expenses of his expedition). The Plymouth authorities would arrest Morton. When they “disposed of what he had at his plantation,” they would do so, and know they were doing so, on charges that would be untenable at law in England.3 Then they would abandoned him for an entire chill month on one of the Isles of Shoals4 with only his “thinne suite” to keep him from the cold and damp and only his bare hands with which to find a way to feed himself and defend himself — hoping that he would die before a returning fishing vessel picked him up for farther transport to England and trial.
LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.
3. The warrant for his arrest is not to be found among their colonial records because they knew it to be preposterous and illegal on its face. 4. As they would take him out to the island, they would torch his home ashore in such manner as to ensure that he sighted the rising smoke. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1629
Since the natives of Agawam feared an invasion from the Tarrentines or Eastern Indians, Governor Endicott dispatched a boat with Hugh Brown and others, to defend them. Such aid would be afforded on several occasions.
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
June 13, Saturday (Old Style): “Lord’s day, in the morning, the Sagamore of Agawam and one of his men came on board our ship and stayed with us all day.” This chief was called Masconnomo, but more commonly Masconnomet, and sometimes John. It is evident from the account given by Masconnomet’s grandchildren, when they received of different towns compensation for land which he had owned, that his jurisdiction was extensive. Agawam had reached from the Merrimack on the north to the Naumkeag River, now of Salem, on the south, and from Cochichawick (Andover) on the west to the ocean beach. About 1630, Masconnomet was at Saugus, and with other natives witnessed the sale of Nahant and other land by Black William to William Witter for two pestle-stones.
Ipswich, Massachusetts “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1631
July 5, Tuesday (Old Style): “The Sagamore of Agawam is banished from every Englishman’s house for the space of one year, on the penalty of ten beaver skins.”
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
August 8, Monday (Old Style): “The Tarrentines, to the number of 100, came in three canoes, and in the night assaulted the wigwam of the Sagamore of Agawam, slew seven men, and wounded John Sagamore, and James, and some others, (whereof some died after,) and rifled a wigwam of Mr. Craddock’s men, kept to catch sturgeon, took away their nets and biscuit.” The Sagamore of Agawam was Masconnomet. James was the sachem of a tribe in Saugus and John the sachem of a tribe slightly toward the west. James’s wife and others were carried away.
During this first week of August, at Plymouth, Mary Williams, the wife of the Reverend Roger Williams, had given birth to a daughter who would be christened as Mary.
September 17, Saturday (Old Style): Sagamore James’s wife was recovered from the Tarrentines, and Abraham Shurd of Pemaquid sent her back to Agawam along with a note that wampum and beaver-skins were being demanded as ransom.
Ipswich, Massachusetts “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1633
March: Governor John Winthrop sent his son John Winthrop, Jr. to establish a white settlement at Agawam to be designated Ipswich after a town in east England at the head of the Orwell estuary, the administrative centre of Suffolk and a manufacturing center for agricultural and industrial equipment. John the Younger recruited twelve men and on a chilly day they sailed up the tidal Ipswich River in a shallop and began their settlement on the banks of the river near the present wharf. Here they hoped to obtain the advantages of fresh water, water power, good fishing, and an easy means of transportation. This land was not vacant and unclaimed. The entire neck of land upon which the western part of which the new town would be founded had been called Jeffrey’s Neck after its occupant and claimant, a white man named William Jeffrey, who also bestowed his name upon the creek. This original town was on the location which would afterward become known as Manchester.
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
Ipswich, Massachusetts “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
April 1, Monday (Old Style): The Court of Assistants forbade any to reside in the new town Ipswich without the leave of those already come, specifically: • Mr. John Winthrop, Jr. • John Biggs • William Perkins • Mr. William Clerk • John Gage • Mr. John Thorndike •Robert Coles •Thomas Hardy • William Serjeant • Thomas Howlet Quite obviously there are names missing from this list of the first thirteen intrusives. This is possibly because a couple of these guys would acquire the reputation of drunkards: There were two betrayers of the public weal, even among the first twelve, who accompanied the younger Winthrop to the wilds of Agawam. In these betrayers we have a specimen two centuries old, of the more than brutal degradation, of the enormous iniquity, and of the most painful consequences, to which intoxication has always led some of its votaries, and to which it especially and constantly exposes the whole of them. It would be far better for the temporal and eternal welfare of men to be Rechabites, Nazarenes indeed, — to have their lips never moistened, except with the pure drink, which God in his wisdom has made and has caused to gush from the fountains of earth, than to partake of the choicest wines and spirits, which the perverted genius of science has invented, and thus to continually enlarge the multitudes, who sacrifice themselves on the crowded altars of Intemperance. Various persons –among whom was Great-Great-Great-Great Grandfather Joseph Emerson, the eponymous ancestor in America of Waldo Emerson, and another Great-Great-Great-Great Grandfather, William Moody, not eponymous (the Waldos would shuffle through Ipswich in a slightly later timeframe)– would later be granted right of abode: • Andrews, Robert • Bishop, Thomas •Brown, John • Appleton, Samuel • Bishop, Nathaniel • Beacham, Robert •Avery, Wm. • Bixbey, Nath’l. • Bitgood, Rich’d. • Archer, Henry • Browning, Tho’s. • Bachellor, Henry • Andrews, John • Boreman, Tho’s. •Brewer, Tho’s. • Annable, John • Brown, Edward • Buckley, Wm. • Adams, Wm. • Burnam, John • Bridges, Edmund • Andrews, Richard • Baker, John • Burnam, Thomas •Averil, Wm. • Button, Matthias • Bosworth, Haniel • Appleton, John • Bird, Thos. •Bragg, Edward • Ayres, John • Belcher, Jeremy • Betts, Richard • Bracey, Thomas, Mr. • Bellingham, Rich’d., Mr. •Birdley, Gyles • Bradstreet, Dudley • Bosworth, Nath’l. • Bishop, Job • Bradstreet, Humphrey • Bird, Jathnell • Bixbey, Joseph • Bradstreet, Simon, Mr. • Boreman, Sam’l. • Bartholomew, Wm. • Bachellor, Mr. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
• Carr, George • Dillingham, John • Elliot, — • Curin, Mathias • Dudley, Thomas, Mr. • Easton, Nicholas, Mr.1 • Cross, John • Dudley, Samuel, Mr. • English, Wm. • Cogswell, John, Mr. • Dennison, Daniel, Mr. • Eppes, Dan’l., Mr. • Covengton, John • Dorman, Thomas • Emerson, John •Clark, Daniel •Dix, Widow • Emerson, Joseph • Clark, Thomas • Dane, John • Emerson, Thomas • Cross, Robert •Davis, John • Challis, Phillip • Dane, John, Jr. • Colebeye, Arthur • Duglas, Wm. • Comesone, Symond • Davis, Richard • Cooley, John • Dane, Francis • Cartwright, Michael •Day, Robert • Cachame, Henry • Dennison, John • Crane, Robert • Dutch, Robert • Comings, Isaac • Dix, Ralph • Cachame, Edward • Chute, Lionel •Castell, Robert • Cowley, John • Chelson, Robert •Chapman, Edward •Chute, James • Catchame, John • Clark, Malachi • Choate, John • Cogswell, Wm. • Colborne, Robert
1. After being fined five shillings for coming to Puritan meeting without his weapons, Mr. Nicholas Easton would become a Quaker, and a governor of Rhode Island. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
• Franklin, Wm. • Goodhue, Wm. • Hubbard, Wm., Mr. • Fuller, John • Gardner, Edmund • Hassell, John • Fawne, John, Mr. • Giddinge, George • Haffield, Rich’d. • Fuller, Wm. • Graves, Robert • Hall, Samuel • Fowler, Philip • Gibson, Thomas • Hart, Nathaniel • Foster, Wm. • Greenfield, Samuel • Harris, Thomas • Firman, Tho’s., Mr. • Gilven, Thomas • Heldred, Wm. • French, Tho’s., Mr. • Green, Henry • Hayes, Robert •French, Edward • Gutterson, Wm. • Hovey, Daniel • French, Tho’s., Jr. • Granger, Lancelot • Hauchet, John • Filbrick, Robert • Gilbert, Humphrey • Humphrey, ___ • Firman, Giles, Doct. • Greene, Thomas • Huttley, Richard •Farnum, Ralph • Gillman, Edward •Hadley, George • Fellows, Wm. • Griffen, Humphrey • Hodges, Andrew • Foster, Abraham • Hart, Thomas • French, John •Hoyt, John • Howe, James •Hunter, Robert • Heard, Luke • Heiphar, Wm. • Harris, Anthony • Harris, Thomas • Harindin, Edward
• Jeffrey, Wm. • Knight, Alexander • Lancton, Roger • Jackson, John • Kent, Richard • Lord, Roberrt • Johnson, John • Kinsman, Roberrt • Lamson, Wm. • Jordan, Francis • Kemball, Richard • Ladd, Daniel • Jacob, Richard • Kingsbury, Henry • Lord, Katherine, widow • Jennings, Richard • Knight, Wm., Mr. • Lumkin, Richard • Jordan, Stephen • Kemball, Henry • Lee, John • Knowlton, John • Lee, Tho’s. • Knowlton, Wm. •Lumas, Edward • Knowlton, Tho’s. • Lumas, Richard • Knight, Aleph • Low, Tho’s. • Kemball, Rich’d., Jr. • Lovell, Tho’s. • Long, Sam’l. • Lancton, Joseph • Long, Phillip • Layton, John • Leigh, Joseph HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
• Manning, John • Newman, John • Perkins, John • Moody, Wm. • Norton, John, Mr. • Perkins, John, Jr. • Metcalf, Joseph • Norton, Wm., Mr. • Parker, Thomas, Mr. • Mussey, John •Northe, John • Procter, John • Mussey, Robert • Newmarch, John •Perley, Allen • Merriall, John • Nichols, Richard • Pebody, Francis • Mosse, Joseph • Newman, Tho’s. •Pike, —, Mr. • Morse, John • Purrier, Wm. • Perkins, Isaac • Medcalf, Tho’s. • Osgood, Christopher • Miller, Wm. • Paine, Wm. • Mohey, Robert • Pitney, James • Preston, Roger • Paine, Robert • Perry, Thomas • Pettis, John • Pingrey, Moses • Pinder, Henry • Podd, Daniel • Perkins, Jacob • Pinder, John • Pingrey, Aaron • Podd, Samuel • Pearpoynt, Robert • Pendleton, Bryan, Mr. • Prichard, Wm. •Palmer, George • Potter, Anthony HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
• Quilter, Mark • Shatswell, John •Tuttle, John • Symonds, Mark • Treadwell, —, Mr. • Spencer, John • Treadwell, Edward • Robinson, John • Sewall, Henry, Mr. • Turner, —, Cap. • Rogers, Nath’l., Mr. • Saltonstall, Rich’d., Mr. • Thornton, John • Reading, Joseph • Short, Anthony • Treadwell, John • Rawlinsone, Tho’s. • Short, Henry • Treadwell, Tho’s. • Robinson, John • Symonds, Wm. • Taylor, Sam’l. • Reddin, John •Sayward, Edmund • Thomson, Simon • Roberts, Robert • Saunders, John • Tingley, Palmer • Ringe, Daniel •Sherrat, Hugh • Rawlinsone, Tho’s., Jr. • Scott, Thomas •Roffe, Ezra • Varnum, George • Sherman, Samuel •Roffe, Daniel • Vincent, Humphrey, Mr. • Seaverns, John •Sawyer, Edmund • Symonds, Samuel, Mr. • Silver, Thomas • Sherman, Tho’s. •Scott, Robert • Stacy, Simon • Swinder, Wm. • Smith, Tho’s. •Story, Andrew • Safford, Tho’s. • Scofield, Rich’d. • Setchell, Theophilus • Smith, Richard • Silsbee, Henry • Smith, George •Story, Wm. • Stacy, Tho’s. • Stone, Nath’l. • Scott, Tho’s., Jr. • Satchwell, Richard • Smith, Robert • Salter, Theophilus HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
• Ward, Nath’l., Mr. • Younglove, Samuel • Williamson, Paul • Wyatte, John • Wainwright, Francis • Wells, Thomas • Webster, John • White, Wm. • Whityear, John • Wade, Jona., Mr. • Woodmansee, — Mr. • Wythe, Humphrey, Mr. • Wilson, Theophilus, Mr. • Wedgwood, John • Whitred, Wm. • Williamson, Michael • Warren, Wm. • Wattles, Richard • Whittingham, John, Mr. • Whipple, Matthew • Whipple, John, Mr. • Wilkinson, Henry • Whitman, Robert •Wallis, Robert • Warner, Daniel • Windall, Tho’s. • Wood, Daniel, Cap. • Whittingham, Tho’s., Mr. • Woodman, John • Warren, Abraham • Walderne, Abraham • Ward, John, Doct. • Whipple, John, Jr. • Whitred, Thomas •Walderne, Edward •West, John • Wooddam, John • Warner, John • Wood, Obadiah • Walker, Henry
Over time there would be a number of persons of substance and education going out on this Ipswich venture: • Deputy Governor Thomas Dudley • Magistrate Simon Bradstreet • Magistrate Richard Saltonstall • Magistrate Samuel Symonds • the Reverend Nathaniel Ward • the Reverend John Norton • the Reverend William Hubbard (evidently the father of the William Hubbard who had already been born in England and would go to Harvard and become a minister and a historian) • the Reverend Nathaniel Rogers Note that of the Emersons, Waldos, and Moodys, ancestors to Waldo Emerson, who all came through Ipswich in this 1st HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
generation of the Great Migration, none were ministers. Six generations later, their children all the way from Boston Bay up the lower Maine coast and inland to the towns of Essex and Middlesex counties, would be being born into the expectation of religious leadership, but at first this would not be the case. The theology of this collection of families would be founded upon the “spirit-driven” religiosity of the Reverend Jonathan Edwards of Northampton and then of the Reverend George Whitefield, the British “Grand Itinerant.” Although Waldo Emerson would mention his blood lineal
descent from the Reverend Peter Bulkeley of Concord (see the first paragraphs of his “Historical Discourse in Concord”), he was of course well aware that by the conservative theological and cultural standards of that reverend ancestor, who had been among those sitting in judgment upon Mistress Anne Hutchinson during the theocracy of 1st Church Boston, he himself could be nothing more than a heretic. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
September: The following has been listed in the town records of Ipswich as a “deliverance,” which fundamentally is a theological category. Allegedly the “Tarrentines,” that is, non-local native Americans visiting from the interior, had formed a plot while there were still only 20-30 white men present on the neck of ground that was being settled there, Jeffrey’s Neck, to stage a surprise attack while most of these 20-30 whites had gone out on the water:
Robin, a friendly Indian, came to John Perkins, a young man, living then in a little hut upon his father’s island, on this side of Jeffrey’s Neck, and told him, that, on such a Thursday morning, early, there would come four Indians to draw him to go down the hill to the water-side, to truck with them; which if he did, he and all near him would be cut off; for there were forty birch canoes, which would lye out of light, under the brow of the hill, full of armed Indians for this purpose. Of this, Perkins forthwith acquainted Mr. John Winthrop, who advised him, if such Indians came, to carry it roughly towards them, and threaten to shoot them, if they would not be gone, and, when their backs were turned, to strike up the drum he had with him, besides his two muskets, and to discharge them; so that six or eight young men, who were in the marshes hard by a mowing, having their guns ready charged, might take the alarm, and the Indians would perceive their plot discovered, and haste away to sea again. This was accordingly so acted, and took like effect; for he [Perkins] told me, he presently after discovered forty such canoes sheer off from under the hill, and make as fast as they possibly could to sea; and no doubt but many godly hearts were lifted up to heaven for deliverance.
My own evaluation is that this is likely to have been entirely a figment of the imagination of the one young man offering the testimony, John Perkins, trying to start an interesting race war in which he could posture as a hero, and my own evaluation of the reported response made by John Winthrop the Younger is that very clearly he did not credit the claim being made by young Perkins. Notice that no mention is made of their having sought further testimony from this goodfellow, Robin!
“As the star of the Indian descended, that of the Puritans rose ever higher.” — Tourtellot, Arthur Bernon, THE CHARLES, NY: Farrar & Rinehart, 1941, page 63
September 3, Tuesday (Old Style): An Ipswich man was ordered to pay £10 and stand so long as the court think meet with a white sheet of paper on his back, whereon Drunkard is written in great letters, “for abusing himself shamefully with drink and for enticing his neighbor’s wife to incontinency and other misdemeanors.” The neighbor also was ordered to pay 15s. for drunkenness.
There, as in numerous other lamentable cases since, intoxication led to the commission of crime. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1634
April: William Wood’s NEW ENGLANDS PROSPECT. A TRUE, LIVELY, AND EXPERIMENTALL DESCRIPTION OF THAT PART OF AMERICA, COMMONLY CALLED NEW ENGLAND: DISCOVERING THE STATE OF THAT COUNTRIE, BOTH AS IT STANDS TO OUR NEW-COME ENGLISH PLANTERS; AND TO THE OLD NATIVE INHABITANTS. LAYING DOWNE THAT WHICH MAY BOTH ENRICH THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE MIND-TRAVELLING READER, OR BENEFIT THE FUTURE-VOYAGER,5 published in this year in London by John Dawson, described Boston’s bay: “The chiefe Ilands which keepe out the Winde and the Sea from disturbing the Harbours, are first Deare Iland, which lies within a flight-shot of Pullin-point. This Iland is so called, because of the Deare which often swimme thither from the Maine, where they are chased by the Woolves: Some have killed sixteen Deare in a day upon this Iland.” Deer Island, Long Island, and Hog Island next to Noddle Island in the upper Boston Harbor were leased to the town for 21 years at a rent of £3 per year.6 This NEW ENGLANDS PROSPECT featured a woodcut illustration entitled “The South part of New-England, as it is Planted this yeare, 1634” prepared by Thomas Cotes for John Bellamie. Said map would be reissued in conjunction with another early map, as a lithograph, in 1846 in Boston by William B. Fowle. This map, and the other one, a 1677 map by John Foster (1648-1681), were the 1st to show both the Algonquian name, “Musketaquid,” and the English name, “Concord,” for the 1st
5. A text Henry Thoreau would be frequently citing, involving 17th-Century inventories of American resources. (I have “CNN- colorized” the map from William Wood’s NEW-ENGLAND’S PROSPECT of “The South part of New-England, as it is Planted this yeare, 1634,” prepared by Thomas Cotes for John Bellamie.) 6. Note well that this Hog Island next to Noddle Island is not the Hog Island we know today as Spinnaker Island off the Hull peninsula to the southeast of Boston, nor is it the island that Thoreau referred to in his journal as “Hog Island” for he was speaking of the Isles of Shoals farther out on the waters, and of the one of those sea islands now known as Smuttynose Island on account of a dark mark on the side of the hill. There are three “Hog Island” islands which you will need to keep straight, the big one next to Noddle Island now under East Boston, the one now known as Spinnaker containing a condo community and connected by causeway to Point Allerton, and the Isles of Shoals one now known as Smuttynose. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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inland settlement. Copies of the original maps are at the Boston Public Library and at the Boston Athenaeum. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM HDT WHAT? INDEX
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William Wood reported to the bloody English reading public –people who of course would be fascinated by this sort of thing, consider nothing so fine as to go out and blow away some defenseless innocent thing before theirbreakfast– that “Heathcockes [Heath Hen Tympanuchus cupido cupido] and Partridges [Ruffed Grouse Bonasa umbellus] be common: he that is husband, and will be stirring betime, may kill half dozen in a morning.”
On this woodcut illustration, “Deare Is.” off “pullim poynt” was the only island in the harbor to have a name attached to it:
3 At 214 acres Long Island is the largest, and at 1 /4 miles the longest, of the harbor islands. Deer Island, the 2d- largest in the inner harbor, is nearly a mile long and 210 acres in extent. It, despite being only second in size, has become the island with –without any possibility of doubt or equivocation– the most disgusting history.
“The South part of New-England, as it is Planted this year, 1639,” used as the frontispiece in William Wood’s NEW ENGLANDS PROSPECT, was explained on pages 31-38: The chiefe Ilands which keepe out the winde and the sea from disturbing the Harbours, are first Deare lland [Deer Island], which lies within a flight-shot of Pullin-point. This Iland is so called, because of the Deare which often swimme thither from HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM HDT WHAT? INDEX
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the Maine, when they are chased by the Woolves. Some have killed sixteene Deere in a day upon this Iland. The opposite shore is called Pullin-point, because that is the usuall Channell. Boats use to passe thorow into the Bay; and the Tyde being very strong, they are constrained to goe a shore, and hale their Boates by the seasing, or roades, whereupon it was called Pullin-point. The next Iland of note is Long Island, so called from his longitude. Divers other Ilands be within these: viz. Nodles Ile, Round Ile, the Governours Garden, where is planted an Orchard and a Vine-yard, with many other conveniences; and Slate-Iland, Glasse-Iland, Bird-Iland, &c. These Iles abound with Woods, and Water, and Medow-ground; and whatsoever the spacious fertile Maine affords. The inhabitants use to put their cattle in these for safety, viz. their Rammes, Goates, and Swine, when their Corne is on the ground. Those Townes that lie without the Bay, are a great deale nearer the Maine, and reape a greater benefit from the Sea, in regard of the plenty both of Fish and Fowle, which they receive from thence; so that they live more comfortably, and at lesse charges, than those that are more remote from the Sea in the Inland-plantations.
DEER ISLAND HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
As part of this book’s elucidation of its frontispiece “The South part of New-England, as it is Planted this year, 1639” on pages 31-38, it described the settlement at Ipswich:
IPSWICH
Agowamme [Ipswich] is nine miles to the North from Salem, which is one of the most spacious places for a plantation, being neare the sea; it aboundeth with fish, and flesh of fowles and beasts, great Meads and Marshes and plaine plowing grounds, many good rivers and harbours and no rattle snakes. In a word, it is the best place but one, in my judgement, which is Merrimacke, lying eight miles beyond it, where is a river twenty leagues navigable, all along the river side is fresh Marshes, in some places three miles broad. In this river is Sturgeon, Sammon, and Basse, and divers other kinds of fish. To conclude, the Country scarce affordeth that which this place cannot yeeld. So that these two places may containe twice as many people as are yet in new England: there being as yet scarce any inhabitants in these two spacious places. Three miles beyond the river of Merrimacke is the outside of our Patent for the Massachusets Bay. These be all the Townes that were begun, when I came for England, which was the 15. of August 1633.
WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF
Ipswich, Massachusetts “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
April 3, Thursday (Old Style): Governor John Winthrop walked to Agawam “to prophesy for them on the Sabbath.”
For a long period before watches became so common as in late years, an hour-glass was used to measure the time of religious performances. There is a place still remaining for such a glass, on one side, fronting the Elders’ seat, in the house of the First Parish; and there was another, till within a few years, in the South meeting-house. Hour-glasses were thus employed here till seventy years since. They had been common in Old as well as in New England. In allusion to this fact, a painter, though not in the most delicate manner, represented Hugh Peters, as in a pulpit with a large assembly before him, turning an hour-glass, and using these words, — “I know you are good fellows; stay and take another glass.”
August 4, Monday (Old Style): The Court of Assistants began the practice of referring to Agawam as Ipswich “in acknowledgment of the great honor and kindness done to our people, who took shipping” at that town in England.
September 18, Thursday (Old Style): The Griffin arrived in the harbor of Boston with about a hundred colonists, and cattle for their New World plantations: • WILLIAM HUTCHINSON of Alford, County Lincoln to settle at Boston • Mrs. Anne Hutchinson • Edward Hutchinson • Faith Hutchinson • Bridget Hutchinson HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
• William Hutchinson • Samuel Hutchinson • Anne Hutchinson • Mary Hutchinson • Susanna Hutchinson • NATHANIEL HEATON • Mrs. Elizabeth Heaton • Samuel Heaton • Jabez Heaton • Leah Heaton •Mary Heaton
• Rev. ZACHARIAH SYMMES of Canterbury, County Kent to settle at Charlestown • Mrs. Sarah Symmes • William Symmes • Mary Symmes • Elizabeth Symmes • Huldah Symmes • Hannah Symmes • Rebecca Symmes • THOMAS LYNDE of Dunstable, County Bedford • Mrs. Margaret Lynde • Thomas Lynde • Henry Lynde
• Reverend JOHN LOTHROP of London to settle at Scituate • Mrs...... Lothrop • Thomas Lothrop • Samuel Lothrop • Joseph Lothrop • John Lothrop • Benjamin Lothrop • Jane Lothrop •Barbara Lothrop
• WILLIAM BARTHOLOMEW to settle at Ipswich • Mrs. Mary Bartholomew
• WILLIAM HAINES of Dunstable, County Bedford to settle at Salem • RICHARD HAINES of Dunstable, County Bedford HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1635
In Ipswich one could hear wolves commence their howling soon after sunset, and it was considered inadvisable to pass near woods except during the hours of broad daylight.
At this point fences were commonly being made of palings, that is, narrow boards or poles sharpened on both ends and driven into the ground along a line, fastened together in some manner near the top, and such leaping predators as wolves must have been treating this fencing as if it were not there. A shipment of “wolf-hooks” arrived from England, sent over by Mr. Wilson. Per John Josselyn:
Four mackerel hooks across are bound with a brown thread and then some wool is wrapped round them and they are dipped into melted tallow, till they be as big and round as an egg. This thing, thus prepared, is laid by some dead carcase, which toles the wolves. It is swallowed by them, and is the means of their being taken.
You would need to pay a fine of £1 if your swine damaged someone’s cornfield.
June 7, Sunday: The Act of Surrender of the Great Charter of New England to His Majesty. READ THE FULL TEXT
Captain Nicholas Trerice’s Planter arrived in Boston Harbor. The vessel had sailed from London on April 2nd or 10th (accounts vary). Some of its passengers had been certified from Stepney: • NICHOLAS DAVIES 40 tailor of Wapping Charlestown • Mrs. Sarah Davies 48 • Joseph Davies 13 • William Locke 6 Woburn
• John Maddox 43 sawyer Salem • Robert Stevens 22 sawyer Braintree (?) • John Moore 24 laborer • James Hayward 22 servant • Judith Phippen 16 servant
Some of the Planter’s passengers had been certified from St. Albans in County Herts: • JOHN TUTTLE 39 mercer Ipswich HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
• Mrs. Joan Tuttle 42 • John Lawrence 17 • William Lawrence 12 • Mary Lawrence 9 • Abigail Tuttle 6 • Simon Tuttle 4 • Sarah Tuttle 2 • John Tuttle 1 • Mrs. Joan Antrobus 65 • Mary Wrast 24 • Thomas Greene 15 • Nathan Haford 16 servant • Mary Chittwood 24
• THOMAS OLNEY 35 shoemaker Salem • Mrs. Marie Olney 30 • Thomas Olney, Jr. 3 • Epenetus Olney 1
• GEORGE GIDDINS 25 husbandman of Clapham, county Beds Ipswich • Mrs. Jane Giddins 20 • Michael Williamson 30 servant • Thomas Carter 25 servant • Elizabeth Morrison 12 servant
• MARTIN SAUNDERS 40 currier of Sudbury, Suffolk Braintree • Mrs. Rachel Saunders 40 • Mary Saunders 15 • Leah Saunders 10 • Judith Saunders 8 • Martin Saunders 4 • Mary Fuller 15 servant • Richard Smith 14 servant • Richard Ridley 16 servant
• FRANCIS NEWCOM 30 husbandman Braintree • Mrs. Rachel Newcom 21 • Rachel Newcom 2 1/2 • John Newcom 3/4
• Anthony Stanion 24 glover Boston • Daniel Hanbury 29 • Francis Dexter 13 • William Dawes 15
• EDMOND WEAVER 28 husbandman of Aymestrey, Hereford • Mrs. Margaret Weaver 30 HDT WHAT? INDEX
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• James Weaver 23 stationer of Aymestrey, Hereford
• RICHARD TUTTLE 32 husbandman of Ringstead, NorthantsBoston • Mrs. Anne Tuttle 41 • Anne Tuttle 12 • John Tuttle 10 • Rebecca Tuttle 6 • Isabel Tuttle 70 (probably mother) • Mary Wolhouston 30
• WILLIAM TUTTLE 26 husbandman of Ringstead, NorthantsBoston • Mrs. Elizabeth Tuttle 23 • John Tuttle 3 1/2 • Anne Tuttle 2 1/4 • Thomas Tuttle 1/4 • Cicely Clark 16 •Mary Bill 11 • Philip Atwood 12 • Bartholomew Faldoe 16 • Elizabeth Swayne 20 • Margaret Leach 15 • Hannah Smith 18 • Anne Wells 15
• FRANCIS BUSHNELL 26 carpenter from Berkshire Salem • Mrs. Mary Bushnell 26 • Martha Bushnell 1 • William Lea 16 • Mary Smith 18
• Richard Fenn 27 certified by Alderman Richard Fenn • Thomas Savage 27 tailor of Taunton, Somerset Boston
• RICHARD HARVIE 22 tailor Salem • Mrs. Anne Harvie 22
• Francis Peabody 21 husbandman Ipswich
• WILLIAM WILCOCKSON34 weaver Hartford • Mrs. Margaret Wilcockson24 • John Wilcockson 2
• WILLIAM BEARDSLEY30 Concord and Stratford CT • Mrs. Mary Beardsley 26 • Mary Beardsley 4 • John Beardsley 2 • Joseph Beardsley 1/2 HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
• Allen Perley 27 husbandman Ipswich • William Felloe 24 shoemaker Ipswich • Francis Baker 24 tailor Boston
Other of the Planter’s passengers had been certified from Kingston in County Surrey. • Palmer Tingley 21 miller Ipswich • William Buttrick 20 hostler • Thomas Jewell 27 miller Braintree
Other of the Planter’s passengers had been certified from Sudbury in County Suffolk: • RICHARD HAFFIELD 54 currier Ipswich • Mrs. Martha Haffield 42 •Mary Haffield 18 • Sarah Haffield 14 • Martha Haffield 8 • Rachel Haffield 6 • Ruth Haffield 3 • Alice Smith 40 • Elizabeth Cooper 24 • John Smith 13 • Job Hawkins 15
In the case of other of the Planter’s passengers, no place of origin had been certified. • Mrs. Eylin Hanford 46 of Fremington, Devon Scituate • Margaret Hanford 16 • Elizabeth Hanford 14 • Rodolphus Elmes 15 servant of Southwark, Surrey Scituate • Thomas Stanley 16 servant • Mrs. Sarah Pitney 22 (?) Marshfield • Margaret Pitney 22 • Sarah Pitney 7 • Samuel Pitney 1 1/2 • Rachel Deane 31 HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
August 14, Friday-15, Saturday (Old Style): The 1st hurricane to be recorded in New England’s written historical record was a fierce one indeed, arriving just before dawn on the 14th of August to blow the roofs off the cabins of the Europeans, and sink their ships at sea and in the harbors.7
7. Some 4-foot-long metal tubes jammed into the marshy soil and sediment layers at Succotash Marsh in East Matunuck, Rhode Island (at the west side of the ocean entrance of the Narragansett Bay) by Tom Webb of the Geological Sciences Department of Brown University, have revealed that there has been a series of overwash fans created by storm tidal surges, indicating that seven category-three hurricanes have struck Narragansett lowlands in about the past millennium. The 1st such overwash fan that has been revealed dated to the period 1295-1407CE, the 2nd to the period of roughly the first half of the 15th Century, and the 3rd to approximately 1520CE (give or take a few decades). The 4th such overwash fan obviously dates specifically to this historic storm of the 14th and 15th of August, 1635. NEW ENGLAND HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
The Reverend Richard Mather and his family were aboard the James bound for the New World (he would become the minister in Dorchester), and the previous night they had made their way by moonlight to what they had taken to be a quite safe anchorage among the Isles of Shoals “and there slept sweetly that night, until break HDT WHAT? INDEX
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of day.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
The next morning, however, would bring this great summer hurricane, the most violent storm of the 17th Century along this coast, causing the loss of the Angel Gabriel on Pemaquid Point and the loss of the Avery shallop at Thatcher’s Island off Cape Ann. The James was driven toward Star Island with her sails in tatters after losing three anchors and cables in quick succession. Entirely out of control, it missed the ledges of the island by only a few yards before being driven on by the winds into deeper water: “We shall not forget the passage of that morning until our dying day.”
An old man who was accustomed to go to sea in a small boat accompanied only by his dog, which he had taught to do rudimentary steering at his command, was sailing down the Ipswich River on the morning of the 15th when he was warned of the prospect of the approaching storm. He responded with profanity and he and his dog sailed out never again to be seen.
When the intrusives and the indigenes of the mainland came out of their hiding from the elements after this big one, thousands of trees were down, and some of those trees still standing had had their branches so entangled as to appear to have been braided. As the storm had made its way up through Buzzards Bay, a number of native Americans had taken refuge in substantial trees but had nevertheless been drowned as the sea was raised by the winds by about 20 feet.
This hurricane was the one that knocked down many trees in the district that would later become the town of Concord, which would make it very difficult later for the Selectmen to beat the bounds of the town once per year as was required by the town’s Body of Laws. They would have to clamber over many huge old crossed trunks in the swamps, left by this big wind from before their town was even imagined.
A building which had been taken by the sea at Smuttynose Island later would wash ashore on Manamoyik Cape Cod, and would be in such good condition that the Cape people would be able to repair it and put it to use. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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The bark Angel Gabriel wrecked off Pemaquid Point, Maine. One of the passengers, John Bailey, had left his wife, his son Robert, and one or more daughters behind in England, planning to send for them after he became established in the New World. Although he would survive the storm and the shipwreck, after hearing of what had happened to the Angel Gabriel his family would be afraid to follow him, and they would never be reunited. Here is a partial list of the vessel’s passengers (there’s a complete list on a plaque at Pemaquid): • Captain ROBERT ANDREWSShip’s Master Ipswich
• JOHN BAILEY, Senior, a weaverfrom Chippenham, England Newbury • John Bailey, Jr. born in 1613 • Johanna Bailey (possibly came on a later ship soon after)
• HENRY BECK
• (Deacon) John Burnham • Thomas Burnham • Robert Burnham
• RALPH BLAIDSDELL of Lancashire York, Maine • Mrs. Elizabeth Blaidsdell • Henry Blaidsdell
•WILLIAM FURBER
• JOHN COGSWELL, age 43 Westbury Leigh, Wiltshire Ipswich • Mrs. Elizabeth (Thompson) Cogswell, age about 41 Westbury Leigh, Wiltshire Ipswich • Mary Cogswell, about 18 Westbury Leigh, Wiltshire Ipswich • William Cogswell, about 16 Westbury Leigh, Wiltshire Ipswich • John Cogswell, about 13 Westbury Leigh, Wiltshire Ipswich • Hannah Cogswell, about 11 Westbury Leigh, Wiltshire Ipswich • Abigail Cogswell, about 9 Westbury Leigh, Wiltshire Ipswich • Edward Cogswell, about 6 Westbury Leigh, Wiltshire Ipswich • Sarah Cogswell, about 3 Westbury Leigh, Wiltshire Ipswich • Elizabeth Cogswell, infant Westbury Leigh, Wiltshire Ipswich • SAMUEL HAINES, about 24Apprentice to John Cogswell probably Ipswich, later Dover Point • WILLIAM HOOK •HENRY SIMPSON • JOHN TUTTLE Dover Ipswich, later Dover NH HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1636
March 3, Thursday (1635, Old Style): The General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony decided that no white man could be considered as a candidate to become a freeman, who belonged to any church organized without the approbation of the magistrates plus the approbation of a majority of the existing churches. William Dyer took the oath of loyalty to the Massachusetts Bay Colony and was recognized as a freeman, eligible to vote (Elisha Dyer, Governor of Rhode Island in 1857, would be a descendant).
The colony decided that henceforward Ipswich and five other towns would be allowed to keep a sufficient guard of freemen at home during the general political assemblies of the election period, with these defenders being able to cast their ballots by proxy. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1637
June 15, Thursday (Old Style): Governor John Winthrop visited Ipswich.
September 28, Thursday (Old Style): John Williams and William Schooler were hanged in Boston. • John Williams “was a ship-carpenter, who, being lately come into the country and put in prison for theft, brake out with one John Hoddy, whom, near the great pond, in the way to Ipswich, he murdered, and took away his clothes and what else he had, and went in them to Ipswich, where he had been sent to prison, and was there again apprehended; and though his clothes were all bloody, yet he would confess nothing, till about a week after the body of Hoddy was found.” • William Schooler had been investigated by the magistrates for over a year before being found guilty of having murdered Mary Sholy on the way from Newbury to Piscataquay.
It is well known that such punishment was more necessary, to render the property and lives of the community safe, before the erection of state-prisons, than subsequently. Even now, in cases of extreme atrocity, this punishment, as required by law, seems just and requisite. The criminal, who has forfeited his life and has a reasonable time to prepare for eternity, is more likely to repent and have this preparation, when assured that he must soon stand before his omniscient Judge, than if he was permitted to live out all his days within the walls of a penitentiary. It is a fearful fact, that capital crimes increase in our country, in a greater ration, than its population does. Our chief hope for turning back so dark and portentous a flood, is the increase of pure religion in our nation. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1638
It would have been in about this year that Waldo Emerson’s Great-Great-Great-Grandmother Elizabeth Bulkeley was born. (I don’t know where she was born. However, at this point the man she eventually would marry, Emerson’s Great-Great-Great-Grandfather Joseph Emerson, had already arrived in Ipswich from England.)
The Reverend Cotton Mather, writing in a later timeframe of the Reverend Rogers’s ordination in Ipswich, would offer that “Here was a renowned church, consisting mostly of such illuminated Christians, that their pastors, in the exercise of their ministry, might, in the language of Jerome, perceive that they had not disciples so much as judges.”
Stocks were set up in Ipswich “as a terror to the disorderly.”8 HDT WHAT? INDEX
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March 13, Tuesday (1637, Old Style): Headman Masconnomet signed away for £20 his interest in the land of Ipswich, to John Winthrop, Jr.
I Masconnomet, Sagamore of Agawam, do by these presents acknowledge to have received of Mr. John Winthrop the sum of £20, in full satisfaction of all the right, property, and claim I have, or ought to have, unto all the land, lying and being in the Bay of Agawam, alias Ipswich, being so called now by the English, as well as such land, as I formerly reserved unto my own use at Chebacco, as also all other land, belonging to me in these parts, Mr. Dummer’s farm excepted only; and I hereby relinquish all the right and interest I have unto all the havens, rivers, creeks, islands, huntings, and fishings, with all the woods, swamps, timber, and whatever else is, or may be, in or upon the said ground to me belonging: and I do hereby acknowledge to have received full satisfaction from the said John Winthrop for all former agreements, touching the premises and parts of them; and I do hereby bind myself to make good the aforesaid bargain and sale unto the said John Winthrop, his heirs and assigns for ever, and to secure him against the title and claim of all other Indians and natives whatsoever. Witness my hand.
28th of June, 1638 Witness hereunto, JOHN JOYLIFFE, JAMES DOWNING, THOMAS COYTIMORE, ROBERT HARDING,
MASCONNOMET
his mark.
8. This device and the whipping post would stand until 1794 behind the 1st Parish meetinghouse, where also, generally, the town gallows would be erected, when needed. A “pillory” or public platform would also sometimes be set up on this meetinghouse hill, if a local person needed to be publicly abused “for making haste to be rich by fraudulent practices.”
Having stood upon it as the sentence required, a gazing-stock to the multitude, they would, for the most part, have one or both ears cropped, to mark their offence wherever they should go.... When individuals had done something which bordered on a capital crime, they would be seated on a gallows, with a rope round their neck at one end, and tied to the gallows with the other. This was usually accompanied with whipping. In the early settlement of our country, persons were made to wear a halter, open to public view, for months and years. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1639
In the southwest part of Ipswich, now Middletown, Massachusetts, there was a native plantation at a hill which by 1661 would be being called Will Hill, referring to a native American named William who, as of 1660, seemed to own considerable land.
March 5, Tuesday (1638, Old Style): For having made “lewd attempts,” a man was severely whipped in Boston and in Ipswich and required to wear the letter V on the breast of his outer garment.
Governor John Winthrop’s servant having broken headman Masconnomet’s gun, it was arranged that it be mended. In return for transfer of his interest in the land of the area, Winthrop allowed Masconnomet a lifetime supply of powder to kill fowl and deer.
June: The man who in March had been condemned and severely whipped in Boston and in Ipswich, for having made “lewd attempts,” to wear the letter V on the breast of his outer garment, was at this point “for his apparent reformation” allowed to remove the letter.
November 5, Tuesday (Old Style): Ipswich reimbursed to John Winthrop, Jr. the £20 which he had paid the Sagamore for his interest in their land. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1641
Ipswich was allowed to supply one member of a company in the Bay colony which had a monopoly on all trade with the American natives for beaver and wampum.
In addition to the worship services on the Sabbath, “Lectures” were scheduled at the town meetinghouse of Ipswich at 11AM each Thursday.
In Ipswich, “As money is scarce, and cattle, corn, and other things fallen, workmen are to have less wages and to receive pay in produce.”
Each inhabitant of Ipswich might allow from one to four hogs to wander about — depending on how much property that person owned in the town. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1642
An order was posted at the Ipswich meeting-house forbidding the sale of powder or guns to Indians.
The Seven select men of Ipswich were to see that any children who were being neglected by their parents were employed, learned to read, and came to “understand the principles of religion and the capital laws of this country.” Where necessary and appropriate, such children were to be bound out to service.
As we reflect on the moral transactions of this and other ancient towns, we are compelled to notice one fact, however ominous of evil, however discouraging to our hope. This fact is, that, as such communities have increased in numbers, wealth, and years, so have they departed from the justifiable strictness of their ancestors. We look in vain for that measure of vigilance, promptness, and activity, which the officers of each corporation anciently manifested against the workers of iniquity. We look in vain for the ready obedience, which the vicious were constrained to yield to the commands of their social authorities. Our disease is open before us. Wise and happy shall we be, if we apply the needed remedies.
In Ipswich, whoever left carrion for 24 hours so as to draw wolves in or annoy people, would be fined 5s.
Whosoever kills a wolf is to have — and the skin, if he nail the head up at the meeting-house and give notice to the constables. Also, for the better destroying or fraying away wolves from the town, it is ordered, that by the 1st day of 7th mo., every householder, whose estate is rated £500 and upward, shall keep a sufficient mastive dog; or £100 to £500, shall provide a sufficient hound or beagle, to the intent that they be in readiness to hunt and be employed for the ends aforesaid.
The fine for failure to comply would be 1s. per month until compliance was demonstrated. The General Court of the Bay colony also ordered that if one of these dogs killed a sheep it would immediately be hung and its owner would need to pay double damages to the owner of the sheep. (We may take note that in 1693 in this same cultural context, dogs would be being hung — on charges of witchcraft.)
September: Richard Lovelace went to Holland and France with General Goring, writing on the trip “The Rose” and “The Scrutiny.”
The arms of the Agawam and other tribes, which had been taken from them because it had been suspected that they were intending to rise against the English, were at this point returned to them. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
September 23, Friday (Old Style): At the 1st graduation ceremony of Harvard College, nine BA degrees were granted, including one to William Hubbard who would become minister at Ipswich, and one to John Bulkeley, a son of the minister of Concord, the Reverend Peter Bulkeley, who would start out as a minister but become a physician.
JOHN BULKELEY, son of Rev. Peter Bulkeley, was in the first class of graduates [at Harvard College] in 1642. He returned to England and settled in the ministry at Fordham, but was ejected in 1662. He afterwards lived at Wapping in London, where he practised physic with good success. He died in 1689 aged 70.9
9. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1644
March 8, Friday (1643, Old Style): Masconnomet and four other sagamores placed themselves and their subjects and possessions under the protection and government of the Bay colony and agreed to accept instruction in the Christian religion:
1ST. Will you worship the only true God, who made heaven and earth, and not blaspheme? ANS. “We do desire to reverence the God of the English and to speak well of Him, because we see He doth better to the English, than other gods do to others.”
2D. Will you cease from swearing falsely? ANS. “We know not what swearing is.”
3D. Will you refrain from working on the Sabbath, especially within the bounds of Christian towns? ANS. “It is easy to us, — we have not much to do any day, and we can well rest on that day.”
4TH. Will you honor your parents and all your superiors? ANS. “It is our custom to do so, — for inferiors to honor superiors.”
5TH. Will you refrain from killing any man without just cause and just authority? ANS. “This is good, and we desire so to do.”
6TH. Will you deny yourselves fornication, adultery, incest, rape, sodomy, buggery, or bestiality? ANS. “Though some of our people do these things occasionally, yet we count them naught and do not allow them.”
7TH. Will you deny yourselves stealing? ANS. “We say the same to this as to the 6th question.”
8TH. Will you allow your children to learn to read the word of God, so that they may know God aright and worship him in his own way? ANS. “We will allow this as opportunity will permit, and, as the English live among us, we desire so to do.”
9TH. Will you refrain from idleness? ANS. “We will.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
Along with this exchange of words, Masconnomet and the other sachems presented the white Court with 26 fathoms of wampum and the Court awarded them five coats of two yards of red cloth each and a pot of wine. Squaw Sachem, at Concord, Kutshamikin, sachem at Dorchester, Musconomok, sachem at Ipswich, and Nashacowin and Wassamug,10 two sachems near Wachusett, made a formal submission to the English government on the 8th of March 1644, and put themselves and their subjects under its protection. In their examination, as to their moral and religious views, they express their desire, “as opportunity will serve and English live among them,” to learn “to read God’s word, to know God aright, and to worship him in his own way.” Two sachems (Pumham and Socononocho, near Providence), the preceding June, and Passaconaway, sachem at Merrimack and his sons, on the 20th of the succeeding June, submitted in like manner. Though the motives of these Indians might have been selfish, these were considered encouraging circumstances by the friends of their civilization.11
May 11, Saturday (Old Style): The following order relative to the use of fishheads and offals as fertilizer in the corn fields was passed by the town of Ipswich: “It is ordered that all doggs, for the space of three weeks after the publishinge hereof, shall have one legg tyed up. If such a dogg should break loose and be found in any corne field, doing any harme, the owner of the dogg shall pay the damages. If a man refuse to tye up his dogg’s legg, and hee bee found scraping up fish in the corne field, the owner shall pay 12s., besides whatever damage the dogg doth. But if any fish their house lotts, and receive damage by doggs, the owners of those house lotts shall beare the damage themselves.”
10. The Rev. Samuel Danforth, in his Almanack for 1647, spells these names as follows: Cutchamakin, Mascanomet, Wassamegen, Nathawanon. 11. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1645
February 25, Tuesday (1644, Old Style): “Whereas a plott of the cow-common on the north side of the river, containing by estimation three thousand two hundred and forty-four acres more or less, was presented unto the freemen of the town the day and year above written; the freemen do give and grant unto the inhabitants of the town with themselves, their heirs, and successors for ever, (viz. all such as have right to commonage,) all the aforesaid common to be improved as aforesaid.” IPSWICH HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1646
The “mechanics” of Ipswich (which is to say, all ablebodied workers who were not farmers) were put on notice that if there was danger that the local farmers might lose part of a crop, they would be called upon to provide farm labor.
An Ipswich constable was required to carry, as a sign of his office, a staff, five feet or five feet and a half long, tipped on the upper end with five or six inches of brass.
Writing of the Ipswich River, Johnson commented:
A faire and delightful river, whose first rise or spring begins about twenty-five miles farther up the country, issuing forth a very pleasant pond. But soon after, it betakes its course through a most hideous swamp of large extent, even for many miles, being a great harbour for bears. After its coming forth this place, it groweth larger by the income of many small rivers, and issues forth in the sea, due east against the Island of Sholes, a great place of fishing for our English nation. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1647
In Boston in this curious year were being published Nathaniel Ward’s THE SIMPLE COBBLER OF AGAWAM, ridiculing female fashions, and the Reverend John Cotton’s THE BLOODY TENENT WASHED. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1648
A Massachusetts court proposed that a special “witch finder” be appointed, to monitor persons suspected of witchcraft.
A William Bulkley settled in Ipswich. I don’t know whether he was any relation to the Bulkeleys of Concord. His wife Sarah, who had come over in 1643, would bear a son William who would die in 1660. They would remove to Salem where Sarah would in 1692 be indicted for witchcraft but acquitted. He would die on June 2, 1702, at the age of 80.
December 19, Tuesday (Old Style): Joseph Emerson became a freeman of Ipswich. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1649
2 October 17, Wednesday (Old Style): Ipswich was allocated /5ths of Plum Island, for obtaining thatch for the roofs of the houses of the town.
We are told that the plumbs, which are found on Plumb Island, were plenty, many years since, in various parts of the town. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1650
May 27, Monday (Old Style): William Adams, Junior was born in Ipswich, Massachusetts to William Adams (1620- 1659) and Elizabeth Stacy Adams (1624-1655).12 I was born a sinner into an evil world.
12. For the history of this Adams family of Ipswich, refer to Kenneth L. Bosworth’s 1996 genealogy study, WILLIAM ADAMS, 1594- 1661, OF IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS, AND SOME OF HIS DESCENDANTS: A HISTORY OF THE ANCESTRAL ADAMS LINEAGE OF MADELINE (ADAMS) WHITEHEAD AND DESCENDANTS OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS OF MOUND CITY, KANSAS WITH DETAILS OF RELATED FAMILIES, INCLUDING : DICKINSON, KNOWLTON, LEACH, LOCKE ... (Heritage Books). HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1652
“Granted Thomas Clark and Reginal Foster, that when they shall have cut through a passage from [Ipswich River] into Chebacco River, of ten feet wide and soe deepe as a lighter may pass through laden, and to make a ford and foote-bridge over, that then the town [Ipswich] have given unto them £10 towards said passage.” CANALS
Thomas Urquhart’s THE DISCOVERIE OF A MOST EXQUISITE JEWEL and PANTOCHRONICON.
Joseph Emerson had married for the 1st time, with Elizabeth Woodmansey, daughter of Robert Woodmansey of Cherry Burton, Yorts, England, who was a schoolmaster in Boston. This union in this year produced Joseph Emerson in Wells, Maine (she would die before 1665).13
April 17, Saturday (Old Style): Slightly prior to this date, Peckanaminet of Ipswich, also known as Ned and sometimes as Acocket, had mortgaged about eight miles square of land north of the Merrimack River, eight or ten miles from Andover, for £30.
May 22, Saturday (Old Style): As there was but one prison in all of the Bay colony it was ordered that a second one be erected, at Ipswich.
September 28, Tuesday (Old Style): A man was sentenced at Ipswich court to pay 20s. or be whipped for “having familiarity with the devil.” WITCHES
13. This Joseph Emerson would produce Edward Emerson, who would produce Joseph Emerson, who would produce William Emerson, who would produce Ralph Waldo Emerson. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1655
February 21, Wednesday (1654, Old Style): “Left to the seven men to grant to the Sagamore six acres of planting land, where they shall appoint, for to plant, but not propriety to but himself.” IPSWICH HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1656
The compensation of the keeper of the new Bay colony house of correction at Ipswich, Theophilus Wilson, was set at £3 a year, 5s. for each prisoner. All prisoners were to pay him for their board “and attendance,” with those not able to pay “to be kept on bread and water.” By law the town’s selectmen were required to keep this prison supplied with flax and hemp for work. The 1st Church of this town voted as follows: • We look at children of members in full communion, which are about fourteen years old when their father and mother joined the Church, or were born since, to be members in and with their parents. • We look at such children under the care and watch of our Church, and as they grow up to be about fourteen years old, to be liable to our Church censures in case of offence and scandal. • We look at it as the duty of Elders and brethren to endeavour, in their respective places, to instruct them, and to call upon them to know the Lord, and to carry it according to the rules of the Gospel. • We look upon it as the Elder’s duty to call upon such children, being adults, and are of understanding, and not scandalous, to take the covenant solemnly before our assembly. • We judge that the children of such adult persons, that are of understanding, and not scandalous, and shall take the covenant, that their children shall be baptized. • That notwithstanding the baptizing the children of such, yet we judge, that those adult persons are not to come to the Lord’s table, nor to act in Church votes, unless they satisfy the reasonable charity of the Elders or Church, that they have a work of faith and repentance in them. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1658
Ipswich granted “liberty to the inhabitants, with such others as shall join with them, to set up a blomary for to make iron at Chebacco River.”
June 18, Friday (Old Style): Headman Masconnomet of the Agawam had died, for we find in Ipswich records:
“Granted the Sagamore’s widow to enjoy that parcel of land, which her husband had fenced in, during the time of her widowhood.” He had been interred with his gun on Sagamore Hill but some well-intentioned person would soon be digging him back up to mount his skull atop a pole and parade it through the streets of the town. DIGGING UP THE DEAD HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1659
William Adams of Ipswich, Massachusetts was left an orphan at the age of 9 years. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1660
William Jeffrey laid formal claim to the neck bearing his name, Jeffrey’s Neck, in the limits of Ipswich, and was granted five hundred acres of land on the south side “of our patent, to be a final issue of all claims by virtue of any grant, heretofore made by any Indians whatsoever.” This was on the peninsula later to be known as Manchester.
March 15, Thursday (1659, Old Style): An Ipswich town ordinance having to do with commonage: “For as much as it is found by experience, that the common lands of this town are overburdened by the multiplying of dwelling- houses, contrary to the interest and meaning of the first inhabitants in their granting of house-lots and other lands to such as came among them: to the end such inconveniences may be prevented for the future, it is ordered that no house, henceforth erected, shall have any right to the common lands of this town, nor any person, inhabiting such house, make use of any pasture, timber, or wood, growing upon any of said common lands, on pretext of any right or title belonging to any such house hereafter built, without express leave of the town. It is further ordered, that the Seven men, in behalf of the town, petition the next General Court for the confirmation of this order.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1661
Why were wolves such a hot topic in Ipswich? –A good deal of the town’s income was coming from supplying meat to Boston. It was arranged at this point that Haniel Bosworth and Henry Osborn would function as the town’s cowherds, to watch over its herd of cows on the north side of the Ipswich River each year from May 1 to October 20. For 13s. per week one of them was to go out with the cows a half hour after sunrise and bring them home a little before sunset, “a peck of corn a head at their going out, one pound of better or half peck of
wheat in June, and the rest of his pay at the end of his time, whereof half to be paid in wheat or malt; the pay to be brought to his house within six days after demanded, or else to forfeit 6d. a head more.” The other of the pair of town cowherds was to take the cows in Scott’s Lane, and blow a horn at the meetinghouse green in the morning. Hog-Reeves, town officials who regulated the local swine, were also appointed, and Robert Roberts was retained to keep the town’s flock of sheep on Jeffrey’s Neck from April 8th to end of October and to have a shepherd (not a “sheep-reeve”!) follow them constantly. He was to have £13 per year for making sure this was taken care of. Meanwhile the town arranged for Robert Whitman to be keeping another of its flocks of sheep on the north side of the Ipswich River, at 10s. per week to be paid in “half English and half Indian” grain.
May 24, Friday (Old Style): The town of Ipswich granted to George Smith 200 acres, for £25, that had originally been adventured in 1628 by John Smith. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1663
John Josselyn, Gent., visiting Ipswich, commented on the use of tobacco in England: “It is generally made the compliment of our entertainments and hath made more slaves than Mahomet.”
April 16, Thursday (Old Style): The town of Ipswich ordained “that no man shall cut any grass on Plumb Island before the 10th of July, nor any family use above two scythes at a time.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1664
March 15, Tuesday (1663, Old Style): The town of Ipswich voted that it would grant no more land. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1665
From this year to 1703 the Reverend William Hubbard would serve as the minister to the church in Ipswich, Massachusetts.
The English took over some more Nipmuc lands by means of their Brookfield Purchase, from the natives of Quabaug to several inhabitants of Ipswich. The purchase was fair and square although there is some question as to what might have happened to the natives had they chosen to be “unreasonable.” Whites got the best farmlands in the river valleys, leaving the Nipmuc –who depended heavily on agriculture– with a serious difficulty in feeding themselves. The Nipmuc of course got Christianity in return for their title generosity, which any way you slice it is a really great deal. This would be the last land deal with the Nipmuc prior to “King Phillip’s War”.
February 14, Tuesday (1664, Old Style): The town of Ipswich “voted that Plumb Island (the part belonging to Ipswich), Hog Island, and Castle Neck be divided to such, as have the right to commonage, in the proportion of 4, 6, 8; that all who do not exceed 6s. 8d., in their person and estates, in a single country rate, to be of 4; those not exceeding 16s., in such a rate to be of six; those above 16s., together with magistrates, elders, Messrs. John Rogers and Thomas Andrews, to be of 8.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1666
The town of Ipswich dealt with its paupers:
“An individual supported by the town, is to be let out.”
May 1, Tuesday (Old Style): Thomas Emerson of Ipswich died. Here are 5 generations of his descendants: Generation One 1. Thomas1 Emerson; m. Elizabeth Brewster; d. 1 May 1666 at Ipswich, Mass. Children of Thomas1 Emerson and Elizabeth Brewster were as follows: * i. Thomas2. * ii. Robert; m. Frances (--?--); baptized 24 May 1612 at Herts, Bishop Stortford, England; m. Elizabeth Grave 22 Oct 1635 at Herts, Bishop Stortford, England; m. Anna Grant 4 Nov 1658 at Rowley, Essex, Mass; d. 25 Jun 1694 at Haverhill, Essex, Mass, at age 82. He left a will on 3 May 1694; dated this date and probated 23 July, 1694. * iii. Benjamin; baptized 2 Oct 1614 at Herts, Bisshop Stortford, England; d. 27 Oct 1614 at Herts, Bishop Stortford, England. * iv. Ralfe; baptized 19 Oct 1615 at Herts, Bishop Stortford, England; d. 8 Jun 1626 at Herts, Bishop Stortford, England, at age 10; killed by falling from a tree. * v. James; baptized 16 Feb 1617 at Herts, Bishop Stortford, England; d. 1664 at Tangiers; will proved on this date. He mentioned in his fathers will: “ If he shall come over into this country ( or send a certificate of his being living) in 1653. * 2. vi. Joseph, b. 25 Jun 1620 at Herts, Bishops Stortford, England; m. Elizabeth Woodmansey; m. Elizabeth Bulkeley. * vii. Elizabeth; m. John Fuller; baptized 14 Jun 1623 at Herts, Bishops Stortford, England. * 3. viii. John, m. Ruth Symonds; b. 26 Feb 1625 at Herts, Bishops Stortforf, England. * 4. ix. Nathaniel, m. Sarah (--?--); m. Lydia Wells; b. 18 Jul 1630 at Herts, Bishop Stortford, England. * x. Susan; baptized 17 Mar 1632 at Herts, Bishops Stortford, England. Generation Two 2. Joseph2 Emerson (Thomas1); baptized 25 Jun 1620 at Herts, Bishops Stortford, England; m. Elizabeth Woodmansey circa 1646; m. Elizabeth Bulkeley 7 Dec 1665; d. 3 Jan 1680 at Concord, Middlesex, Mass, at age 59. He lived in 1638 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; admitted freemen here in 1648. Children of Joseph2 Emerson and Elizabeth Woodmansey both b. at Wells, ME, were as follows: * 5. i. Joseph3, b. circa 1648; m. Mary (--?--). * 6. ii. James, b. circa 1650; m. Sarah Ingersoll. Children of Joseph2 Emerson and Elizabeth Bulkeley were as follows: * 7. i. Ebenezer3, m. Bethia Parker; m. Mary Boutwell. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
* 8. ii. Daniel, m. Jane Armitage. * iii. Lucy Ann; b. 2 Oct 1667; m. Thomas Damon 15 May 1683; d. 1740. * 9. iv. Edward, b. 26 Apr 1670 at Mendon, Worcester, Mass; m. Rebecca Waldo. * 10. v. Peter, b. 1673 at Mendon, Worcester, Mass; m. Anna Brown. 3. John2 Emerson (Thomas1); m. Ruth Symonds; baptized 26 Feb 1625 at Herts, Bishops Stortforf, Englanf; d. 2 Dec 1700 at Gloucester, Mass, at age 75. He (an unknown value). He lived on 19 Dec 1648 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; took freeman oath. He was graduated in 1656 at Harvard College, Boston, Mass. He left a will on 3 Feb 1698; bequethed to his wife Ruth three farms in Ipswich; mentions son John, daughters Ruth Newman, Martha Cogswell, Mary Phillips, and Dorothy. Children of John2 Emerson and Ruth Symonds were as follows: * i. Mary3; b. 7 Mar 1655 at Gloucester, Essex, Mass; m. Samuel Phillips, son of Samuel Phillips and Sarah Appleton, 26 Mar 1687; d. 4 Oct 1703 at Salem, Essex, Mass, at age 48. * ii. Ruth; b. 26 Aug 1660; m. John Newman 1 Dec 1683; m. Samuel Sargeant after 1700. * iii. Martha; b. 28 Nov 1662 at Gloucester, Essex, Mass; m. William Cogswell, son of William Cogswell and Susanna Hawkes, 9 Oct 1685 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. * iv. Elizabeth; b. 26 Aug 1667; d. 1683. * 11. v. John, b. 14 May 1670 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; m. Mary Batter. * vi. Dorothy; b. 6 Jul 1675. * vii. Samuel; b. 20 Nov 1678; d. 4 Dec 1687 at age 9. 4. Nathaniel2 Emerson (Thomas1); m. Lydia Wells; m. Sarah (--?--); baptized 18 Jul 1630 at Herts, Bishop Stortford, England; d. 29 Dec 1712 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass, at age 82. He testified that he was age 28; and again in 1691 that he was age 60 in 1659. Children of Nathaniel2 Emerson and Sarah (--?--) were as follows: * i. Hannah3; m. Beamsley Perkins Sep 1698. * ii. Elizabeth; m. James King; d. 30 Jan 1715. * 12. iii. John, b. 1654 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; m. Sarah (Carter) Stowers. * 13. iv. Nathaniel, b. 16 Aug 1657 at Ipswich, Essex, NH; m. Martha Woodward. * v. Sarah; b. 15 Mar 1658 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. * 14. vi. Thomas, b. 1670; m. Phillippa Perkins. There were no children of Nathaniel2 Emerson and Lydia Wells. Generation Three 5. Joseph3 Emerson (Joseph2, Thomas1); b. circa 1648 at Wells, ME; m. Mary (--?--) circa 1677; d. circa 1706 at Boston, Mass. Children of Joseph3 Emerson and Mary (--?--) both b. at Boston, Mass, were as follows: * i. Mary4; b. 13 Jul 1677; m. Robert Noakes, son of Robert Noakes, 17 Aug 1699. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
* ii. Jane; b. circa 1680; m. Thomas Orcutt, son of Thomas Orcutt, 29 Nov 1703. 6. James3 Emerson (Joseph2, Thomas1); b. circa 1650 at Wells, ME; m. Sarah Ingersoll circa 1686; d. 1756 at Mendon, Worcester, Mass. Children of James3 Emerson and Sarah Ingersoll were as follows: * i. Sarah4; m. Daniel Hall 4 Nov 1709. * ii. Elizabeth; b. 6 Mar 1687 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; m. Joseph Taft, son of Robert Taft, 1708; d. 1760 at Uxbridge, Worcester, Mass. * 15. iii. James, b. 13 Mar 1692 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; m. Sarah Lock; m. Sarah Marsh. * 16. iv. John, b. 9 Jun 1694 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; m. Mary Rice. * v. Joseph; b. 18 Dec 1696 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; d. 1745 at Falmouth, ME. * vi. Ebenezer; b. 1698 at Mendon, Worcester, Mass; m. Elizabeth Walcott 20 Feb 1730. * 17. vii. Nathaniel, b. 19 Aug 1701 at Mendon, Worcester, Mass; m. Johanna (--?--); m. Mary (Burnham) Stimpson. 7. Ebenezer3 Emerson (Joseph2, Thomas1); m. Bethia Parker 1707; m. Mary Boutwell 1716; d. 1751. Children of Ebenezer3 Emerson and Bethia Parker were as follows: * 18. i. Nathaniel4, b. 31 Mar 1705 at Reading, Mass; m. Hephzibah Burnap. * ii. Bethia; b. 27 Jul 1709 at Reading, Mass; m. Nathaniel Parker 14 Apr 1731. * iii. Susan; b. 8 Mar 1713 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass; m. Isaac Burnap, son of Joseph Burnap, 19 Feb 1736. Children of Ebenezer3 Emerson and Mary Boutwell all b. at Reading, Middlesex, Mass, were as follows: * 19. i. Ebenezer4, b. 6 Jan 1716; m. Lydia (--?--); m. Anna Nichols; m. Rebecca Putnam. * 20. ii. James, b. 9 Jan 1720; m. Mary Farrar; m. Elizabeth Nichols. * 21. iii. Joseph, b. 3 Nov 1721; m. Phebe Upton. * 22. iv. Thomas, b. 12 Jul 1724; m. Elizabeth Bruce; m. Mary Dresser. 8. Daniel3 Emerson (Joseph2, Thomas1); m. Jane Armitage, daughter of Timothy Armitage and Johanna Richardson, 19 May 1709. Children of Daniel3 Emerson and Jane Armitage were as follows: * i. Johanna4; b. 2 Oct 1710 at Boston, Mass; m. James Hardin 1731. * ii. Timothy; b. 10 Oct 1712 at Boston, Mass; m. Mary McMechan 28 Feb 1741. * 23. iii. Edward, b. circa 1714; m. Hannah (--?--). 9. Edward3 Emerson (Joseph2, Thomas1); b. 26 Apr 1670 at Mendon, Worcester, Mass; m. Rebecca Waldo 27 Jan 1697; d. 9 May 1743 at Malden, Mass, at age 73. He lived between 1705 and 1713 at Charlestown, Suffolk, Mass. Children of Edward3 Emerson and Rebecca Waldo were as follows: * 24. i. Joseph4, b. 20 Apr 1700 at Chelmsford, Middlesex, Mass; m. Mary Moody. * ii. Elizabeth; b. 19 Apr 1701. * 25. iii. Edward, b. 8 May 1702 at Chelmsford, Middlesex, Mass; m. Hannah Beale. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
* iv. Hannah; b. 26 Apr 1704; d. 2 Feb 1705. * 26. v. John, b. 27 Feb 1706 at Chelmsford, Middlesex, Mass; m. Elizabeth Pratt. 10. Peter3 Emerson (Joseph2, Thomas1); b. 1673 at Mendon, Worcester, Mass; m. Anna Brown, daughter of John Brown and Anna Fiske, 11 Nov 1696; d. 1751. Children of Peter3 Emerson and Anna Brown were as follows: * i. Anna4; b. 6 Jul 1697; d. 11 Aug 1697. * ii. Elizabeth; b. 20 Feb 1699 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass; m. Elias Smith, son of Francis Smith and Ruth Maverick, 31 Dec 1724. * iii. Anna; b. 9 Mar 1701 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass; d. 15 Feb 1781 at Hollis, NH, at age 79; Gravestone- “Erected to the memory of Mrs. Anna Emerson, sister of Rev. Daniel Emerson, who departed this life February ye 15th, 1788, in the 87th year of her age.” * 27. iv. Brown, b. 16 Apr 1704 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass; m. Sarah Townsend. * v. Lucy; b. 1706 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass; d. 1735. * vi. Sarah; b. 8 Nov 1708 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass. * vii. Jane; b. 11 Mar 1711 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass. * viii. Mary; b. 20 Dec 1713 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass; m. Jonas Eaton 3 Aug 1738 at Salisbury, Essex, Mass. * 28. ix. Daniel, b. 20 May 1716 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass; m. Hannah Emerson. * x. Katherine; b. 2 Dec 1718 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass; m. Josiah Conant, son of Roger Conant and Mary Raymond, 9 Feb 1746; m. Moses Thurston, son of Abner Thurston, 17 Dec 1777; d. 2 Aug 1809 at Hollis, NH, at age 90. 11. John3 Emerson (John2, Thomas1); b. 14 May 1670 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; m. Mary Batter, daughter of Edmond Batter, 14 May 1696; d. 21 Jun 1732 at Portsmouth, NH, at age 62. He lived on 24 May 1703 at New Castle, NH; ordained ; settled in New Castle as the first minister of the town until 1712. Children of John3 Emerson and Mary Batter were as follows: * i. Mary4; m. Francis Winkley 12 Nov 1724. * ii. Elizabeth. * iii. Ann. * iv. Sarah. * v. Margarett; baptized 13 Jun 1712 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. * vi. John; baptized 22 Nov 1713 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; d. 7 Jan 1714 at New Castle, NH. * vii. Dorothy; b. 17 Jun 1715 at New Castle, NH; m. Elihu Gunnison, son of Elihu Gunnison and Mary Rollins, 8 Jun 1738; d. 1753 at Kittery, ME. 12. John3 Emerson (Nathaniel2, Thomas1); b. 1654 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; m. Sarah (Carter) Stowers 1699 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; d. 24 Feb 1712 at Salem, Essex, Mass. He lived; Charlestown and Salem. Children of John3 Emerson and Sarah (Carter) Stowers were: HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
* i. Sarah4; b. 7 Aug 1695 at Charlestown, Suffolk, Mass; m. Richard Foster circa 1717 at Charlestown, Suffolk, Mass; d. 16 Nov 1724 at Charlestown, Suffolk, Mass, at age 29. 13. Nathaniel3 Emerson (Nathaniel2, Thomas1); b. 16 Aug 1657 at Ipswich, Essex, NH; m. Martha Woodward, daughter of Ezekiel Woodward and Ann Beamsley, 1 Feb 1685; d. 16 Sep 1738 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass, at age 81. He was military served under Major Appleton during the Narragansett Campaign. In 1735 his son Stephen, drew the right to his land claim at Narragansett No. 1 in 1675. He sold land on Bar Island to Benjamin Studley on 14 Jan 1734 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. Children of Nathaniel3 Emerson and Martha Woodward were as follows: * 29. i. Stephen4, m. Mary (--?--); m. Lydia Norman. * 30. ii. Nathaniel, b. 26 Dec 1686 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; m. Elizabeth Whipple. * iii. Mary; m. Jacob Tilden; b. 18 Dec 1687 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. * 31. iv. Joseph, b. 26 Jun 1690 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; m. Abigail Perkins. * v. Mary; b. 19 Jan 1691 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; d. before 1697. * vi. Brewster; b. 28 Jun 1695 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; m. Thankful Howland 4 Apr 1728 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. * vii. Mary; b. 18 Dec 1697 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. * viii. Hannah; b. 5 Dec 1698 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; m. Michael Farley 15 Apr 1724 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; m. Abel Huse 22 Apr 1738. * ix. Anna; b. 4 Sep 1700 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; m. Benjamin Studley 2 Jun 1739 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. 14. Thomas3 Emerson (Nathaniel2, Thomas1); b. 1670; m. Phillippa Perkins, daughter of Jacob Perkins and Sarah Wainwright, 20 Nov 1685 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; d. 14 Apr 1738 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. He Will of Thomas Emerson Sr, of Chebacco dated 14 March 1738, probated 4 January 1747. Children named; Sarah Hunt, Elizabeth Smith, Mary wife of Stephen Story, Mehitable Burnam, and son Thomas to be executor, and to him given the remaining estate, excepting household goods. He left a will on 14 Mar 1738; probated January 4, 1738. Children of Thomas3 Emerson and Phillippa Perkins were as follows: * i. Elizabeth4;Elizabeth Emerson; m. Francis Goodhue 5 Jan 1733. * ii. Phillipa; m. John Hurlburt 9 Apr 1759 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. * iii. Mehitable; m. Solomon Burnham, son of Jacob Burnham and Mehetabel Perkins, 13 Nov 1729 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; d. 23 Aug 1792 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. * iv. Sarah; b. 6 Jul 1691 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; m. William Hunt, son of William Hunt and Sarah Newman, 11 Nov 1710 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. * v. Elizabeth; b. 16 Jul 1693 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. * vi. Thomas; b. 3 Mar 1697 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; d. before 1699 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. * 32. vii. Thomas, b. 4 Jun 1699 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; m. Sarah (--?--). * 33. viii. Mary, b. 20 Apr 1704 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; m. Stephen Story. Generation Four HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
15. James4 Emerson (James3, Joseph2, Thomas1); b. 13 Mar 1692 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; m. Sarah Lock 21 Feb 1722; m. Sarah Marsh circa 1734. Children of James4 Emerson and Sarah Lock all b. at Uxbridge, Worcester, Mass, were as follows: * i. Sarah5; b. circa 1724; m. Micah Thayer 2 Feb 1757. * ii. James; b. 1726; m. Elizabeth Emerson, daughter of Thomas Emerson, 27 Oct 1752 at Uxbridge, Worcester, Mass. * 34. iii. Jonathan, b. 1 Jan 1729; m. Sarah Marshall. * iv. Abigail; baptized 17 Sep 1732; m. Philip Cody 12 Aug 1754. Children of James4 Emerson and Sarah Marsh were as follows: * i. Elizabeth5; b. 23 Aug 1735 at Uxbridge, Worcester, Mass; m. Nathan Marsh 18 Oct 1759. * ii. Rebecca; b. circa 1737; d. circa 1737. 16. John4 Emerson (James3, Joseph2, Thomas1); b. 9 Jun 1694 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; m. Mary Rice 23 Nov 1721; d. 1780 at Uxbridge, Essex, Mass. Children of John4 Emerson and Mary Rice were as follows: * i. John5; b. 6 Sep 1722 at Uxbridge, Worcester, Mass; m. Mary Wood 27 Feb 1745. * ii. Thomas; b. 2 Feb 1725 at Uxbridge, Worcester, Mass; m. Abigail Marsh 25 Nov 1748; d. 13 Oct 1796 at age 71. * iii. Mary; b. 17 Sep 1730 at Uxbridge, Worcester, Mass. * iv. Luke; b. 14 Oct 1733 at Uxbridge, Worcester, Mass; m. Ruth Emerson, daughter of Thomas Emerson and Sarah (--?--), 30 Apr 1755. * v. Ezekiel; b. 14 Oct 1733 at Uxbridge, Worcester, Mass; m. Catherine Dorr 27 Mar 1760; d. 9 Nov 1815 at age 82. * vi. Sarah; b. 14 Jan 1740 at Uxbridge, Worcester, Mass; m. Thomas Sabin 1 Jan 1763; m. John Haskins 29 Nov 1764. * vii. Phebe; b. 17 Aug 1743 at Uxbridge, Worcester, Mass. * viii. Hannah; b. 29 Mar 1747 at Uxbridge, Worcester, Mass; m. Matthew Darling 29 Oct 1767. * ix. James; b. circa 1750. 17. Nathaniel4 Emerson (James3, Joseph2, Thomas1); b. 19 Aug 1701 at Mendon, Worcester, Mass; m. Johanna (--?- -) circa 1728; m. Mary (Burnham) Stimpson 15 Nov 1747 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. Children of Nathaniel4 Emerson and Johanna (--?--) all b. at Mendon, Worcester, Mass, were as follows: * i. Reuben5; b. 9 Apr 1729. * ii. Tryal; b. 24 Sep 1730; d. 2 Sep 1734 at Mendon, Worcester, Mass, at age 4. * iii. Lois; b. 16 Feb 1732. * iv. Simeon; m. Persis Davenport; b. 16 Feb 1732; d. 7 Feb 1825 at age 93. * v. Jacob; b. 13 Apr 1735; d. 14 Feb 1736 at Mendon, Worcester, Mass. * vi. Oliver; b. 7 Apr 1737. * vii. Nathaniel; b. 4 Apr 1741; m. Mary Jefferson 15 Apr 1762. Children of Nathaniel4 Emerson and Mary (Burnham) Stimpson were as follows: HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
* i. Mary5; b. 22 Jun 1749. * ii. Silence; b. 5 Jul 1751. 18. Nathaniel4 Emerson (Ebenezer3, Joseph2, Thomas1); b. 31 Mar 1705 at Reading, Mass; m. Hephzibah Burnap, daughter of Joseph Burnap, 15 Apr 1725; d. 1777 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass. He left a will on 3 Apr 1776; probated June 24, 1777. He nominates son John as executor; mentions wife Hephzibah; son Joseph; children of son Samuel, deceased- Anna, Lucy and Hephzibah; daughter Hephzibah Melondy; Tabitha Pratt; Susanna Upton; Mary Bachelor; and Martha. Children of Nathaniel4 Emerson and Hephzibah Burnap were as follows: * i. Nathaniel5; b. 1726 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass. * ii. Hephzibah; m. William Melondy; b. 1729 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass. * iii. John; b. 1732 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass. * iv. Susanna; b. 1734 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass; m. Josiah Upton 28 Dec 1756 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass; d. 1778 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass. * v. Tabitha; m. Timothy Pratt; b. 1737 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass. * vi. Martha; b. 1739 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass. * vii. Mary; m. Nathaniel Batchelder; b. 1739 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass. * viii. Samuel; b. 1740. * ix. Joseph; b. circa 1742 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass. 19. Ebenezer4 Emerson (Ebenezer3, Joseph2, Thomas1); b. 6 Jan 1716 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass; m. Lydia (--?-- ) circa 1743; m. Anna Nichols 15 May 1746; m. Rebecca Putnam, daughter of Daniel Putnam, 7 Dec 1749. Children of Ebenezer4 Emerson and Lydia (--?--) were: * i. Lydia5; b. 7 Jan 1743. Children of Ebenezer4 Emerson and Anna Nichols were: * i. Ebenezer5; b. 21 Feb 1747; m. Judith Nichols 30 Mar 1769; d. 3 Nov 1801 at age 54. Children of Ebenezer4 Emerson and Rebecca Putnam were as follows: * i. Aaron5; b. 28 Sep 1752; m. Catherine Parker 20 May 1779; d. 21 Mar 1815 at age 62. * ii. Rebecca; b. 1 Mar 1755. * iii. Daniel; b. 1 Mar 1757; d. 5 Apr 1757. * iv. Daniel; b. 19 Apr 1760; m. Lucy Pratt 28 Jun 1781; d. 1806. * v. Edward; b. 2 May 1766. 20. James4 Emerson (Ebenezer3, Joseph2, Thomas1); b. 9 Jan 1720 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass; m. Mary Farrar 28 Nov 1744; m. Elizabeth Nichols, daughter of Daniel Nichols and Elizabeth Bachelder, 13 Mar 1759 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass. Children of James4 Emerson and Mary Farrar all b. at Reading, Middlesex, Mass, were as follows: * i. Kendall5; b. 31 Oct 1745; m. Mehitabel Parker 18 Sep 1770; m. Elizabeth Pratt 17 Dec 1776. * ii. Mary; b. 26 Jul 1747. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
* iii. Lucy; b. 23 Dec 1750. * iv. James; b. 6 Sep 1752. * v. Abigail; b. 7 Feb 1755. Children of James4 Emerson and Elizabeth Nichols all b. at Reading, Middlesex, Mass, were as follows: * i. James5; b. 8 Dec 1759; m. Abigail Rayner 8 May 1788; d. 1839 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass. * ii. Catherine; b. 23 May 1763. * iii. Chloe; b. 16 Apr 1765; d. 23 Apr 1765 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass. * iv. Edmund; b. 16 Mar 1769. * v. William; b. 28 Nov 1771. 21. Joseph4 Emerson (Ebenezer3, Joseph2, Thomas1); b. 3 Nov 1721 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass; m. Phebe Upton 7 Dec 1749. Children of Joseph4 Emerson and Phebe Upton were as follows: * i. Phebe5; b. 7 Mar 1751; m. Thomas Richardson 3 Mar 1774. * ii. Tabitha; b. 1 Jan 1753. * iii. Naomi; b. 1755; m. Benjamin Bridger 8 Oct 1778. * iv. Joseph; b. 1757. * v. Elias; b. 1758; d. 1759. * vi. Elias; b. 1759. * vii. Mary; m. Benjamin Johnson; b. 1761. * viii. Sarah; b. 1763. * ix. Bethia; b. 1765. * x. Ephraim; b. 1767. * xi. Charles; m. Rebecca Byrant; b. 1769. * xii. Zerviah; b. 1773; m. Jesse Foster 29 May 1796. 22. Thomas4 Emerson (Ebenezer3, Joseph2, Thomas1); b. 12 Jul 1724 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass; m. Elizabeth Bruce 16 Apr 1747 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass; m. Mary Dresser 24 Oct 1793 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass; d. 15 Jan 1810 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass, at age 85. Children of Thomas4 Emerson and Elizabeth Bruce all b. at Reading, Middlesex, Mass, were as follows: * i. Elizabeth5; b. 17 Aug 1753; m. Benjamin Emerson 12 Jan 1777. * ii. Hannah; b. 12 Nov 1755; m. Timothy Wakefield 9 Apr 1793; d. 10 Jan 1832 at age 76. * iii. Thomas; b. 11 Dec 1757; m. Ruth Bancroft 21 Nov 1782; d. 17 Feb 1837 at age 79. * iv. William; b. 10 Jun 1760; m. Sarah Cowdery 14 Apr 1782; m. Mary Vinton 3 Nov 1785; d. 23 Jul 1848 at age 88. * v. Jerusha; b. 4 Sep 1762; m. Nathaniel Cowdery 23 May 1782. * vi. Susanna; b. 21 Nov 1764; m. William Williams 12 Dec 1793. * vii. Jonathan; b. 15 Mar 1768; m. Martha Williams 1 Mar 1796. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
* viii. Lucy; b. 21 Feb 1770; m. Aaron Damon 23 Nov 1788. * ix. Lois; b. 6 Nov 1772; m. John Smith 7 Mar 1792. There were no children of Thomas4 Emerson and Mary Dresser. 23. Edward4 Emerson (Daniel3, Joseph2, Thomas1); b. circa 1714; m. Hannah (--?--) circa 1730; d. 19 Mar 1737. Children of Edward4 Emerson and Hannah (--?--) both b. at Boston, Mass, were as follows: * i. Joseph5; b. 13 Sep 1731. * ii. Hannah; b. 5 Jan 1736. 24. Joseph4 Emerson (Edward3, Joseph2, Thomas1); b. 20 Apr 1700 at Chelmsford, Middlesex, Mass; m. Mary Moody, daughter of Samuel Moody and Hannah Sewall, 27 Dec 1721; d. 13 Jul 1767 at Malden, Middlesex, Mass, at age 67. He left a will on 12 Jan 1762; proved September 1, 1767; It mentions his wife, Mary, sons- Joseph, Edward, Samuel, Bulkeley, Waldo, and John; daughters Rebecca and Ruth; son and daughter of deceased daughter Mary. Children of Joseph4 Emerson and Mary Moody all b. at Malden, Middlesex, Mass, were as follows: * 35. i. Hannah5, b. 3 Dec 1722; m. Daniel Emerson. * ii. Joseph; m. Abigail Hay; b. 25 Aug 1724; d. 29 Oct 1775 at age 51. * iii. Mary; b. 8 Oct 1726; m. Daniel Little 2 Nov 1751; d. 2 Jun 1758 at Wells, ME, at age 31. * iv. Edward; b. 1 Apr 1728; m. Mary Owen 14 Feb 1749; d. 3 Oct 1806 at York, ME, at age 78. * v. Samuel; b. 7 Jul 1730; m. Deborah Harris 5 Sep 1767; d. 3 Feb 1775 at Newbury, Essex, Mass, at age 44. * vi. Bulkeley; b. 5 Jun 1732; m. Mary Moody 13 Jul 1752; d. 20 Apr 1801 at Newbury, Essex, Mass, at age 68. * vii. Waldo; b. 23 Jun 1734; d. 8 Jul 1735 at Malden, Middlesex, Mass, at age 1. * viii. Waldo; b. 23 Jun 1735; m. Olive Hill 12 Jan 1759; d. 1 Apr 1774 at Wells, ME, at age 38. * ix. Ebenezer; b. 6 Aug 1736; d. 10 Jul 1750 at age 13. * x. Rebecca; m. Samuel Waite; m. Jacob Waite; b. 7 Aug 1738; d. 21 Jul 1808 at Malden, Middlesex, Mass, at age 69. * xi. Ruth; m. Nathan Sargent; b. 19 Jan 1741; d. 21 Jul 1808 at age 67. * xii. William; b. 31 May 1743; m. Phebe Bliss 21 Aug 1766; d. 20 Oct 1776 at Concord, Middlesex, Mass, at age 33. * xiii. John; b. 20 Nov 1745; m. Sabra Cobb 25 Sep 1770; d. 20 Jun 1826 at Conway, Mass, at age 80. 25. Edward4 Emerson (Edward3, Joseph2, Thomas1); b. 8 May 1702 at Chelmsford, Middlesex, Mass; m. Hannah Beale 13 Nov 1729; d. 1740 at Boston, Mass. Children of Edward4 Emerson and Hannah Beale both b. at Boston, Mass, were as follows: * i. Joseph5; b. 13 Sep 1731; d. 19 Mar 1737 at Boston, Mass, at age 5. * ii. Hannah; b. 5 Jan 1736. 26. John4 Emerson (Edward3, Joseph2, Thomas1); b. 27 Feb 1706 at Chelmsford, Middlesex, Mass; m. Elizabeth Pratt 23 Oct 1729; d. 11 Jul 1744 at Topsfield, Essex, Mass, at age 38. He was graduated in 1726 at Harvard College, Cambridge, Mass; ordained the same year. He lived on 27 Nov 1728 at Topsfield, Essex, Mass; settled as the town minister. Children of John4 Emerson and Elizabeth Pratt all b. at Topsfield, Essex, Mass, were as follows: HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
* i. Elizabeth5; b. 14 Sep 1730; m. Joseph Gould Jr. 19 Dec 1751; d. 5 Mar 1825 at age 94. * ii. John; b. 20 Dec 1731; d. 4 Feb 1754 at Topsfield, Essex, Mass, at age 22. * iii. Rebecca; b. 24 Feb 1733; m. Thomas Hodgkins 5 Mar 1761. * iv. Thomas; b. 8 Jan 1735; m. Lydia Porter 15 Mar 1765; d. 9 May 1813 at Topsfield, Essex, Mass, at age 78. * v. Mary; b. 27 Oct 1736; m. John Baker Jr. 21 Mar 1761. * vi. Edward; b. 13 Jul 1738; m. Elizabeth Shillaber 1 Feb 1760. * vii. Dorcas; b. 4 Mar 1740; m. Tyler Porter 9 Nov 1760; d. 13 Aug 1821 at Wenham, Essex, Mass, at age 81. * viii. Abigail; b. 18 Dec 1741; d. 24 Apr 1769 at age 27. * ix. Elihu; m. Mary Clapp; b. 19 Dec 1743. * x. Hannah; b. 19 May 1745; m. Nathaniel Howe 15 Nov 1764. * xi. Dorothy; b. 15 Oct 1746; m. Thomas Murray 22 Dec 1766. * xii. Joseph; b. Dec 1747; d. Jan 1748 at Topsfield, Essex, Mass. * xiii. Joseph; b. 4 Sep 1750; m. Lydia Durrell 28 Aug 1774; d. 28 Mar 1822 at age 71. * xiv. Ebenezer; b. 1752; d. 12 Mar 1752 at Topsfield, Essex, Mass. * xv. Cornelius Waldo; baptized 10 Jun 1753; d. 7 Aug 1753 at Topsfield, Essex, Mass. * xvi. Sarah; baptized 12 Mar 1758; d. 21 May 1759 at Topsfield, Essex, Mass, at age 1. 27. Brown4 Emerson (Peter3, Joseph2, Thomas1); b. 16 Apr 1704 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass; m. Sarah Townsend, daughter of John Townsend, 17 Jun 1725; d. 1774 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass. He town clerk; selectman 1746, and between 1765-1769 between 1747 and 1770 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass. He left a will on 8 Mar 1774; probated April 5, 1774. He mentions wife, Sarah; his son Peter to whom he left “all lands in Reading and one half of a grist mill in Lynn”; five other sons, Jacob, John, Daniel, Timothy and Brown, and a daughter Sarah Eaton. Children of Brown4 Emerson and Sarah Townsend all b. at Reading, Middlesex, Mass, were as follows: * i. Peter5; b. 29 Nov 1726; m. Rebecca Poole 31 Jan 1754; m. Mary Dix 14 Jul 1761; d. 16 May 1821 at age 94. * ii. Sarah; b. 17 Dec 1728; d. 15 Mar 1737 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass, at age 8. * iii. John; b. 25 Apr 1732; d. 2 May 1737 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass, at age 5. * iv. Lucy; b. 7 May 1735; d. 15 Mar 1737 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass, at age 1. * v. Jacob; b. 14 Feb 1739; m. Margaret (Walton) Swain 25 Apr 1755; d. 1811. * vi. John; baptized 5 Apr 1739; m. Katherine Eaton 20 Dec 1764; d. 14 Nov 1809 at Hancock, NH, at age 70. * vii. Sarah; b. 23 Feb 1741. * viii. Daniel; b. 23 Dec 1743. * ix. Timothy; b. 24 May 1746; m. Mary Felch 19 Jan 1773; d. May 1788 at Ashby, Mass. * x. Brown; b. 22 Mar 1749; m. Abigail Anderson 6 Nov 1796. 28. Daniel4 Emerson (Peter3, Joseph2, Thomas1); b. 20 May 1716 at Reading, Middlesex, Mass; m. Hannah Emerson, daughter of Joseph Emerson and Mary Moody, 17 Oct 1744; d. 30 Sep 1801 at Hollis, NH, at age 85. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
Children of Daniel4 Emerson and Hannah Emerson all b. at Hollis, NH, were as follows: * i. Hannah5; b. 30 Sep 1745; m. Mannasseh Smith 17 Feb 1774; d. 1823. * ii. Daniel; b. 15 Dec 1746; m. Ama Fletcher 17 Nov 1768; d. 4 Oct 1820 at Hollis, NH, at age 73. * iii. Mary; b. 19 Sep 1748; d. 10 Jan 1750 at age 1. * iv. Peter; m. Mary Muzzey; m. Rebecca Hubbard; b. 9 Nov 1749; d. 21 Feb 1827 at age 77. * v. Lucy; b. 29 Oct 1751; m. Silas Swallow 10 Jun 1786. * vi. Mary; b. 14 Nov 1753; m. Ebenezer Rockwood 10 Jun 1779; d. 9 Mar 1848 at Wilton, NH, at age 94. * vii. Elizabeth; b. 5 May 1755; m. Isaac Bayley 8 Apr 1779; d. 5 Feb 1842 at age 86. * viii. Ebenezer; b. 14 Aug 1757; d. 8 Apr 1759 at Hollis, NH, at age 1. * ix. Joseph; b. 28 Sep 1759; d. 27 Jul 1781 at Hollis, NH, at age 21. * x. Ralph; b. 4 Mar 1761; m. Alice Ames 13 May 1784 at Hollis, NH; d. 4 Oct 1790 at Hollis, NH, at age 29. * xi. Rebecca; b. 5 Jul 1762; d. 5 Jul 1762 at Hollis, NH. * xii. Samuel; b. 6 Sep 1764; m. Olive Burrell 6 Jul 1791; d. 7 Aug 1851 at Kennebunk, ME, at age 86. * xiii. William; b. 11 Dec 1765; d. 27 Nov 1775 at Hollis, NH, at age 9. 29. Stephen4 Emerson (Nathaniel3, Nathaniel2, Thomas1); m. Mary (--?--) circa 1727; m. Lydia Norman 16 Oct 1735 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. Children of Stephen4 Emerson and Mary (--?--) all b. at Ipswich, Essex, Mass, were as follows: * i. Stephen5; baptized 1 Dec 1728. * ii. Mary; baptized 31 May 1730. * iii. Antiss; b. 12 Dec 1731; m. William Badger 28 Sep 1751 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. There were no children of Stephen4 Emerson and Lydia Norman. 30. Nathaniel4 Emerson (Nathaniel3, Nathaniel2, Thomas1); b. 26 Dec 1686 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; m. Elizabeth Whipple, daughter of Joseph Whipple and Mary Adams, 19 Nov 1715 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; d. 2 Sep 1779 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass, at age 92. Children of Nathaniel4 Emerson and Elizabeth Whipple all b. at Ipswich, Essex, Mass, were as follows: * i. Elizabeth5; baptized 2 Feb 1717; m. Francis Goodhue 16 Jan 1733 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. * ii. Sarah; baptized 1 Oct 1718; m. John Brown 8 Dec 1736 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. * iii. Mary; baptized 12 Jun 1720; m. John Andrews 20 May 1742 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. * iv. Martha; baptized 19 Aug 1722; m. Nathaniel Adams, son of Samuel Adams and Mary Burley, 1 Feb 1746/47 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. * v. Priscilla; baptized 21 Jun 1724; d. Nov 1725 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass, at age 1. * vi. Joseph; baptized 11 Sep 1726. * vii. Isaac; baptized 28 Jul 1728; d. Nov 1732 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass, at age 4. * viii. Priscilla; baptized 25 Aug 1728. * ix. Hannah; baptized Aug 1730; m. Nathaniel Howe 15 Nov 1764 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
* x. Nathaniel; baptized 19 Nov 1732; m. Deborah Burnham 24 Aug 1773 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. 31. Joseph4 Emerson (Nathaniel3, Nathaniel2, Thomas1); b. 26 Jun 1690 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; m. Abigail Perkins 15 Dec 1722 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. Children of Joseph4 Emerson and Abigail Perkins all b. at Ipswich, Essex, Mass, were as follows: * i. Abraham5; baptized 13 Nov 1726. * ii. Brewster; baptized 12 Apr 1730. * iii. Abigail; baptized 29 Aug 1731. * iv. Susanna; baptized 14 Jan 1733. * v. Isaac; baptized 11 May 1735. 32. Thomas4 Emerson (Thomas3, Nathaniel2, Thomas1); b. 4 Jun 1699 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; m. Sarah (--?--) circa 1723; d. 3 May 1782 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass, at age 82. Children of Thomas4 Emerson and Sarah (--?--) all b. at Ipswich, Essex, Mass, were as follows: * i. Sarah5; b. 31 Oct 1724. * ii. Mary; b. 20 Jun 1727. * iii. Lucy; baptized 25 Jun 1727; d. before 1729 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. * iv. Elizabeth; baptized 15 May 1729. * v. Thomas; baptized 2 Jul 1732. * vi. John; b. 30 Jul 1734. * vii. Ruth; b. 12 Mar 1737; m. Luke Emerson, son of John Emerson and Mary Rice, 30 Apr 1755. * viii. Phillipa; baptized 13 Apr 1740. * ix. Hannah; baptized 8 Apr 1742. * x. Nathaniel; baptized 29 Apr 1744; d. before 1747 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. * xi. Nathaniel; baptized 31 May 1747. Children of Thomas4 Emerson and an unknown spouse were: * i. Elizabeth5; b. 27 Jun 1733 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; m. James Emerson, son of James Emerson and Sarah Lock, 27 Oct 1752 at Uxbridge, Worcester, Mass. 33. Mary4 Emerson (Thomas3, Nathaniel2, Thomas1); b. 20 Apr 1704 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; m. Stephen Story, son of Samuel Story and Elizabeth Burnham, 23 Sep 1721 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; d. 13 Jul 1777 at Bennington, Bennington, Vt, at age 73. Children of Mary4 Emerson and Stephen Story were as follows: * i. Stephen5; b. 2 Apr 1722 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; This date was entered ino the Norwich Records on Aug. 23, 1742 by Mary Emerson; m. Lydia Wood 6 Oct 1741 at Norwich, New London, Conn. As of 6 Oct 1741, he was also known as Stephen Story Jr.. * ii. Mary; b. 4 Jun 1724 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; This date was entered into the Norwich records on Aug. 23, 1742 by Mary Emerson. * 36. iii. Phillipa, m. Ebenezer Fillmore; b. 22 May 1726 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
* iv. Lucy; baptized 10 Nov 1728 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. As of 10 Nov 1728, she was also known as Lucy Storey. * v. Ruth; m. Johnson Cleveland; baptized 12 Dec 1730 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. As of 12 Dec 1730, she was also known as Ruth Storey. * vi. Francis; baptized 15 Jul 1733 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. As of 15 Jul 1733, he was also known as Francis Storey. * 37. vii. Daniel, b. 28 May 1734 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; m. Martha Hazen. * viii. Martha; b. 21 Jun 1737 at Norwich, New London, Ct. * 38. ix. Thomas, b. 29 Aug 1739 at Norwich, New London, Ct; m. Alice Rouse. * x. Elijah; b. 24 Jun 1742 at Norwich, New London, Ct. He was military Elijah Story-served in Capt Elijah Dewey’s Co. at the Battle of Bennington;Aug 16, 1777;Also listed on the muster rolls of the 1st Co. of Vermont Militia organized Oct. 24, 1764 in Aug 1777 at Bennington, Bennington, VT. * xi. Benajah; b. 22 Sep 1743 at Norwich, New London, Ct; d. 22 Oct 1743 at Norwich, New London, Ct. Benejah Story-served in Capt. Elijah Dewey’s Co. at the Battle of Bennington; Aug. 16, 1777; Also served for 8 days in Capt. William Hutchin’s Co; Oct. 11, 1780. Also served in Capt. Isaac Tichenor’s Co. at Castleton for 8 days; Oct. 13, 1781.Also listed as a drummer on muster roll of the 1st Co. of Vermont Miltia organized Oct. 24, 1764 between 1764 and 1781 at Bennington, Bennington, VT. * 39. xii. Sarah, m. Joseph Rudd; b. 11 Nov 1744 at Norwich, Conn. * xiii. Benajab; b. 24 Dec 1746 at Norwich, New London, Ct; d. 1842. Generation Five 34. Jonathan5 Emerson (James4, James3, Joseph2, Thomas1); b. 1 Jan 1729 at Uxbridge, Worcester, Mass; m. Sarah Marshall 20 Dec 1752 at Uxbridge, Worcester, Mass. Children of Jonathan5 Emerson and Sarah Marshall were: * i. Jonathan6; baptized 13 May 1753 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. 35. Hannah5 Emerson (Joseph4, Edward3, Joseph2, Thomas1); b. 3 Dec 1722 at Malden, Middlesex, Mass; m. Daniel Emerson, son of Peter Emerson and Anna Brown, 17 Oct 1744; d. 28 Feb 1812 at Hollis, NH, at age 89. Children of Hannah5 Emerson and Daniel Emerson all b. at Hollis, NH, were as follows: * i. Hannah6; b. 30 Sep 1745; m. Mannasseh Smith 17 Feb 1774; d. 1823. * ii. Daniel; b. 15 Dec 1746; m. Ama Fletcher 17 Nov 1768; d. 4 Oct 1820 at Hollis, NH, at age 73. * iii. Mary; b. 19 Sep 1748; d. 10 Jan 1750 at age 1. * iv. Peter; m. Mary Muzzey; m. Rebecca Hubbard; b. 9 Nov 1749; d. 21 Feb 1827 at age 77. * v. Lucy; b. 29 Oct 1751; m. Silas Swallow 10 Jun 1786. * vi. Mary; b. 14 Nov 1753; m. Ebenezer Rockwood 10 Jun 1779; d. 9 Mar 1848 at Wilton, NH, at age 94. * vii. Elizabeth; b. 5 May 1755; m. Isaac Bayley 8 Apr 1779; d. 5 Feb 1842 at age 86. * viii. Ebenezer; b. 14 Aug 1757; d. 8 Apr 1759 at Hollis, NH, at age 1. * ix. Joseph; b. 28 Sep 1759; d. 27 Jul 1781 at Hollis, NH, at age 21. * x. Ralph; b. 4 Mar 1761; m. Alice Ames 13 May 1784 at Hollis, NH; d. 4 Oct 1790 at Hollis, NH, at age 29. * xi. Rebecca; b. 5 Jul 1762; d. 5 Jul 1762 at Hollis, NH. * xii. Samuel; b. 6 Sep 1764; m. Olive Burrell 6 Jul 1791; d. 7 Aug 1851 at Kennebunk, ME, at age 86. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
* xiii. William; b. 11 Dec 1765; d. 27 Nov 1775 at Hollis, NH, at age 9. 36. Phillipa5 Story (Mary4Emerson, Thomas3, Nathaniel2, Thomas1); m. Ebenezer Fillmore; baptized 22 May 1726 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass. As of 22 May 1726, she was also known as Philippa Storey. Children of Phillipa5 Story and Ebenezer Fillmore were: * i. Nathaniel6. 37. Daniel5 Story (Mary4Emerson, Thomas3, Nathaniel2, Thomas1); b. 28 May 1734 at Ipswich, Essex, Mass; This date was entered into the Norwich records on Aug. 23, 1742 by Mary Emerson. ; m. Martha Hazen, daughter of Thomas Hazen and Sarah Ayer, 13 Jan 1761 at Norwich, New London, Conn. He was military Daniel Storey-served 1 day in Capt Joseph Safford’s Co.; Aug 2, 1781. Also served 5 days in Samuel Robinson’s Co.; Oct 11, 1780 at 1780-1781, Bennington, Bennington, VT. As of 1 Jun 1735, he was also known as Daniel Storey. He was land Sold lot #34, about 45 acres, to Thomas Story for $150 on 8 Jan 1793 at Bennington, Bennington, Vt. Children of Daniel5 Story and Martha Hazen were as follows: * i. Francis6; m. Ruth Beeman, daughter of Joesph Beeman and Catherine Durkee; b. 15 Sep 1761 at Norwich, Conn; d. 30 May 1830 at Fairfax, Franklin, Vt, at age 68. He was military Francis Story- served in Capt Samuel Robinson’s Co. for 5 daysm; Oct 11, 1780; Also served 64 days in Capt. William Hutchins Co.; Mar 1, 1779; Also served 25 days in Capt William Dyres Co. Oct 12, 1780; Also served 2 days in Capt Joseph Safford’s Co.; Aug 2, 1781; Also served 18 days (Castleton Alarm) in Capt Joseph Safford’s Co.; Oct 14, 1781; Also received pay for guarding road on the East My. For 4 days beginning June 15, 1781 between 1780 and 1781 at Bennington, Bennington, Vt. He was land on 27 Feb 1797 at Faifax, Franklin, Vt. * ii. Jacob; b. 1763. * iii. Francis; b. 7 Mar 1765. * iv. Stephen; b. 7 Mar 1765 at Norwich, Ct. * v. Peter Ayer; b. 24 Jun 1768 at Norwich, Ct; d. 1 Jul 1832 at age 64. * vi. Daniel; b. 17 Nov 1770 at Norwich, Ct. 38. Thomas5 Story (Mary4Emerson, Thomas3, Nathaniel2, Thomas1); b. 29 Aug 1739 at Norwich, New London, Ct; m. Alice Rouse, daughter of John Rouse and Alice Hazen, 2 Oct 1763 at Norwich, New London, Ct; d. 7 Jul 1813 at Fairfax, Franklin, VT, at age 73. He was military Thomas Story received money May 6, 1777 for serving in Capt Elijah Dewey’s Co. for an alarm at Ticonderoga; Also served in Capt Elijah Dewey’s Co. for 28 days for duty at Mount Independence; Oct 18, 1776;Also served in Capt William Hutchins’ Co for 8 days; Oct 11, 1780;Also listed on the muster roll of the 1st Co, of Vermont Militia organized Oct 24, 1764. between 1776 and 1780 at Bennington, Bennington, VT. He lived in 1796; came from Bennington to Fairfield and was the first settler in Buck Hollow. Children of Thomas5 Story and Alice Rouse were as follows: * i. Jacob6; m. Susanna Merrill, daughter of Jedediah Merrill and Martha Lucas; b. 5 Jan 1762 at Bennington, Bennington, Vt; d. 31 Oct 1834 at Fairfax, Franklin, Vt, at age 72. He was military Jacob Story served in Capt Elijah Dewey’s Co. at the Battle of Bennington; Aug.16, 1777; Also seved 10 days in Capt William Hutchins Co.: Oct 11, 1780 between 1776 and 1780 at Bennington, Bennington, Vt. He lived in 1787 at Faifax, Franklin, Vt; A pioneer settler of Fairfax, Vt. * ii. Phillippa; b. 27 Jul 1766. * iii. Leviah; m. Hampton Paul Lovegrove; b. 19 Jun 1768. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
* iv. Andrew; b. 10 Aug 1772. * v. Elijah; b. 10 Sep 1773 at Bennington, VT; m. Rhoda Crissey 28 Nov 1798 at Franklin, VT; d. 20 Mar 1830 at Fairfax, Franklin, Vt, at age 56. * vi. Alice; b. 13 Apr 1776. * vii. Mary; b. 4 Apr 1781; m. Nathan Buck 20 Mar 1798. * viii. Lucretia; bur. at Fairfax, Franklin, Vt; b. 27 Apr 1784; m. Silas Safford, son of Josiah Safford, 1803; d. 1861 at Fairfax, VT. * ix. Thomas; b. 13 Apr 1788; d. Feb 1846 at Fairfax, Franklin, Vt, at age 57. * x. Cynthia; b. 3 May 1791. 39. Sarah5 Story (Mary4Emerson, Thomas3, Nathaniel2, Thomas1); m. Joseph Rudd; b. 11 Nov 1744 at Norwich, Conn; d. 1842. Children of Sarah5 Story and Joseph Rudd were: * i. Martha6; b. 1818.
June 11, Monday (Old Style): William Adams “first went to school to Mr. Andrews: abode with him till Aug. 10. 1667.” IPSWICH HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1667
In Ipswich, the pay of the town cowherd was somewhat increased: “Agreed with Haniel Bosworth to keepe the cow-herd on the north side of the river from the 22d of April to the last of October, to have for his wages 14s. a week, 12d. a head for the first paye, one pound of butter in June, and the rest at the end of the tyme, and for helpe in the spring and on the Lord’s day, as in other years; and, if any that are warned to helpe him then, fail, they shall forfeit 2s. 6d. a daye, if warned the night before.”
For singing during Ipswich worship, in this period the Bay Psalm-Book was beginning to be relied upon in place of the Book of Psalms.
March 26, Tuesday (Old Style): John Evelyn’s diary entry for this day was in part as follows: John Evelyn’s Diary
Sir John Kiviet dined with me, we went to search for brick-Earth, in order to a greate undertaking.
THIS DAY IN PEPYS’S DIARY
The Ipswich man, somehow unnamed in the record, who had dug up the bones of the Sagamore and carried “his scull upon a pole,” was tried and punished, the extent and nature of the punishment somehow unspecified in the record.
August 13, Tuesday (Old Style): William Adams “came down to Cambridge to ye commencement, sought for admission into colledge, could nto obtain it, pecuniæ deerant.” IPSWICH HARVARD COLLEGE
August 14, Wednesday (Old Style): William Adams “returned home, lived a disconsolate month at home.” IPSWICH
September 20, Friday (Old Style): William Adams “came to Cambridge again with my uncle N.A.” IPSWICH HARVARD COLLEGE
November 22, Friday (Old Style): William Adams “went home to Ipswich afoot.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
November 27, Wednesday (Old Style): William Adams “returned to Cambridge upon Mr. D. Epps’s horse, was lost in Charlestowne woods and lay in ye woods all night, so bewildered I took N. for S. and contra.” IPSWICH HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1668
In Ipswich, wolves were evidently getting fairly scarce. The extermination campaign was almost complete. However, the wolves were not yet completely gone, for in this year some residents complained that the town’s 1 shepherd had incautiously exposed their sheep to attack. The reward for catching or killing a wolf within 2 /2 miles of a town meeting-house was increased by 40s. to a total of £4 each.
As the Selectmen are instructed by the General Court to receive gifts here for freight of masts for His Majesty, next lecture-day is appointed to ascertain what sum can be advanced. These masts and other articles were sent over to Charles the Second, by contributions from the several towns, as a sort of palliation for our fathers’ having favored the anti-royalists. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1670
It was ordered in Ipswich that every cow have a bell. Not only that, but the town constables were instructed to prevent young persons from being out late in the evening, especially on the Sabbath and on lecture and militia training-day evenings. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1671
February 21, Tuesday (1670, Old Style): An Ipswich measure for the relief of a local native American: “Granted Ned two or three acres to plant, during his life, in some convenient place, if he fence it sufficiently with stone wall.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1672
Employers might not supply laborers with intoxicating liquors: “As workmen demand wine or liquors over their wages, and many refuse to labor without, which ‘tends much to the rooting of young persons in an evil practice, and by degrees to train them up to a habit of excess,’ any person who allows men and boys wine or strong liquors, except in cases of necessity, shall pay 20s.” IPSWICH HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1673
In the Bay colony, in Ipswich, any who let houses or lands to those whom the town disapproved of, should be fined, or any who entertained strangers, should pay 20s. a week unless security be given for their honesty and ability. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1675
September 19, Sunday (Old Style): During September, bands of warriors had been roaming the valley of the Connecticut River. The military garrison at Hadley MA had been growing, and provisions for these troops needed to be sent from the individual villages. On this day, while Captain Thomas Lathrop with 80 men were riding convoy for a wagon train from Deerfield loaded with threshed wheat on its way to the mill just north of the Hadley garrison, the convoy needed to traverse a narrow, swampy thicket with a brook, near what is now Northampton. During the extended period of time that it took to get the heavily laden carts across the brook, the soldiers had tossed their rifles atop the loads. Some were gathering the grapes that grew alongside the brook. Hundreds of warriors lay in concealment. When they opened fire, the captain fell immediately and only 7 or 8 of the whites would escape; not one of the Deerfield men who were driving the carts would survive. Captain Moseley and his troop of 60 soldiers were close enough to hurry to the scene. In among the corpses, one of the wounded, Robert Dutch of Ipswich, had been able to successfully play dead:
Captain Mosely came upon the Indians in the morning; he found them stripping the slain, amongst whom was one Robert Dutch, of Ipswich, who, having been sorely wounded, by a bullet that raised his scull, and then mauled by the Indian hatchets, was left for dead by the savages, and stript by them of all but his skin; yet, when Captain Mosely came near, he almost miraculously, as one raised from the dead, came towards the English, to their no small amazement; by whom being received and clothed, he was carried off to the next garrison, and is living, and in perfect health at this day.
For approximately six hours, neither side could gain the upper hand. Finally a troop of 100 Connecticut soldiers with a band of Mohegans arrived on the scene, whereupon the ambushers faded into the forest. The surviving soldiers straggled back to Deerfield and that night would be taunted by warriors who from a safe distance would wave items stripped from English corpses.14 The surviving soldiers returned the next day to dig a mass grave. The sluggish stream would be known as Bloody Brook. Shortly afterward, Deerfield would be abandoned and would be torched by Phillip’s warriors. In the town of South Deerfield MA a stone shaft marks the edge of the swampy area in which this ambush occurred. “KING PHILLIP’S WAR”
(However, Samuel Sewall has it in his diary that “Sept. 13. Saturday, was that lamentable fight, when Capt. Latrop with sixty-four killed.”)
14. Among the corpses was that of Samuel Crumpton of Salem. His widow Jane Crumpton would remarry with Captain Richard More and help him keep his tavern. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1676
October: Thomas Cobbet, Junior, son of the Reverend Thomas Cobbet of Ipswich, who had been taken hostage more than nine weeks before, was ransomed for a coat:
This was done by the influence of Mug, an Indian chief, who stopped, while on his way to Boston for negotiating a peace, at Ipswich, and then promised Mr. Cobbet, the father of the young man, that he would send him home.
“KING PHILLIP’S WAR” HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1677
The Reverend William Hubbard Miniſter of Ipſwich’s THE PREſENT STATE OF NEW-ENGLAND. BEING A NARRATIVE OF THE TROUBLES WITH THE INDIANS IN NEW-ENGLAND, FROM THE FIRſT PLANTING THEREOF IN THE YEAR 1607, TO THIS PREſENT YEAR 1677. BUT CHIEFLY OF THE LATE TROUBLES IN THE TWO LAſT YEARS, 1675, AND 1676. TO WHICH IS ADDED A DIſCOURFE ABOUT THE WAR WITH THE PEQUODS IN THE YEAR 1637.15
Here, then, was the solution to the colonists’ dilemma ... wage the war, and win it, by whatever means necessary, and then write about it, to win it again. The first would be a victory of wounds, the second a victory of words.
15. This was the title as printed in Boston. The book would be reprinted in England in the same year with a slightly different title. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
The volume contained a 31 x 40 cm. “map of New-England, being the first that ever was here cut, and done by the best pattern that could be had, which being in some places defective, it made the other less exact: Yet doth it sufficiently show the situation of the country & conveniently well the distances of places.” The map was prepared by John Foster (1648-1681) and was oriented with north to the right, with relief pictorially depicted. “The figures that are joyned with the names of places are to distinguish such as have been assaulted by Indians from others.”
This map would be reissued in 1846 in Boston in conjunction with another early map, made in 1634 by William Wood, as a lithograph by William B. Fowle. These were the 1st maps to show both the Algonquian name “Musketaquid” and the English name “Concord,” for the 1st inland settlement. Copies of the original maps are at the Boston Public Library and at the Boston Athenaeum.
I don’t have a copy of the 1677 edition to show you, but here is the title page of the 1801 reprinting that was done in Worcester, Massachusetts by David Greenleaf for Joseph Wilder: HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1678
The town of Ipswich dealt with its paupers: Although “A Deacon of the Church is empowered to supply a poor person at the town’s expense,” all persons in town were required to have some visible employment.
In the course of the year Ipswich paid out £3 10s. for the killing of 70 foxes.
December 23, Monday (Old Style): Ipswich gave some provisions to several natives living in a wigwam. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1681
In Ipswich, any and all single persons who were under no government were ordered to put themselves under the care of some head of a family.
In particular, Daniel Weldron was required to return to his wife according to law.
A complaint was brought by one of the Ipswich’s tythingmen that although one of the town’s residents had had a servant for many years, this servant still had not been taught how to read.
As we reflect on the moral transactions of this and other ancient towns, we are compelled to notice one fact, however ominous of evil, however discouraging to our hope. This fact is, that, as such communities have increased in numbers, wealth, and years, so have they departed from the justifiable strictness of their ancestors. We look in vain for that measure of vigilance, promptness, and activity, which the officers of each corporation anciently manifested against the workers of iniquity. We look in vain for the ready obedience, which the vicious were constrained to yield to the commands of their social authorities. Our disease is open before us. Wise and happy shall we be, if we apply the needed remedies. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1682
Tobacco yards were to be seen at this point in Ipswich, and this would continue until 1783, scarcely any tobacco being imported to the region. Local use of tobacco would continue into the new century before resistance would begin to arise:
Many families would have their spots of land for cultivating it, and their mode of twisting it, and curing it with molasses and rum so as to render it more palatable. Segars were very little used till after the peace of Independence. Pipes and a large box of tobacco for smoking were in daily and extensive use. They were considered, till within thirty years, as essential for the entertainment of company, as the chibouque and its apparatus are in Turkey. It is matter of consolation, that tobacco, though consumed much more than either cleanliness, comfort, health, or temperance justifies, has begun to loose its hold on the vitiated appetite of thousands, and that there is some prospect of its going down to the deep degradation of intoxicating liquors. Had the liquid, which the affrighted servant of Raleigh threw upon him, so effectually quenched his zeal for rendering tobacco fashionable, as it fully drenched his smoking head, and thus no imitators of this noble lord been found, a vast amount of evil would have been prevented in the civilized world.
When Virginia’s Middle Peninsula “malcontents” destroyed their fields of planted tobacco and also the fields of neighboring farmers in what was known as the plant-cutter riots, because of low wholesale prices –prices that were low due to overproduction– “the vengeance of the government fell heavily” on Major Robert Beverley, Sr., who it seems because of some loose talk while intoxicated was being blamed as “the principal instigator of these disturbances.” Beverley would be jailed for this loose talk and would lose all his positions. Indeed, the Virginia legislature would in 1684 classify such destructive of growing crops as a capital crime. CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
April 13, Thursday (Old Style): The town of Ipswich determined that no commoner or inhabitant might “take up and inclose land upon the common or high ways, as he or they shall see good, for Tobacco yards and other uses.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1683
February 27, Tuesday (1682, Old Style): Ipswich authorized surveyors to lay out a small quantity of land for a native American named Ned and his family and the old Sagamore’s daughter and her children, to improve for them during the town’s pleasure. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1686
John Dunton, although he was a white man, was being accompanied from Wenham MA to Ipswich by a native American who was awarding him the common salutation of his tribe –netop, friend– when he was permitted to attend a native funeral service. The relatives had their faces blacked as a sign of mourning. He reported that when the mourners came to the grave, they laid the body near by, then sat down and lamented. He observed successive tears on the cheeks of old and young. After the body was laid in the grave, they made a second lamentation; then spread the mat, on which the deceased had died, over the grave; put the dish there, in which he had eaten, and hung his coat of skin in an adjacent tree. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1687
Ipswich granted to itself the birthright to be forever known (within its town borders :-) as The Birthplace of
American Independence, as its citizens protested a tax that Royal Governor Sir Edmund Andros attempted to impose on the Bay colony. The Ipswich residents were led by the Reverend John Wise in the making of this protest, arguing that as Englishmen they could not abide taxation without representation. They were of course jailed and fined for such action, but in 1689 Andros would be called back to England and the colonists would HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
receive a fresh charter from the new sovereigns, King William and Queen Mary.
One of the things that the people of the Massachusetts Bay Colony held against Sir Edmund was that he had been, at the Boston Town House, tolerating the celebration of Christmas — the Puritan colonists having no tolerance for such Papist drunkenness.
In about this year Rachel Clinton was being brought before an Ipswich court on an accusation of witchcraft, but we don’t have a record that there was any further action. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1690
February 18, Tuesday (Old Style): An impoverished native American named Ned, aged about 82, was assisted by the town of Ipswich.
December 30, Tuesday (Old Style): An impoverished native American named Robert was assisted by the town of Ipswich. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1692
June 30, Thursday (Old Style): Elizabeth How of Ipswich was tried for witchcraft. After various witnesses against her were heard, she was condemned to death. She would be executed on Gallows Hill in Salem on July 19th, leaving a husband James How, and children Mary How and Abigail How — who, in 1712, would be granted by the colonial government for damages occasioned by the prosecution of their mother, the sum of £12.
August 3, Wednesday (Old Style): The former neighbors of John Procter, who had removed from Ipswich to Salem Village and had there been condemned for witchcraft, sent a petition for his reprieve signed by 32 who had known him, testifying to his character.
Still, this benevolent effort was in vain. Deep delusion shut up almost every heart, and threw a thick veil over almost every understanding.
August 31, Wednesday (Old Style): The wife of Peter Cloyce, who lived at Salem Village, was confined as a witch in the Ipswich jailhouse.
September 27, Tuesday (Old Style): John Shephard of Rowley was bound over for assisting to convey Mary Green, a prisoner charged with witchcraft, out of the Ipswich jailhouse.
October: Some witchcraft accusers went to Gloucester and there accused four women, but Salem prison was already full so two of these new accused were sent to the Ipswich prison. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
November: The witchcraft accusers were sent for again by Lieutenant Stephens, who had been informed that a sister of his was bewitched. While passing over Ipswich bridge on their way to Gloucester, they met with a local old woman and instantly fell into fits.
But by this time the validity of such accusations being much questioned, they found not the encouragement, that they had done elsewhere, and soon withdrew. Happy for this town, that such a scene occurred at no earlier day; had it, more than one of the inhabitants would have probably become the victims of popular delusion. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1693
May 9, Tuesday (Old Style): The Supreme Court sat at Ipswich and tried and cleared several Andover residents who had been accused of witchcraft. –And that, for the time being, was the end of that.
In no courts in the world is justice more impartially dispensed, than in our own. They yet remain for a protection to the poor as well as rich. Still, as human institutions, they, or course, are liable to err. Such a character, both in its lights and shades, has always belonged to our civil tribunals.
December 26, Tuesday (Old Style): Ipswich was assessed £51 19s. for its part of the expenses, incurred by sessions of the Oyer and Terminer Court, to try those who were charged with the offense of witchcraft.
Thus closed one of the darkest, deadliest infatuations, which ever fell upon New England. Its criminations were so indiscriminate; its excesses carried so far, as to break the spell, which had long given it credibility and victims; to wrest it, as a dreaded instrument, from the hand of fiendish revenge, and trample it down with the forbidden follies of human, but penitent, fallibility. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1700
The town of Ipswich attempted to be rid of a chronic pauper, and it didn’t float: “Voted to be at the charge of sending Goodwife Dent to Scotland, her native place. She did not go.”
May 27, Monday (Old Style): As a public precaution against harm that might be done by strangers, John Wainwright of Ipswich, having leased a farm locally to a Samuel Cass of Hampton, New Hampshire, gave a bond of £200 to indemnify the town if any of that Cass family should “come upon them.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1701
The town of Ipswich dealt with the need of its paupers for an alms-house: “Voted that some convenient house be built on the common to accommodate the poor.”
July 17, Thursday (Old Style): Esther Rogers of Newbury was hanged and then her dead body was placed on a gibbet at Pingrey’s Plain in Ipswich, for having murdered her illegitimate infant on November 12, 1700. “Go thou and sin no more.”
Tradition informs us, that she confessed this to be her second illegitimate child, and that the first was secreted, she not knowing whether it was dead or alive. She appeared very sorrowful for her iniquities, and acknowledged her sentence to be righteous. She continued in deep distress for her sins, after she set out for the gallows; but, when passing a hill, she was divinely enabled to cast her soul upon Christ and to enjoy the consolations of a hope in him. This hill from that time, has been called “Comfort Hill,” because she there was comforted by the promises of religion to the penitent. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1702
The town of Ipswich dealt with the need of its paupers for an alms-house: “Voted that a cottage be made for this purpose.”
March 30, Monday (Old Style): The town of Ipswich ordered that those who had already built cottages on the town’s common lands would be required to pay rent, and that in the future no one might “build thereon without proper leave.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1705
February 22, Thursday (1704, Old Style): “Voted, that Samuel Appleton, Esq., and our two Representatives treat with the Hon. Wait Winthrop, about Masconnomo’s deed of Agawam, made to his father deceased, Governor of Connecticut.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1712
December 29, Monday (Old Style): Mr. Nathanal Emerson was buried in Ipswich with not only a preposterously HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
elaborate and signifying headstone giving his specifics: HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
but also a footstone inscribed with his name:
(Mr. Nathanal Emerson must have been decidedly important to somebody!) HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1715
Ipswich voted an additional 30s. over what the law allowed for the killing within its limits of any grown wolf, or an additional 5s. for the killing of a wolf whelp. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1717
The town of Ipswich dealt with the need of its paupers for an alms-house: “It is agreed to have an alms-house, composed of logs, 40 feet long, 16 wide, and 6 high.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1720
November: Nicholas Woodbury, of the Hamlet near Ipswich, returned from Canada after long-term captivity among the native Americans. He had been taken in 1712 while in service at Wells and £30 obtained his release. The General Court of the Bay colony would compensate him with £60 and appoint him as an interpreter, “as the province may need his service in this respect.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1723
Wolves were still so abundant near the meeting-house of Ipswich that parents would not suffer their children to go and come from worship without some grown person.
Equating Roman Catholic native Americans with wolves, the Massachusetts Bay Colony hired bounty hunters to collect the scalps of the Norridgewock Abenaki and their 65-year old père, Father Sébastien Rasles. (Ethics aside, hair buying had its problems. One little problem was that it did nothing to discourage the Indians from attempting equally bloody-minded reprisals. Another was that scalp-hunters, this being for them an economic activity, sometimes became indiscriminate. The Mexicans, for instance, in the 1840s, would feel a need to chase several English and American scalp hunters out of Chihuahua, because they would come to suspect that the scalps they had been redeeming from these scalp hunters had among them scalps that seemed to have been taken from the heads Mexicans and Texans rather than from the heads of native Americans. One of the better known 18th-Century scalp-hunters was James Moore, a Scotsman, who would in 1850 use his scalp bounty to purchase the position of town librarian of Glasgow, this despite the fact that he himself was unable to read or write.)
December 1, Sunday (Old Style): Daniel Rogers, son of John Rogers, President of Harvard College, perished while wandering in the marshes in a snow storm, after missing a ferry on his way home from Salisbury NH. He left a widow, Sarah Rogers, and children, the Reverend Daniel Rogers, minister of Littleton; John Rogers; a daughter, wife of John Watson; Margaret Rogers Ward, married to the Reverend Robert Ward of Wenham MA; Patience Rogers Freeman, married to Joshua Freeman; Priscilla Rogers Leonard, married to the Reverend Nathaniel Leonard; and Elizabeth Rogers Wiswall, married to Peleg Wiswall. He graduated at Harvard College, in 1686, long kept the Grammar School, was Representative in 1716, was many years Town Clerk of Ipswich, Justice of the Quarterly and General Sessions Courts, and a physician. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1725
It was in about this year that Elizabeth Atwood, a single woman of Ipswich, was hung for having murdered her child:
She gave no signs of being properly affected by her crime, or by the realities of eternity. She put on, as many others in a similar condition have done, a mock courage, which set at defiance the retributions of both God and man. As an evidence of her callousness, tradition tells us that, as it was customary for the executioner to have the clothes of those whom he executed, she fitted herself out in the very worst of her apparel, and on her way to the gallows, she laughed, so that a woman who attended her saw it, and exclaimed, “How can you be so thoughtless on such an occasion?” and that she immediately replied, “I am laughing to think what a sorry suit the hangman will get from me.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1726
At this point there were still three native American families living in the Agawam district (Ipswich), their homes being at the Hamlet, back of Wigwam Hill:
When we look back on the Aborigines, as the sole proprietors of our soil, on the places which once knew them, but are now to know them no more for ever, feelings of sympathy and sadness come over our souls. Such reflection, though not presenting us with monuments of the civilized arts, nor with the productions of literature, nor with the improvements of science, to secure lasting fame, still sets before us, in the light of history, a tribe of men immortal as ourselves, who have irrevocably disappeared from the scenes and concerns of earth. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1727
The town of Ipswich dealt with its paupers:
Two men, having been blown off from Canso and having put in at St. Peter’s of Newfoundland, where they paid money for the passage of an old man, Richard Cole, who had lived at Ipswich and who was with them, to his home in England, desire to be reimbursed.
October 16, Monday (Old Style): “We are informed, from Ipswich, that on Wednesday night last, a young woman of that place, being more merry than wise, dressed herself in men’s apparel, intending a frolic at a place some distance off; but as she was riding through a river or pond, her horse, in all likelihood, threw her into the water, where she was taken up the next day drowned.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1730
In Ipswich the first “chair” carriage (a sort of chaise body without a top) was that of Richard Rogers, Esquire. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1733
At this point potatoes , which had been introduced to the North American continent in Derry NH in 1719 by settlers from Ireland, began to be cultivated also in some of the gardens of Ipswich.
They were kept as a rarity, to eat with roast meat. They were at first planted in beds, as beets and carrots. Three bushels of them were considered a large crop for one farmer’s family. Now a hundred bushels of them are not thought so much of, as one was then. Before potatoes came into use, turnips were raised abundantly and supplied the place, which the former now do. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1734
Woodchucks were still so numerous in Ipswich that a premium of 1s. per dozen was voted for killing them. The town also voted that 12d. a dozen be paid for the heads of blackbirds and blue jays killed within the town — the town treasurer was to destroy heads upon receipt so as not to pay for them more than once. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1735
The town of Ipswich dealt with the need of its paupers for an alms-house:
“All the poor are to live in one house, provided by the Selectmen, except such as are exempted.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1736
March 10, Wednesday (1735, Old Style): According to a will proven in Ipswich on this date and recorded in Salem Registry of Essex Probate, Hannah Emerson Duston had recently died. (Hannah had died in the home of her son Jonathan in Haverhill. A granite monument had been erected more or less near this site, but the city had not paid for it and so the stone works repossessed the materials and hauled them off and sandblasted away the inscriptions, and sold the monument to somebody else intending it for some other purpose. A glacial erratic, cheaper because excavated out of Bradley Brook where it empties into the Merrimack River (the point at which Hannah stepped out of the canoe after her escape), now marks this site.
The tomahawk used by Hannah to kill and scalp four adults and six children, or one like unto it, is on display at the Haverhill Historical Society at 240 Walter Street, as well as a crude knife found sticking in one of the corpses.)
New York’s Governor William Cosby died of consumption. Captain Peter Warren, brother-in-law of Governor Cosby’s associate James Delancey, would pay £110 for Crosby’s 14,000 acres on the south bank of the Mohawk River. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1738
The town of Ipswich contemplated its involvement with its paupers: “This place pays £400 a year for its poor.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1739
One might have expected the deer population to explode, with the decimation of the wolf population, but at this point deer had become so scarce in Ipswich due to overhunting that a law for preserving the remaining deer had to be read before the town, and two deer-reeves were appointed to see it executed. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1740
At this point there were a few sleighs in Ipswich, and the number would slowly increase. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1741
The town of Ipswich dealt with its paupers: “The Overseers are to give public notice when the time is for letting out the paupers, as cheap as they can be. This is still a practice in our small towns, where there are no alms- houses. It is open to the serious objection of having the disorderly among the poor often thrown into hands unfitted to hold a proper restraint upon them.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1742
The town of Ipswich dealt with its paupers: “Voted that Mr. Pickering have a contribution for the poor in Chebacco.”
The “Lecture” meetings which occurred each Thursday at Ipswich meetinghouse were at this point changed from the forenoon to the evening. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1744
June 3, the Lord’s Holy Day (Old Style): King George’s War began as France joined in a war effort against England. (This war would be going on until the treaty of Aix-La-Chapelle, in 1748.)
An earthquake occurred while people were at the forenoon meeting. In the Hamlet of Ipswich, although the Reverend Wigglesworth’s hearers were exceedingly alarmed, he calmed them somewhat by remarking “There can be no better place for us to die in, than the house of God.”
In a Huguenot family BIBLE –the same one in which there had been placed a record of the great earthquake of October 29/30, 1727– a record was made also of this earthquake of 1744 as it was experienced in Boston. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1747
A blast from the past: a bear was shot near the Ipswich River. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1753
The “Lecture” meetings which had occurred each Thursday at Ipswich meetinghouse were changed from weekly to monthly.
One of the first “chaise” carriages in Ipswich was that of the Reverend Samuel Wigglesworth. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1755
There were 62 slaves in the town of Ipswich of above sixteen years of age.
They were Indians as well as Africans. Besides these, in the early age of the colony, criminals were sold into servitude for a term of years, according to their offences.
Notice the category chosen for this statistic, “of above sixteen years of age.” Would there have been any functionality to this category at all, except that being above sixteen years of age made it so much easier to determine whether a person was a slave or was not a slave? HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
November 18, Tuesday: An earthquake that shook Boston was blamed, by some, on the installation there of lightning rods, a device for the exhibition of distrust in the overarching benevolence of an all-powerful Deity which had been being popularized by Benjamin Franklin since 1752.16 The Reverend Thomas Prince of South Church in
Boston would soon preach, “God shakes the earth because He is wroth.” God had been offended by this human interference with His instrument of choice for reprimand –lightning strikes that punished particular offenders– and so He was now being obligated to conduct his terrorist hits against a broader target. The more lightning rods were put up in Boston to control the artillery of heaven, the more earthquakes there were going to be. Professor of Mathematics and Physics John Winthrop at Harvard College would attempt to explain the nature of this earthquake in his “A Lecture on Earthquakes.” The professor would not favor the prevailing
16. See, it was a bum rap. This guy was not guilty of everything of which he was suspected! HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
explanation that the earthquake had been a manifestation of the divine wrath.17
17. Actually this was two quakes, occurring at 9:12AM and at 10:29AM Greenwich Mean Time off Cape Ann. The first was of magnitude 6.0 and the second an aftershock. There would be additional aftershocks off that cape on November 23d and December 20th. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
As part of this, a tsunami hit Cape Ann.18
The earthquake table now lists the two quakes on this day as “1755NOV18 0912 42.70 70.30 8 6.0 MA OFF CAPE ANN” and “1755NOV18 1029 X 42.70 70.30 4 MA OFF CAPE ANN.” (Cape Ann is in fact hit more often than any other area in New England.)
The Reverend George Leslie of Ipswich reported that “Between the hours of four and five in the morning, there happened a most surprising shock of an earthquake, which was succeeded by several others; though none equal to the first. In the town of Ipswich much damage was done to many houses; yet, through the goodness of God, no hurt was done either to the lives or limbs of any persons.” (The reverend noted also that the evening prior to the earthquake had been uncommonly clear and calm.)
In Braintree, John Adams believed that it continued almost four minutes: “The house seemed to rock and reel and crack as if it would fall in ruins about us.”
Some 200 miles at sea, the sailors aboard a ship assumed they had run aground.
In Boston, walls and stone fences lay in rubble on the ground. Something like a hundred chimneys were knocked down. Some descriptions mentioned violent movement like the waves of the sea, making it necessary to cling to something to prevent being thrown down. At Pembroke and Scituate small chasms opened in the earth through which fine sand reached the surface. Large numbers of fish were killed and many people on vessels presumed they were striking bottom. This earthquake was felt from Montréal, and from Lake George, New York, to a point at sea 200 miles east of Cape Ann, and from the Chesapeake Bay to the Annapolis River in Nova Scotia, an area of about 300,000 square miles. (Nineteen earthquakes have centered in Massachusetts in historic times. A number of other earthquakes have been centered off the coast of Massachusetts but have affected the eastern portion of the State. This earthquake of November 18, 1755 has, however, been at least so far the most destructive to be recorded in the eastern United States.)
18. These temblors had occurred along a plate boundary on the ocean floor, between the mid-Atlantic ridge and the Azores. For a comparison event within our own timeframe: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/ indonesia/aceh-andaman-tsunami-imagery.htm
Note that this tsunami that hit Cape Ann was not related in any way to the three tsunami that had hit Lisbon, Portugal at the beginning of the month, despite the fact that all of this was occurring in the Atlantic basin. Those earlier tsunami had already long since subsided. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1757
There was drought in the Bay colony. The wolf problem had at this point evidently been resolved in Ipswich. Also in this year, east of Mile Brook, a bear was shot which apparently was the last one in that district.
April 22, Friday: There being a demand for sand to sprinkle on one’s floors to keep down the dust and dirt, the town of Ipswich voted to contract with Captain Jonathan Fellows of Cape Ann for one year of exploitation of all the sand banks of the town, for the sum of £2 13s. 4d. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1758
The Atlantic cod Gadus morhua and other fishery had declined by half in Massachusetts. Of the fishing schooners at Ipswich only six remained. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1759
The town of Ipswich dealt with its paupers: “Materials are to be provided, so that the paupers committed to the house of correction may be employed.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1760
The town of Ipswich dealt with its paupers: “£66 13s. 4d. are voted to buy a house for two men, reduced to poverty.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1762
John Stavers began a public “curricle” carriage between Portsmouth, New Hampshire and Boston. It was drawn by two horses. The schedule was to leave Portsmouth on Monday morning and, proceeding via Ipswich, reach the ferry at Charlestown on the next day. It returned to Portsmouth by Friday night. A one-way fare through the whole route cost 13s. 6d. sterling.
There was drought in the Bay colony. Most of the hay and corn harvest was lost and the remaining corn would be selling at four times its usual price.
Joanna Baillie was born in Bothwell.
LAUNCELOT GREAVES, by Tobias Smollett. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1763
Up to this point in time, phthisis or consumption had been rare in Ipswich and so, when a person was confined with it, the case excited much sympathy and conversation and the ill person was visited by many from far and near. That was all about to change, as tuberculosis became much more ordinary. In the following half-century, the number of sufferers from tuberculosis would multiply by a factor of five. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1765
In WE THE JURY, issued by Prometheus Books, Godfrey D. Lehman has advanced the preposterous argument that, given time, US juries might have disposed of human enslavement across our nation in the manner in which Massachusetts juries had disposed of human enslavement in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, for instance in the Jenny Slew case dating to 1766 and Quok Walker case dating to 1783. One problem with Lehman’s ingenious argument is that since it is based primarily upon the premise that the notorious Walker case disposed of human enslavement in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, it is based primarily upon a false premise. However, had that little-known Slew case dispose of human enslavement in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts? In this year, Jenny Slew of Ipswich was suing her master for keeping her as a slave for three years, on the idea that since she had been born to a white mother she should not be considered to be a slave.Her
SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS master based his defense on the idea that no such person as this Jenny Slew existed –as a legal entity– and the thing is that, in the lower court, where trial by jury was available, this proved to be the winning argument. Only on appeal to the higher court in the following year, a court in which of course there was no jury, would this decision be reversed, and Jenny awarded four pounds in damages, plus expenses. (Since slaves could not receive such awards, Lehman’s presumption became that before the law she was not a slave. On such a scanty evidentiary basis Lehman infers that slavery had been disposed of — and that it had been juries that had done the deed!) HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1766
The town of Ipswich dealt with its paupers: “Paupers are increasing here.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1770
The town of Ipswich dealt with the need of its paupers for an alms-house: “The alms-house at the south-east end of the county-house, is decayed.” The town deer-reeves joined with those of other towns in an attempt to prevent the deer of Chebacco Woods from being entirely extirpated. A few might be seen there as late as 1790, but ultimately this attempt at species preservation would prove unsuccessful. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1771
Having been reading theology under the tutelage of his father-in-law, Manasseh Cutler received a license to preach and became pastor of the Congregational church in the parish of Ipswich, Massachusetts (now Hamilton). HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1774
At this point a 4-horse stagecoach was making the round trip between Newburyport MA and Boston via Ipswich twice a week.
February 7, Monday: There was an epidemic of the small pox in Ipswich, and the reaction was: “Voted, that all the dogs in the town be confined, and if any shall go at large, they shall be killed.” (Obviously, they were supposing that this measure might hinder the spread of this disease.)
August 29, Monday: Ipswich voted £100 to relieve the distressed inhabitants of Boston “who are suffering in the cause of the country.”
Such noble charity was bestowed by all parts of our country, though adversity frowned and fears were high in every quarter. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1776
During the American revolution, unable to protect the Isles of Shoals from British naval forces, the province of New Hampshire would order the islands to be abandoned. The fishermen living there would mostly dismantle their homes and float them to the mainland. Such relocated houses reportedly still exist, scattered from York ME to Ipswich.
During the American revolution Peddocks Island is said to have been the site of a patriot infantrymen’s raid
on a Loyalist farm in which some 800 cows and sheep were confiscated. Some 600 American militiamen were HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
then quartered on this island to guard the harbor against the return of British troops.
Meanwhile the French expeditionary force was constructing a pentagonal earthwork “Fort Independence” atop HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
Telegraph Hill in the Pemberton section of Hull Village. The fortification’s 22 cannon would dominate the
southerly approaches to Boston Harbor. Only traces of the original earthworks still remain. Re-named Fort Revere to avoid name conflict with the Fort William on Castle Island which in 1779 would be been renamed Fort Independence, this site would be converted into a major coastal defense fortification in the late 1800s and HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
would then be deactivated in the 1960s:
POINT ALLERTON HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
June 10, Monday: The Declaration of Ipswich, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. On the recommendation of the Congress, a census of Rhode Island was initiated (the population would turn out to number 55,011).
Hospitals for inoculation for the small pox were ordered to be established in each county of Rhode Island.
There was continued debate in the 2d Continental Congress at Philadelphia and a “committee of five” was appointed to draft a subdued declaration of war, to wit, a “statement of independence” for the colonies. Since there were a couple of northerners –John Adams of Massachusetts and Roger Sherman of Connecticut– plus a couple of men from the Middle Colonies –Benjamin Franklin of Philadelphia and Robert R. Livingston of New York (refer to the guy in the middle, on the back of the $2 bill)– for political correctness they would need to incorporate one or another southerner — and so they picked out a junior delegate, redheaded Thomas Jefferson of Virginia.
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1778
July 2, Thursday: Ezra Ross, a single man of Ipswich, was hanged at Worcester for involvement in the murder of a Mr. Spooner (at the instigation of the wife Mr. Spooner had abandoned).
The day of his execution was kept as a season of fasting and prayer for his untimely end, in his native parish.
December 31, Thursday: The town of Ipswich dealt with its paupers: “Voted that application be made to the Selectmen for cutting down decayed wood, which belongs to persons in Great Britain, ‘for use of the poor and the soldiers’ families in this distressing time for want of wood.’”
Aloise Mocenigo IV, Doge of Venice, died.
Ignaz Joseph Graf von Spaur replaced Leopold Maria Joseph Graf von Spaur as Prince-Bishop of Brixen. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1780
May 19, Friday, mid-morning: As Friend John Greenleaf Whittier would later record it, this was “the famous Dark Day of New England,” which was “a physical puzzle for many years to our ancestors”:
’Twas on a May-day of the far old year Seventeen hundred eighty, that there fell Over the bloom and sweet life of the Spring, Over the fresh earth and the heaven of noon, A horror of great darkness, like the night....
For days the sun had been shining on the northeastern United States from New Jersey to Maine with a reddish hue out of a sky of dull yellow. At mid-morning on this day a blanket of darkness descended and the birds sang their evening songs and the cows began walking back to their barns. Noon was nearly as dark as night, and outdoor travel became difficult. New Haven’s Connecticut Journal reported that inside houses, candles were lit as if it were evening. Samuel Williams of Bradford, Connecticut would report that “In some places, the darkness was so great, that persons could not see to read common print in the open air.... The extent of this darkness was very remarkable.” The Reverend Timothy Dwight, Yale College president, would report that “It was the general opinion that the day of judgment was at hand.”
The followers of “Universal Friend” Jemimah Wilkinson, having been disappointed that the millennium had not appeared on April 1st, wondered whether this “Dark Day” might be the end, but again they were disappointed, and again they fell back and regrouped:
People were supposing that a biblical prophecy had come true and Judgement Day had arrived (Abanes, Richard. END-TIME VISIONS. NY: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1998, page 217). HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
The House of Representatives in Hartford, Connecticut adjourned on account of the darkness. At the urging of Colonel Abraham Davenport, however, the governor’s council continued its meeting: “Either the day of judgment is at hand or it is not. If it is not, there is no cause for adjournment. If it is, I wish to be found in the line of my duty.”
The Reverend William Miller and others would not be able to resist seeing in such heavenly displays a fulfillment of words associated with Jesus Christ, “Immediately after the tribulation in those days shall the sun be darkened and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven and the powers of heaven shall be shaken” (MATTHEW 24:29). This darkening of the sun, combined with the stars falling in November 1833, would convince many devout believers that the second advent of Jesus was indeed near. HERE COME DA JUDGE!
From the town records of Ipswich we learn that:
Darkness came on like that of an eclipse. By 9 o’clock, A.M., persons could not see to weave. Candles were lighted to dine by. As the day began prematurely to put on the appearance of twilight, cattle lowed, and fowls went to roost. The darkness of the succeeding evening was almost palpable. Many feared and trembled, lest the end of all things had come. They alone are truly wise, who seek the Lord when the bow of his mercy is over them, as well as when they hear his thunders, and behold his lightnings.
From the diary of Phineas Sprague, as well as from many, many other sources, we can be assured that this day was indeed a quite unusual and memorable one:
This day was the most Remarkable day that ever my eyes beheld the air had bin so full of smoak to an uncommon degree So that wee could scairce see a mountain at two miles distance for 3 or 4 days Past till this day after Noon the smoak all went off to the South at sunset a very black bank of a cloud appeared in the south and west the Nex morning cloudey and thundered in the west about ten oclock it began to Rain and grew vere dark and at 12 was allmost as dark as Nite so that wee was obliged to lite our candels and Eate our dinner by candel lite at Noon day but between 1 and 2 oclock it grew lite again but in the Evening the cloud caim over us again the moon was about the full it was the darkest Nite that ever was seen by us in the world.
This atmospheric effect probably was caused by numerous forest fires in upstate New York and in Canada. In Boston the air was observed to smell like a “malt-house or coal-kiln,” and something resembling ashes settled on pools of rainwater. However, refer also to the date October 15, 1785 for a comparison volcanic phenomenon. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1782
Foundation of Harvard Medical School, the 1st med school in North America.
The Reverend Manasseh Cutler began a private boarding school in Ipswich, Massachusetts (now Hamilton).
At the age of 17, recommended by Professor Gaspart Monge, Sylvestre François Lacroix was hired as an instructor in mathematics at the École Gardes de Marine at Rochefort, France. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1784
The town of Ipswich dealt with the defects of the current alms-house:
“The Selectmen are to sell the alms-house for the most it will fetch.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1785
The town of Ipswich dealt with the need of its paupers for a replacement to its alms-house:
“A committee are instructed to finish the alms-house.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1786
The town of Ipswich dealt with its paupers: “Charges for poor £300.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1789
The town of Ipswich declared that persons, recently moved thither, were to be warned away without any respect to their character, profession, or condition. This custom, as a legal precaution against the depredations of strangers, would continue years afterwards.
The plot of ground on which the Duxbury meetinghouse had been located, where a number of bodies had over the years been interred including the one pertaining to Myles Standish (the town’s most illustrious founder), was abandoned.19
October 30, Friday: George Washington, on his tour, was escorted into Ipswich where he received a short address, dined at the inn then kept by Mrs. Homan, reviewed a regiment mustered to do him honor, was visited by many, and departed for Newbury through lines of a multitude comprising both sexes of all ages, who had assembled to give him, with deep emotions of gratitude, a welcome and a parting look. Seldom was respect more heartily and deservedly rendered than it was on this occasion, they said, which was over in three hours.
19. Various memorial markers and tourist curiosities have now been installed on this piece of real estate and it is being headlined as “the oldest maintained cemetery in the United States.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1792
The town of Ipswich contemplated its paupers: “They are above £500.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1793
July 6, Saturday: In the evening there was a tempest in the Bay colony, accompanied with hail and rain. In Ipswich the hail not only broke down flax, corn, and other grain, and stripped the fruit trees, but also shattered about 5,000 squares of window glass. The hailstones averaged nearly the size of a hen’s egg and some that were collected actually measured, from their extreme jagged parts, seven inches in circumference. The storm extended three miles in all directions about the main part of the town where all this window glass was broken. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1794
The town stocks which had been set up beside a whipping post “as a terror to the disorderly,” behind the 1st Parish meetinghouse in Ipswich in 1638, were at this point dismantled. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1795
May 6, Wednesday: The town of Ipswich dealt with the need of its paupers for an alms-house: “Voted to buy John Harris’s house, other buildings, and land, for the poor, at £250. This was done.”
August 6, Thursday: Pomp, a black man, was hanged at Ipswich for having murdered his slavemaster, Captain Charles Furbush of Andover.
Before his execution, he was carried into the meeting-house at 11 o’clock. Mr. Frisbie prayed and Mr. Dana preached from the words, “He that sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” Mr. Bradford of Rowley prayed at the gallows. Pomp remained unaffected through the whole of so awful a scene. He was directed to call on God for mercy, and he formally complied. His mind had been so little instructed and his heart so left to moral darkness, that he appeared to have no realizing perception of his guilt or of his danger in being suddenly sent into eternity. The little while he was under the care of the Ipswich ministers, they faithfully did what they could to correct the gross errors of his long neglected education. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1798
Up to this point the weeping willow tree had been preferred as an ornamental tree in Ipswich. At this point Lombardy poplars begin to be set out in various parts of town but that new species would quickly come into disrepute as infested with poisonous asps and as injuring the soil, and within ten years it would become unfashionable. The weeping willow would regain popularity along with pine and spruce trees and the elm and mulberry. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1800
June 9, Monday: The town of Ipswich voted that any persons who, in the opinion of the selectmen, have been exposed to the small pox, were to be inoculated within 24 hours at their own expense by Mr. John Lummus.
October 16, Thursday: Tamerlan, a tragedy by Johann Friedrich Reichardt to words of Mandenville (translated by Schaum), was performed for the initial time in the Koniglichestheater, Berlin (this had been intended for production in Paris in 1786 but the composer had been forced to return to Berlin upon the death of King Friedrich II).
The town of Ipswich voted to permit a local physician, Dr. Thomas Manning, as an experiment to inoculate a few persons who have already had the disease, for the small pox. Dr. Manning was to send of to his brother in London, for the matter with which to conduct said experiment. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1801
May 6, Wednesday: On October 16, 1800 the town of Ipswich had voted to permit their local physician, Dr. Thomas Manning, as an experiment to inoculate a few persons who had already survived the cow pox, with the small pox. The physician having received the matter for this experiment from his brother in London (the usual way to keep the variola fresh on the voyage across the Atlantic was to infect some orphan child, put the child aboard the vessel to suffer its illness on the voyage, and then collect fresh matter from the child’s healing scars upon arrival), and the experiment having been conducted, on this date the good news was released that the town’s experiment had been successful: not so much as one of the citizens who had submitted to this variolation had died. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1802
November: Cato Haskell, a person of color at Ipswich, had an M branded on his forehead and was sentenced to a year in prison for having killed another person of color from Virginia, Charles Lewis, on October 12th, with a scythe.
Cato broke jail and was not recovered. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1803
The town of Ipswich voted, for sufferers by fire at Portsmouth, the sum of $100 in relief (again in 1814 they would vote to send relief for the same town, in the amount of $250). HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1804
As the smoking of tobacco had become prevalent in the streets of Ipswich, to the fire hazard of its structures, such street smoking was forbidden and a penalty of $1 mandated for each offence.
October 9, Tuesday: In Ipswich there was a great gale with much rain. Many trees were blown down and large numbers of fowls, turkeys, geese, sheep, and cattle were killed. (Could it be that the gale in question occurred during the hours of darkness, thus accounting for reports from Ipswich dated the 9th and reports from Boston dated the 10th?)
The town of Hobart was founded on the island of Tasmania by British colonists.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3 day 9 of 10 M 1804 / The day has passed with but little injoyment of the true Life; yet I feel at this time the arising of it in my mind.- In several days past I have been very dry & lean. which when I come to reflect upon, is very alarming to find that I am on the barran Mountains & desolate Hills, where no nourishment is to be found. — Well may I learn wisdom from this state, & be aroused to a more diligent state of Watchfulness & propper weighting upon the Lord who is the Sorce of Life Wisdom & Streangth - Several of our Friends have this day gone for Providence to attend the Quarterly Meeting. I should have been Glad to have been in their company had my health & other circumstances permitted. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
———————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1811
May 31, Friday night: There was an extreme conflagration in Newburyport, Massachusetts, beginning in a stable on Merchants’ Row and proceeding before a dry wind toward the market house and the ferry wharf. The “most ancient, wealthy, and commercial” part of town was consumed despite a long line of citizens passing buckets of water. Then an abrupt change in the wind drove the flames across State Street and into the large brick buildings which the townspeople were counting on to shield the lower end of the town. Many of the refugees gathered at Farnham’s and at the Tracy mansion which serves now as the Newburyport public library:
The five-year-old William Lloyd Garrison would never forget being held aloft to watch the leaping flames that seared the sky. The glare of light was intense, yet smoky clouds obliterated the moon and the night air became as sultry as a summer’s noon. Firemen’s trumpets rang out over the crash of chimneys and the cries of distress, while explosions of stored powder and spirits from the wharfside distilleries gave off thunderous sounds of war. Shortly after dawn, when a cooling fog helped quench the blaze, the fire at last came under control, and Newburyport stared devastation in its grimy, acrid face. Two hundred and forty buildings destroyed, thirteen wharves consumed, ninety families homeless, every dry goods store a wreck, the town library a ruin, and the Baptist meetinghouse in shambles. A visitation without parallel, the fire burned the heart out of the town and broke up forever the possibility of family life for Sister Garrison and her children.
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON
The sympathetic neighboring town of Ipswich would vote $1,000 to these sufferers by fire.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6 day 31 of 5 Mo// Nothing Material to insert - except that we had the agreeable company of Sisters Ruth & Eliza in the evening — ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1814
The town of Ipswich, which had voted in 1803 to send relief for sufferers by fire at Portsmouth, New Hampshire in the amount of $100, at this point voted again to send relief to that town, this time in the amount of $250. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1817
July 18, Friday: Jane Austen died, and her identity as author of the famous novels (published anonymously) was announced by her brother Henry.
That night the house of Colonel Jonathan Cogswell in Ipswich was entered and $100 taken from his locked desk:
The perpetrator of this was not discovered. It is indeed true, that the way of transgressors is hard. Even if not detected by man, they carry in their bosom the smothered, but tormenting fires of guilt. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1818
January 1, Thursday: Forces of the Peshwa were defeated by British at Koregaon.
The Black Ball Lines began regular packet service between Britain and the United States as the Courier departed from Liverpool for New-York.
The town of Ipswich dealt with the need of its paupers for an alms-house: “Voted that the Town Treasurer hire 10,500 dollars to purchase a farm for the paupers.”
The visitors to the President’s home in Washington DC, which had recently been refurbished and painted a glowing white after being burned by the British army in 1814, were referring to it as Washington’s “white house” (since back on the plantation in Virginia, where the President resided for the remainder of the year with his slaves, the main plantation house was also known as the White House).
Charles Wilkes received an appointment as a midshipman in the US Navy.
In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 1 of 1st M 1818 / I have been thankful in beginning the New Year under a precious sense of favor, but have to regret the loss of Meeting. I was in expectation of going but had a little buisness to attend to which I could not avoid & it took about 20 minutes more than the time & being unwilling to go in late & set the example concluded it was best not to go - My H attended & said Hannah Dennis preached - Our cousins George Gould & Lydia his wife set the Afternoon with us & took tea. - This was a pleasant visit, there is something pleasant & comfortable in brethren’s dwelling in harmony HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
Rec'd a Letter from Uncle Stanton20
RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
April 6, Monday: The town of Ipswich dealt with the need of its paupers for an alms-house: “Voted to sell the place previously improved as an alms-house establishment, and with the proceeds of it to enlarge the buildings on the farm recently bought. This farm formerly belonged to the noted Doctor Thomas Berry. It is in the north part of the town nigh Rowley River.”
In Paris, the Baron Karl von Drais de Sauerbrun demonstrated his new swiftwalking bicycle contraption, which he was naming after himself, the draisienne. Although this device would enjoy a brief vogue in England and America, his having taken out a patent wouldn’t do him much good, as the machine would be widely copied, royalties would not be paid, and he would die penniless.
Lady Melborne died.
20. Stephen Wanton Gould Diary, 1815-1823: The Gould family papers are stored under control number 2033 at the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections of Cornell University Library, Box 7 Folder 12 for August 24, 1815-September 25, 1823; also on microfilm, see Series 7 HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
April 17, Friday: The Office of Ordinance’s crane was used to unload the head and torso of the Egyptian statue known then as “younger Memnon” at the Tower Wharf in London.
Great excitement prevailed in Chebacco parish of Ipswich when it was discovered that at least eight bodies had been taken from their graveyard. They adopted measures for detecting the person or persons concerned in this act.
July 23, Thursday: The individual who had been disinterring bodies from a local graveyard of Ipswich for anatomical purposes having been fined a large sum of money, the Reverend Crowell preached, at the request of his parishioners, a sermon from JOHN 20:13.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 23d of 7 M / Our Meeting this day was an excellent one to me soon after I took my seat I felt a sweetness to arise that was precious for which I desire to be thankful. — Lydia ALmy father Rodman & Hannah Dennis were engaged in short testimonys This Afternoon Aunt Stanton arrived from New York. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1820
The town of Ipswich dealt with the need of its paupers for an alms-house: “The whole number in the alms- house, when visited, was forty-seven. Of these, twenty-three were brought to poverty, directly or indirectly, by intemperance.”
There are a number of standard texts on the history of American drinking/temperance and there is the organ of a scholarly group called the Alcohol & Temperance History Group, Social History of Alcohol Review. None of these treat the question of the history of actual consumption in any great detail, the historiography in this field having long been tethered to the temperance movement — in effect, to focuses on “thought” and “political action” rather than upon “social history” and “historical ethnography.” However, the period of Henry Thoreau’s lifetime, 1817 to 1862, falls across what is believed to be the great historical divide in American drinking—going from an era in which there was little restraint on consumption (alcohol was generally regarded as “The Good Creature of God”) to a much more temperate sensibility characterized by: • a long-term shift from whiskey to beer • ethanol consumption down to about 1/3rd the “pre-shift” level • drinking of alcohol confined, by and large, to men
In Ipswich it was agreed that it was permissible for people to sit in meetings with their hats on.
As we reflect on the moral transactions of this and other ancient towns, we are compelled to notice one fact, however ominous of evil, however discouraging to our hope. This fact is, that, as such communities have increased in numbers, wealth, and years, so have they departed from the justifiable strictness of their ancestors. We look in vain for that measure of vigilance, promptness, and activity, which the officers of each corporation anciently manifested against the workers of iniquity. We look in vain for the ready obedience, which the vicious were constrained to yield to the commands of their social authorities. Our disease is open before us. Wise and happy shall we be, if we apply the needed remedies.
A company was incorporated to dig a half a mile of canal between Ipswich and Essex, commencing at Fox Creek and running to the Chebacco River. The canal would cost nearly $1100 and would become navigable early in 1821. The stock was divided into twenty-seven shares of $40 each and was to pay nearly 6% on the original amount. As an inlet from the Merrimack River for ship timber required in Essex, the canal would prove cost-effective. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1822
The first stocking machine smuggled from England arrived in Ipswich, whose early residents had been farmers, fishermen, shipbuilders, and traders. Lace making had developed as a home industry, as would the making of stockings.
March 16, Saturday: In the sanctuary of the Blessed Virgin of the Pillar, in her villa at Castenaso near Bologna, the coloratura Isabella Colbran got married with the opera composer Gioachino Rossini (the couple were on their way from Naples to Vienna).
Friends Benjamin Shaw, John Alley, Junior, Jonathan Buffum, and Preserved Sprague were tried in Ipswich on charges of disturbing the peace by having disrupted Quaker worship at the Lynn meetinghouse, and moderate fines were exacted, with Judge Samuel Howe threatening the defendants that any repetition of such conduct would inevitably result in much harsher penalties before the law (Friend Benjamin Shaw, whom they allowed might be showing signs of mental instability, was given the benefit of the doubt and found not guilty): TRIAL OF BENJAMIN SHAW, JOHN ALLEY, JUNIOR, JONATHAN BUFFUM AND PRESERVED SPRAGUE: FOR RIOTS AND DISTURBANCE OF PUBLIC WORSHIP IN THE SOCIETY OF QUAKERS, AT LYNN, MASSACHUSETTS, BEFORE THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS, HELD AT IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS, MARCH 16TH, 1822 (Cushing & Appleton, 1822). DISTURBING OF WORSHIP HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1823
The town of Ipswich voted $220 to sufferers by fire at Wiscasset and Alna. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1824
August 31, Tuesday: Hector Berlioz wrote from Paris, replying to a scornful letter from his father: “I am driven involuntarily towards a magnificent career –no other adjective can be applied to the career of artist– and not towards my doom. For I believe I shall succeed; yes, I believe it ... I wish to make a name for myself, I wish to leave some trace of my existence on this earth; and so strong was the feeling –which was an entirely honorable one– that I would rather be Gluck or Mehul dead than what I am in the flower of my age.”
On the day that Captain Jones Very and his 11-year-old cabin boy son Jones Very, Jr. arrived back in Salem from their voyage to New Orleans, France, and Portugal, the Marquis de Lafayette was being paraded through the streets of Salem along with his American friend, Fanny Wright. Father and son may well have witnessed this event. In addition, the mother, Lydia Very, may on this day have had an opportunity not only to see but also to speak with Fanny Wright, her personal “idol.”
The French luminary, who had been to Ipswich before, honored the place that evening with a second visit. Unfortunately he and his suite were delayed en route by rain and mud and, after having been expected most of the day, they did not enter the packed meetinghouse until between seven and eight in the evening. He was addressed by Nathaniel Lord, Esq. and made a short reply before being conducted to Nathaniel Treadwell’s inn, where he kibbitzed with some Revolutionary soldiers while obtaining refreshments. The following morning at 10 o’clock he would depart with his suite for Newburyport “amid the benedictions of many hearts.” Unlike the canker-worm, this general would not again return.
In Providence, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3rd day - In the morning attended School Committee & in the Afternoon the Meeting for Sufferings, both which made adjournment till tomorrow - lodged again at MB, RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
September 1, Wednesday: General Lafayette and his suite departed Ipswich at 10AM for Newburyport “amid the benedictions of many hearts.” Unlike the canker-worm, this general would not again return. The weather was so inclement that they would not arrive in Newburyport until too late in the evening for any reception, but the town cannon would be discharged anyway, to alert the residents to his arrival.
In Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day - in dilligent service under my different appointments in society, from the Y Meeting, with my mind much engaged in the service, no part of which was attended with more solid weight than our visit to the children in the School, in the girls department, our frd M Brown was concerned to impart weighty council, & was followed by a baptising supplication from Alice Rathbone & testimony from Hannah Dennis - & was a most interesting opportunity - In the boys school much good council was imparted by several of the committee & I hope our labours will not be soon forgotten — After the service of this day was over I went in to Providence, set the evening with Dorcas Brown & lodged at Welcome Congdons. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1827
The citizens of Ipswich voted to pay ten cents for every crow killed within the town limits. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1828
The town of Ipswich took up a collection for the relief of distress among the Greeks.
The old house of correction at Norton’s Bridge in Ipswich, was discontinued, and the prisoners taken to the new one on the premises of the local jail. The following commitments to this new house of correction would take place, nine out of every ten being of those “addicted to intoxication”:
1828 114 1829 136 1830 74 1831 117 1832 165 1833 98 HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1829
Myron Holley became an Anti-Mason and, when the party assembled in Albany, drafted its platform. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
Public distrust of Masonry was such that the Masons of Ipswich indefinitely discontinued meetings.
As to this cessation they are not chargeable with imprudence. Though aware that there have been gross misrepresentations of Masonic obligations and transactions, yet they have not thought it well to convene, lest it should fan the flame of party animosity, which already preys upon the vitals of the body politic. They do not undertake to assert, that no lodges in our country have become so corrupt, as to engage, that, if expediency or necessity require, they will violate laws both human and divine. But they can truly declare, that neither they nor any lodge of New England, with which they have an acquaintance, have ever understandingly covenanted to countenance, much less to practise immoralities. They feel themselves bound to condemn the murderers of Morgan, if such there be, and the attempts to prevent the infliction of justice upon them, as upon other members of the community. It would, however, be infatuation to pretend, that Masonry is free from every fault. Like all institutions of human origin, it has imperfections. Among these imperfections is a part of the figurative expressions and forms, used on the admission of its members. Such things, if they were not formerly defects, have become so, wherever the benevolent spirit and enlightened views of Christianity prevail. The object of legitimate Masonry can now be accomplished without them. With regard to the proposal before our Legislature, it is a question deserving serious and general consideration, whether they should not only forbid Masonic, Phi Beta Kappa, and other literary societies’ oaths of secrecy, but also oaths of every description. The true man will tell the truth without an oath. The false man will declare falsely with an oath. Indeed, who is not shocked to witness the frequent perjury, which takes place in our courts of justice? In cases of this sort, the perjurer implicitly calls upon his Maker to destroy his soul, if he do not speak truly. There is nothing really so awful as this in the obligations of Masonry. While the axe is laid to one root, let it be laid to the whole. Let a law be passed, prohibiting oaths of every kind, and requiring, when necessary, the solemn affirmation of the Friends. Let this be done, and then the public welfare will not have cause to complain, that while one part of its claims are listened to by a numerous legislative assembly, the other is neglected. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1830
The town of Ipswich voted some aid to sufferers by fire at Gloucester. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1832
The town of Ipswich contributed $150 for relief in the Cape de Verdi Islands.21
Ipswich dealt with the need of its paupers for an alms-house: “The report of this year is as follows. — The main building was an old farm-house, 34 by 48 feet, two stories high. Other buildings are, one 20 by 50, and another 20 by 26, both of one story. The farm contains 340 acres, 50 of which are marsh. The land is excellent for hay and grain, yielding 150 tons of the former and 600 bushels of the latter in a year. One fifth of the paupers here entirely earn their living. The State poor are not inclined to remain, because required to work. All the clothing of those in the alms-house is manufactured and made up here. Salary of the superintendent is 225 dollars, and of a hired man 215 dollars.”22
21. To get a sense of what that amounted to in today’s money, consult
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1833
The town of Ipswich dealt with the need of its paupers for an alms-house: “There were thirty-six in the alms- house. Of these was one insane and another non compos. It is calculated that they have maintained themselves this year, and earned 150 dollars towards paying the interest. The average ages of the thirty-six were seventy- one years, and of twelve among them eighty-five years and a half, making one thousand and twenty-seven years. The purchasing and continuing of this establishment is sound economy for the town and mercy for the poor. These, having stated employement, and wholesome and regular food as well as clothing, are more happy in mind and more healthy in body. Such of them as are slaves to vicious indulgences have something else to occupy their attention, at least for a part of the time, besides the gratification of their evil propensities. While much is thus well done for their bodies, should not the inquiry be made, whether enough has been done for their souls? The poor, however they become so, whether by adversity or crime, are the Providential care of the public, who are bound to provide for their spiritual as well as temporal necessities.”
There were three public houses at Ipswich:
These, when well kept, are the home of the traveller. But when they are resorted to by the idle, intemperate, and licentious of the place where they are situated, and thus become lures to draw the young from virtue and lead them to perdition, they are public nuisances, and no eye of authority should wink at their abominations, but every energy should be put forth for their immediate suppression. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1834
Joseph B. Felt’s HISTORY OF IPSWICH, ESSEX AND HAMILTON explained that although the lightning rod had been invented by Benjamin Franklin (that had been in about 1749), at this point, although an entire span of human life had passed, this device had been but little used in any part of Ipswich — except on the old jail. By this year, although still none of the structures in either Essex or Hamilton were protected by lightning rods, yet there had been a grand sum total of merely seven installed in Ipswich. A likely reason for such inertia would have been the general Colonial sentiment that such devices testified to a reluctance to rely upon God’s Providence, causing the electric fluid to deviate from its natural and direct course. By this point in time, however, a change was being accomplished in the public thinking, and such a Christian sentiment in opposition to the marvels of science and technology was coming to be generally condemned under the rubric “Mahommedan fatality.”
HILLS These, as well as other features of the soil, will be put down, partly preceded by the year, when first found upon record, though most of them must have been previously designated. The reason of the hills being called as they are, is, for the most part, suggested by their names. Those not mentioned as belonging elsewhere, are within the present limits of Ipswich, and their situation may be seen on the map of this place.
1634: Castle 1635: Great bare — Heart-Break 1637: Rabbit — Hurtleberry — Captain Turner’s — Little Turner’s — Turkey 1647: Rocky 1655: Bartholomew 1662: Wilderness 1665: Red-Root 1673: Averill’s 1676: Wigwam 1678: Wind-Mill 1689: Paine’s 1691: Bragg’s 1702: Long — Brush — Tobacco-Pipe — Scott’s — Pigeon — Pine — Timber — Steep Some of the hills contained on the map of Ipswich may be partly among those on the preceding list, but with changed names; as North Ridge — Town — Jewett — Prospect — Boar — Eagle — Plover — Burnham — White’s — Perkins’s, and Eveleth’s now in Essex 1638: Sagamore 1678: Lamson’s 1702: Whipple or Job’s — Vineyard — Dean’s — Wigwam — Brown’s and Independent, Sagamore hill, and the others which follow it in the paragraph, are all in Hamilton. The two last are modern names.
PLAIN This was denominated Wolf-Pen, a place for catching wolves. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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MEADOWS 1634: Rocky 1635: Far 1637: West 1647: New, between Topsfield and Hamilton — Nealand and Conant’s, on Topsfield bounds — Perley’s, in Essex.
SWAMPS 1635: Great Pine 1678: Cedar — Bear, in Hamilton — Long, in Essex.
MARSHES 1635: Reed — Rocky.
CREEKS 1634: Labor-in-vain 1635: Chebacco, in Essex 1650: Robinson — Walker 1667: Green 1672: Whitred 1678: Muscle Other creeks, Sluice — Dane — Fox — Boardman — Paine On the map are the following: Rodgers — Lord — Treadwell — Neck — Six-Geese — Metcalf — Broad — Law — Wallis — Stacy — Kimball — Hart — Baker — West — Grape — Pine.
COVES 1638: Great 1716: Muscle — Neck — Lord’s.
POINTS 1635: Moore 1667: Green — Cedar — Brewer — Safford — Hog Island — Deacon Sam — Cross Bank — Holland — Sawyer — Bar Island.
NECKS 1635: Little — Great — Jeffrey 1655: Castle — Crope’s.
BANKS Thatch — Cross — Nub — Hart — Beach — Neck, or Patch.
PARTICULAR PLACES Turkey Shore — Diamond’s Stage 1635: Great Crook 1639: Aspine Rock 1643: Poor Man’s Field 1650: Far Chebacco, towards Gloucester — The Hundreds 1662: Argilla 1678: Great Pasture, near Gloucester line — Cow-Keeper Rock — The Eighths — Town Landing — Sheep Walks, several places where shepherds kept flocks of sheep 1707: Blind Hole. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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SPRINGS Indian 1678: Lummus, on Wenham line — Bath — Bear Swamp, in Hamilton.
BROOKS 1635: Mile, running from Wenham pond to Ipswich river 1637: Gravel 1649: Pye 1660: Saunders 1681: Black, in Hamilton — Howlet, on Topsfield bounds — Choate, in Essex — Bull — Potter — Norton.
PONDS 1662: Pleasant, on Wenham line 1671: Baker, on Topsfield limits — Prichard — Duck — Perley, in Essex — Chebacco, partly in Essex and partly in Hamilton — Beck — Round and Gravel, in Hamilton.
RIVERS Ipswich. Speaking of this, Johnson says, 1646, “A faire and delightful river, whose first rise or spring begins about twenty-five miles farther up the country, issuing forth a very pleasant pond. But soon after, it betakes its course through a most hideous swamp of large extent, even for many miles, being a great harbour for bears. After its coming forth this place, it groweth larger by the income of many small rivers, and issues forth in the sea, due east against the Island of Sholes, a great place of fishing for our English nation.” 1634, Chebacco, having falls and running from Chebacco pond, in Essex 1635: North, or Egypt, flowing into Rowley river 1637: Muddy, emptying into the same — Rodgers Island 1707: Mill, running out of long swamp into the great pond, beyond Chebacco river.
ISLANDS Plumb. In the grant of King James, 1621, to Captain John Mason, of land between Naumkeag and Merrimack rivers, there is the subsequent clause; “The great Isle, henceforth to be called, Isle of Mason, lying near or before the bay, harbour, or river of Agawam.” This must have been Plumb Island, part of which was set off to Ipswich by the General Court, 1639 1637: Hog, in Essex 1662: Diamon 1668: Perkins — Boreman 1673: Bagwell — Birch — Rogers — Treadwell — Tilton — Bull — Horse — Manning — Grape — Millstone — Holy — Eagle — Mighill’s Garden — Groce — Bar, — Story — Round — Corn — Cross; the four last in Essex.
INLAND ISLANDS 1707: Gregory, in Chebacco Pond — Hemlock, on Wenham line.
HARBOUR Smith says of Agawam, — “This place might content a right curious judgment; but there are many sands at the entrance of the harbour, and the worst is, it is imbayed too farre from the deepe sea.” His opinion, though differing from that of the first settlers at Plymouth, was correct. Had the harbour of Ipswich been deep and capacious, it would probably have been a metropolis. The natural advantages or disadvantages of a place, make it either great or small, in the process of ages. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1838
A new light tower, 42 feet above the water, was erected on Plum Island to replace the one that had been raised in 1788. This new tower was “on Castle Neck, south side of entrance to Ipswich Harbor.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1839
September 3, Tuesday: The 1st anniversary of Frederick Douglass’s freedom, which we may well elect to celebrate in lieu of an unknown slave birthday.
“It has been a source of great annoyance to me, never to have a birthday.”
September 3: Tuesday We passed a boat before sunrise, and though we could not distinguish it for the fog, the few dull sounds we heard, carried with them a sense of weight and irresistible motion which was impressive. {Four-fifths page blank} If ever our idea of a friends is realised it will be in some broad and generous natural person — as frank as the daylight — in whose presence our behavior will be as simple and unconstrained, as the wanderer amid the recesses of the hills. The language of excitement is picturesque merely — but not so with enthusiasm You must be calm before you can utter oracles– What was the excitement of the Delphic priestess compared with the calm wisdom of Socrates! God is calm Enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity. {Two-fifths page blank} Rivers are the natural highways of all nations, not only levelling and removing obstacles from the path of the traveller — quenching his thirst — and bearing him on their bosom, but conducting him through the most interesting scenery of a country most rich in natural phenomena, through the most populous portions of the globe where the animal and vegetable kingdoms attain the greatest perfection. {Three-fifths page blank} We passed a man on the shore fishing with a long birch pole and a dog at his side — standing like caryatides under the cope of heaven– We passed so near as to agitate his float with our oars, and drive luck away for an HDT WHAT? INDEX
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indefinite term — but when we had rowed a mile as straight as an arrow with our faces toward him, he still stood with the proverbial patience of a fisherman the only object to relieve the eye in the extended meadow — under the other side of heaven — and there would stand abiding his luck — till he took his way home at evening with his fish — — He and his dog! (it was a superior contemplative dog) may they fare well. I trust we shall meet again. He was no chimera or vision to me. When we had passed the bridge we saw men haying far off in the meadows, their heads moving like the herds grass. In the distance the wind seemed to bend all alike.23
Plum Island, at the mouth of this river [The Merrimack] to whose formation, perhaps, these very banks have sent their contribution, is a similar desert of drifting sand, of various colors, blown into graceful curves by the wind. It is a mere sand-bar exposed, stretching nine miles parallel to the coast, and, exclusive of the marsh on the inside, rarely more than half a mile wide. There are but half a dozen houses on it, and it is almost without a tree, or a sod, or any green thing with which a country-man is familiar. The thin vegetation stands half buried in sand as in drifting snow. The only shrub, the beach plum, which gives the island its name, grows but a few feet high; but this is so abundant that parties of a hundred at once come from the mainland and down the Merrimack, in September, pitch their tents, and gather the plums, which are good to eat raw and to preserve. The graceful and delicate beach pea, too, grows abundantly amid the sand, and several strange moss-like and succulent plants. The island for its whole length is scalloped into low hills, not more than twenty feet high, by the wind, and, excepting a faint trail on the edge of the marsh, is as trackless as Sahara. There are dreary bluffs of sand and valleys plowed by the wind, where you might expect to discover the bones of a caravan. Schooners come from Boston to load with the sand for masons’ uses, and in a few hours the wind obliterates all traces of their work. Yet you have only to dig a foot or two anywhere to come to fresh water; and you are surprised to learn that woodchucks abound here, and foxes are found, though you see not where they can burrow or hide themselves. I have walked down the whole length of its broad beach at low tide, at which time alone you can find a firm ground to walk on, and probably Massachusetts does not furnish a more grand and dreary walk. On the seaside there are only a distant sail and a few coots to break the grand monotony. A solitary stake stuck up, or a sharper sand-hill than usual, is remarkable as a landmark for miles; while for music you hear only the ceaseless sound of the surf, and the dreary peep of the beach-birds. BEACH PLUM PLUM ISLAND
23.The poet W.H. Auden has in 1962 brought forward a snippet from this day’s entry as:
THE VIKING BOOK OF APHORISMS, A PERSONAL SELECTION BY W.H. AUDEN…
Pg Topic Aphorism Selected by Auden out of Thoreau
6 7 The Talker The language of excitement is picturesque merely — but not so with enthusiasm You must be calm before you can utter oracles. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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September 3: Tuesday The banks of the Merrimack are steep and clayey for the most part and trickling with water — and where a spring oozes out a few feet above the level of the river, the boatmen cut a trough out of a slab with their axes and place it so as to receive the water, and fill their jugs conveniently. Bursting out from under the root of a pine or a rock, sometimes this purer and cooler water is collected into a little basin close to the edge of and level with the river — a fountain head of the Merrimack.– so near along lifes stream lie the fountains of innocence and youth — making fertile the margin of its turbid stream. Let the voyageur replenish his vessel at these uncontaminated sources.– Some youthful spring perchance still empties with tinkling music into the oldest river, even when it is falling into the sea. I imagine that its music is distinguished by the river gods from the general lapse of the stream and falls sweeter upon their ears in proportion as it is nearer the sea. As thus the evaporations of the river feed these unsuspected springs which filter through its banks so our aspirations fall back again in springs upon the margin of our life’s stream to refresh and purify it. The routine of these boatmen’s lives suggests to me how indifferent all employments are, and how any may be infinitely noble and poetic in the eyes of men, if pursued with sufficient boyancy and freedom. For the most part they carry down wood and bring back stores for the country, piling the wood so as to leave a little shelter in one part where they may sleep, or retire from the rain if they choose. I can hardly imagine a more healthy employment, or more favorable to contemplation, or the observation of nature.– In no weather subject to great exposure — as the lumberers of Maine — and in summer inhaling the healthfullest breezes. But slightly encumbered with clothing — frequently with the head and feet bare. From morning till night the boatman walks backwards and forwards on the side of his boat, now stooping with his shoulder to the pole, then drawing it back slowly to set it again — meanwhile moving steadily and majestically forward through an endless valley, amid an ever changing scenery, — now distinguishing his course for a mile or two — and now finding himself shut in by a sudden turn of the river, in a small woodland lake. All the phenomena which surround him are simple and grand– The graceful majestic motion of his craft, must communicate something of the same to his character. So will he over forward to his objects on land. There is something impressive and stately in this motion which he assists. He feels the slow irresistible motion under him with pride as if it were the impetus of his own energy. At noon his horn is heard echoing from shore to shore to give notice of his approach — to the farmer’s wife with whom he is to take his dinner — frequently in such retired scenes that only muskrats and king fisher’s seem to hear.
Tuesday sep 3d About noon we passed the village of Merrimac were some carpenters were at work mending a scow on the shore. The strokes of their mallets echoed from shore to shore and up and down the river, and their tools gleamed in the sun a quarter of a mile from us, which made boat building seem as ancient and honorable as agriculture, and we realized how there might be a naval as well as pastoral life– We thought of a traveller building his boat on the banks of the stream under the heavens– As we glided past at a distance these out-door workmen seemed to have added some dignity to their labor by its publickness — it seemed a part of the industry of nature like the work of hornets and mud wasps The whole history of commerce was made plain in this scow turned bottom upward on the shore. Thus men begin to go down upon the sea in ships. There was Iolchos and the launching of the Argo. ——
The waves slowly beat Just to keep the noon sweet And no sound is floated oer Save the mallet on shore Which echoing on high Seems a caulking the sky We passed some shag-bark trees on the opposite shore skirting the waters edge. The first I had ever seen On the sandy shore of the Merrimack opposite to Tyngsboro, we first discovered the blue bell– A pleasant sight HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Near Litchfield, Thoreau saw an extensive desert area where sand had blown into dunes ten and twelve feet high. This recalled to his mind Plum Island, which he had visited in the past, for he thought some of this desert sand might well be borne down the Merrimack to its mouth not far from Newburyport, and there form part of that island so well known to the birding clan. Of course, Thoreau did not come nearer to Plum Island on this river trip than the junction of the Concord and Merrimack, some thirty miles away. But Thoreau’s description of Plum Island is especially interesting to bird watchers. In his GUIDE TO BIRD FINDING, Dr. Olin Sewall Pettingill, Jr., calls this one of the most famous ornithological areas of the eastern United States. Birds traveling north or south along the Atlantic coast funnel over this area, and multitudes drop down to rest and feed there. A trip to this island is particularly rewarding during the peak of shorebird migration in spring and fall. The half-dozen houses of Thoreau’s day have multiplied many times over. Nevertheless, ripe beach plums may still be picked there in September. Untracked sand, particularly in winter or after storms, may still be found. The fact that Thoreau mentioned only a few beach birds running on the sand and some coots (scoters) riding the waves behind the surf reveals clearly that his interest in birds was dormant when he visited Plum Island. C. Russell Mason, then Executive Director of the Massachusetts Audubon Society, after an early September visit to Plum Island with Dr. Roger Tory Peterson, wrote, “Every shore-bird in the book can be found on Plum Island, and as for gulls, if rare species appear on the north-east coast, they will almost surely be spotted at Plum Island.” Plum Island is one of the most important areas covered by the Newburyport Christmas Bird Count. This Count is made at a time when weather is severe and one would expect bird life in that bleak area to be at a low ebb. Yet on the 1962 Count when winds blew off the ocean and the temperature scarcely rose into the thirties, when snow covered the ground and all the ponds were frozen, eighty-eight species and about twenty-eight thousand individual birds were seen. -Cruickshank, Helen Gere. THOREAU ON BIRDS (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1964) HDT WHAT? INDEX
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it must be to the Scotchman in Lowell mills.
The moon now rises to her absolute rule, And the husbandman and hunter Acknowledge her for their mistress. Asters and golden reign in the fields And the life everlasting withers not. The fields are reaped and shorn of their pride But an inward verdure still crowns them The thistle scatters its down on the pool And yellow leaves clothe the vine– And nought disturbs the serious life of men. But behind the sheaves and under the sod There lurks a ripe fruit which the reapers have not gathered The true harvest of the year Which it bears forever. With fondness annually watering and maturing it. But man never severs the stalk Which bears this palatable fruit.
Mills of Lowell The hardest material obeys the same law with the most fluid. Trees are but rivers of sap and woody fibre flowing from the atmosphere and emptying in to the earth by their trunks — as their roots flow upward to the surface. And in the heavens there are rivers of stars and milky ways– There are rivers of rock on the surface and rivers of ore in the bowels of the earth. From this point the river runs perfectly straight for a mile or more to Carlisle bridge — which consists of 20 piers — and in the distance its surface looks like a cobweb gleaming in the sun. {Two-fifths page blank} In the morning the whole river and adjacent country was covered by a dense fog — through which the smoke of our fire curled up like a subtler mist. But before we had rowed many rods the fog dispersed as by magic and only a slight steam curled up from the surface of the water.– We reached the falls in Billerica before noon, where we left the river for the canal, which runs six miles through the woods to the Merrimack at Middlesex. As we did not care to loitre in this part of our voyage while one ran along the tow path drawing the boat by a cord, the other kept it off from the shore with a pole, so that we accomplished the whole distance in little more than an hour. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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There is some abruptness and want of harmony in this scenery since the canal is not of equal date with the forests and meadows it runs through. You miss the conciliatory influence of time on land and water. In the lapse of ages no doubt nature will recover and idemnify herself. Gradually fit shrubs and flowers will be planted along the borders Already the king-fisher sits on a pine over the water, and the dace and pickerel swim below. All works pass directly out of the hands of the architect. and though he has bungled she will perfect them at last. Her own fish-hawks hover over our fish-ponds were pleased to find that our boat would float in M. water By noon we were fairly launched upon the bosom of the merrimack — having passed through the locks at Middlesex — and felt as if we were on the ocean stream itself. Beaver river comes in a little lower down draining the meadows of Pelham, Windham, and Londonderry, the Irish settlers of which latter town were the first to introduce the potatoe into N.E. {One-fourth page blank} POTATO Two men called out from the steep and wooded banks to be taken as far as Nashua but we were too deeply laden– As we glided away from them with even sweeps while the fates scattered oil in our course — as the sun was sinking behind the willows of the distant shore, — we could see them far off over the water — running along the shore and climbing over the rocks and fallen trees like ants till they reached a spot where a broad stream poured its placid tribute into the Merrimack– When a mile distant we could see them preparing to ford the stream– But whether they got safely through or went round by the source, we never learned. Thus nature puts the busiest merchant to pilgrim’s shifts. She soon drives us to staff and scrip and scallop shell. The Mississippi the Nile the Ganges can their personality be denied? have they not a personal history in the annals of the world– These journeying atoms from the andes and ural and mountains of the moon — by villas — villages — and mists — with the moccasined tread of an Indian warrior. Their sources not yet drained. The mountains of the moon send their tribute to the pasha as they did to Pharoah without fail. though he most collect the rest of his revenue at the point of the bayonnette Consider the phenomena of morn — or eve — and you will say that Nature has perfected herself by an eternity of practice– Evening stealing over the fields– The stars come to bathe in retired waters The shadows of the trees creeping farther and farther into the meadows. And a myriad phenomena beside. Occasionally a canal boat with its large white sail glided around a promontory a quarter of a mile before us and changed the scene in an instant– Occasionally attaching ourselves to its side we would float back in company awhile — interchanging a word with the voyageurs and obtaining a draught of cooler water from their stores. Occasionally we had to muster all our energy to get round a point where the river broke rippling over rocks and the maples trailed their branches in the stream. The rain had pattered all night And now the whole country wept, the drops falling in the river, and on the alder, and in the pastures, but instead of any bow in the heavens there was the trill of the tree sparrow all the morning. The cheery faith of this little bird atoned for the silence of the whole woodland quire. MIDDLESEX CANAL
Tuesday– At intervals when there was a suitable reach in the river — we caught sight of the Goffstown mountain — the Indian Un-can-nu-nuc rising before us, on the left of the river– “The far blue mountain.” {One-fourth page blank} We soon after saw the Piscataquoag emptying in on our left — and heard the falls of Amoskieg above. It was here according to tradition that the sachem Wonolanset resided, and when at war with the mohawks his tribe are said to have concealed their provisions in the cavities of the rocks in the upper part of the falls The descent is 54 feet in half a mile. The manchester manufacturing company have constructed a canal here — through which we passed. Above the falls the river spreads out into a lake — stretching up toward Hooksett– We could see several canal boats at intervals of a mile or more standing up to Hooksett with a light breeze. With their broad sails set they moved slowly up the stream in the sluggish and fitful breeze — as if impelled by some mysterious counter current — like Antediluvian birds. A grand motion so slow and steady. For the most part they were returning empty, or at most with a few passengers aboard. As we rowed near to one which was just getting under way, the steers man offered to take us in tow — but when we came along side we found that he intended to take us on board, as otherwise we should retard his own voyage too much — but as we were too heavy to be lifted aboard — we left him and proceeded up the stream a half a mile to the shade of some maples to spend our noon In the course of half an hour several boats passed up the river at intervals of half a mile — and among them came the boat we have mentioned, keeping the middle of the stream and when within speaking distance the HDT WHAT? INDEX
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steers man called out if we would come along side now he would take us in tow. But not heeding their taunts we made no haste to give chase until our preparations were made — by which time they were a quarter of a mile ahead. Then with our own sails set — and plying our four oars, we were soon along side of them — and we glided close under their side, we quietly promised if they would throw us a rope that we would take them in tow. And then we gradually overhauled each boat in succession untill we had the river to ourselves again. No man was ever party to a secure and settled friendship — it is no more a constant phenomenon than meteors and lightning– It is a war of positions of silent tactics. With a fair wind and the current in our favor we commenced our return voyage, sitting at ease in our boat and conversing, or in silence watching, for the last sign of each reach in the river, as a bend concealed it from view. The lumbermen who were throwing down wood from the top of the high bank, 30 or 40 feet above the water, that it might be sent down the river — paused in their work to watch our retreating sail. {One-fifth page blank} In summer I live out of doors and have only impulses and feelings which are all for action– And must wait for the quiet & stillness and longer nights of Autumn and Winter, before any thought will subside. ______I mark the summer’s swift decline The springing sward its grave clothes weaves Oh could I catch the sounds remote Could I but tell to human ear The strains which on the breezes float And sing the requiem of the dying year. None of the feathered race have yet realized my conception of the woodland depths. I had fancied that their plumage would assume stronger and more dazzling colors, like the brighter tints of evening, in proportion as I advanced farther into the darkness and solitude of the forest. The red election, brought from their depth, did in some degree answer my expectation — gleaming like a coal of fire amid the pines. In Autumn what may be termed the dry colors preponderate in Summer the moist. The Asters and golden rod are the livery which nature wears at present. The golden rod alone seem to express all the ripeness of the autumn, and sheds its mellow lustre on the fields as if the now declining summer sun had bequeathed its hues HDT WHAT? INDEX
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to it. Asters everywhere spot the fields like so many fallen stars.
Thoreau shot a Passenger Pigeon, one of a large flock near the mouth of the Souhegan River, and broiled it for supper. Scientists are not sure why these birds, once fantastically abundant, became extinct. Some attribute it to excessive slaughter on the breeding grounds and throughout the year. Some believe the destruction of the beech and oak forests was largely responsible. Some believe that the numbers having been severely reduced by overshooting, the species was no longer able to reproduce. Thoreau’s concern about the dead pigeon was philosophical. Did he have a right to kill such a beautiful bird? Having killed it, he decided it should be eaten and not wasted.? Though Thoreau seldom saw a dead bird in the woods or fields, had he visited a nesting place of colonial birds, or walked along the drift of an ocean beach, he would have seen many dead birds. Probably the majority of song birds are finally caught and eaten by other creatures. Most of those that do die of disease or age, being quite small, are eaten by insects, mice, or even snakes, for the latter have been seen eating birds killed on highways. Certainly birds are never translated, as some of the Old Testament prophets were said to have been, being taken directly from earth to heaven without dying. –Cruickshank, Helen Gere. THOREAU ON BIRDS (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1964)
[Tuesday of WEEK. American Passenger Pigeon Ectopistes migratorius near the mouth of the Souhegan River.] During the heat of the day, we rested on a large island a mile above the mouth of this river, pastured by a herd of cattle, with steep banks and scattered elms and oaks, and a sufficient channel for canal- boats on each side. When we made a fire to boil some rice for our dinner, the flames spreading amid the dry grass, and the smoke curling silently upward and casting grotesque shadows on the ground, seemed phenomena of the noon, and we fancied that we progressed up the stream without effort, and as naturally as the wind and tide went down, not outraging the calm days by unworthy bustle or impatience. The woods on the neighboring shore were alive with pigeons, which were moving south, looking for mast, but now, like ourselves, spending their noon in the shade. We could hear the slight, wiry, winnowing sound of their wings as they changed their roosts from time to time, and their gentle and tremulous cooing. They sojourned with us during the noon-tide, greater travellers far than we. You may frequently discover a single pair sitting upon the lower branches of the white pine in the depths of the woods, at this hour of the day, so silent and solitary, and with such a hermit-like appearance, as if they had never strayed beyond its skirts, while the acorn which was gathered in the forests of Maine is still undigested in their crops. We obtained one of these handsome birds, which lingered too long upon its perch, and plucked and broiled it here with some other game, to be carried along for our supper; for, beside provisions which we carried with us, we depended mainly on the river and forest for our supply. It is true, it did not seem to be putting this bird to its right use to pluck off its feathers, and extract its entrails, and broil its carcass on the coals; but we heroically persevered, nevertheless, waiting for further information. The same regard for Nature which excited our sympathy for her creatures nerved our hands to carry through what we had begun. For we would be honorable to the party we deserted; we would fulfill fate, and so at length, perhaps, HDT WHAT? INDEX
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detect the secret innocence of these incessant tragedies which Heaven allows. Nature herself has not provided the most graceful end for her creatures. What becomes of all these birds that people the air and forest for our solacement? The sparrows seem always chipper, never infirm. We do not see their bodies lie about. Yet there is a tragedy at the end of each one of their lives. They must perish miserably, not one of them is translated. True, “not a sparrow falleth to the ground without our Heavenly Father’s knowledge,” but they do fall, nevertheless. That night the Thoreau brothers camped “In [the township of] Bedford, on the west bank [of the Merrimack River], opposite a large rock, above Coos Falls.” Did they, due to rainy weather, completely miss the northern lights display of that night? The next morning, as they shoved off, they would see a Green-backed Heron Butorides striatus. Ross/Adams commentary
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December 22, Sunday: During a storm at sea, the brig Pocahontas, out of Cadiz bound for Newburyport, was swept so close to White Island in the Isles of Shoals that the family of the lighthouse keeper there was able to hear its signal gun being fired. It was blown on, its sails in rags and its ropes a tangle, to its destruction on a sandbar off Plum Island, with the loss of all aboard.
Since the gale had been so entirely unexpected, the light on the tower on Plum Island was not being manned. The brig Richmond Packet also went aground, presumably for lack of this warning. The wife of its skipper HDT WHAT? INDEX
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would drown as attempts were being made to get her ashore through the surf.
During this gale 41 of the 130 vessels in Newburyport harbor were damaged.
On December 15th, 22d/23d, and 27th-28th, three successive northeasters battered the New England coast and buried its interior in deep snow. In the first of these storms, in Gloucester Harbor alone, 50 vessels were wrecked and many lives were lost. The third of these gales would be very severe in Boston, and on Cape Cod and on the islands. Inland, the snow cover was increased to 36 inches. Losses would exceed $1,000,000. A descriptive pamphlet entitled “Awful Calamities” would sell out in several editions. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
December 23, Monday: The second of the three great hurricanes of 1839.
The schooner Deposit out of Belfast ME went aground near the Ipswich Light at Plumb Island near midnight.
Unable to make it to shore through the surf and through the waves washing over the vessel, the crew climbed into the rigging and began to die of exposure. The next dawn two men made it out to the vessel, almost losing HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
their lives in the process, but the only person they managed to save besides themselves, and two sailors who were floating in to shore on pieces of wreckage, was the skipper’s wife. HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1880
Abraham Hammatt’S THE HAMMATT PAPERS, EARLY INHABITANTS OF IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS, 1633- 1700. This focused on the initial several generations of Ipswich families and on the lineal descendants of the earliest recorded member of the family in Ipswich, treating of a succession of parents and children, with dates and places of birth, marriage, and death where such could be ascertained, deriving datapoints from primary source documents such as wills, inventories, tax lists, subscription lists, lists of freemen, deeds, conveyances, court orders, and a wide variety of similar sources. 448 pages, indexed. (reprinted in Baltimore in 1991). HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
1951
At the Bull Brook site in Ipswich, carbon dating of artifacts indicated that the region had had Paleo-Indian inhabitants at about 7,000 BCE. Other collections discovered at Great Neck and along river banks would date to the later Archaic (6,000-3,000 BCE) and Woodland (0 CE) periods. PALEONTOLOGY
Barbara McClintock described “jumping genes,” that could move around within an organism’s genome. THE SCIENCE OF 1951 HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
1996
October 31, Thursday: HISTORIES AND GENEALOGIES OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS; CONTAINING TOWN HISTORIES OF AMESBURY MA, ANDOVER, HAVERHILL, IPSWICH, LAWRENCE, LYNN, LYNNFIELD, MERRIMAC, METHUEN, NAHANT, NORTH ANDOVER, SAUGUS, AND SWAMPSCOT; PLUS BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF LEADING CITIZENS. This CD-ROM provides historical and genealogical researchers with 13 volumes of historical and genealogical data pertaining to Massachusett’s Essex County:
•HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF ANDOVER (COMPRISING THE PRESENT TOWNS OF NORTH ANDOVER AND ANDOVER) MA by Sarah Loring Bailey •LIFE SKETCHES OF LEADING CITIZENS OF ESSEX COUNTY MA by the Biographical Review Publishing Company •THE HAMMATT PAPERS: EARLY INHABITANTS OF IPSWICH, MA, 1633-1700 by Abraham Hammatt •HISTORY OF THE CITY OF LAWRENCE [MA] by J. F. C. Hayes •A SHORT HISTORY OF THE FIRST CHURCH AND PARISH OF METHUEN MA, 1729-1929 by Frederick D. Hayward •LYNN [MA] AND SURROUNDINGS by Clarence W. Hobbs •THE CELEBRATION OF THE 250TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE INCORPORATION OF THE TOWN OF IPSWICH MA: AUGUST 16, 1884 compiled by Ipswich Committee •HISTORY OF LYNN, ESSEX COUNTY MA, INCLUDING LYNNFIELD, SAUGUS, SWAMPSCOT, AND NAHANT by Alonzo Lewis & James R. Newhall •HISTORY OF AMESBURY MA AND MERRIMAC MA by Joseph Merrill •THE HISTORY OF HAVERHILL MA by Benjamin L. Mirick •SOME OLD PURITAN LOVE LETTERS: JOHN AND MARGARET WINTHROP, 1618-1638 edited by Joseph Hopkins Twichell •A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF JOHN WINTHROP THE YOUNGER, FOUNDER OF IPSWICH MA IN 1633. Second Edition. by Thomas Franklin Waters •HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF LYNNFIELD MA, 1635-1895 by Thomas Wellman
“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY
Ipswich, Massachusetts “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2015. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at
“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST
Prepared: February 5, 2015 HDT WHAT? INDEX
AGAWAM IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT
GENERATION HOTLINE
This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX
IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS AGAWAM
Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.
First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with