Ipswich
Originally named Agawam, Ipswich was incorporated as a town in 1634. The towns of Boxford, Hamilton, Essex, and Topsfield were once part of Ipswich. The Chebacco Parish section of Ipswich was incorporated as the town of Essex in 1819. This page includes Ipswich and Essex.
Ipswich has more than 50 First Period homes (1626-1725) still in existence.
Orientation
Ipswich Visitor Center, 36 South Main Street. List of events, walking tours (online and audio), and maps.
Historic Ipswich by Ipswich Historical Commission and town historian Gordon Harris’ blog, including Ipswich and the Salem witchcraft trials.
Explore
Appleton Farms (1638), 219 County Road, Ipswich/Hamilton. Home of Col. Samuel Appleton (1624-1696). Oldest continuously working farm, with dairy, farm store, trails, archives.
Elizabeth Howe farm site, 417 Linebrook Road, Ipswich. PRIVATE property. During excavation in 2006, the chimney base and foundation were discovered.
Essex Historical Society and Shipbuilding Museum, 66 Main Street, Essex. Museum collections and the majority of its exhibits are housed in an 1835 schoolhouse. Archives, old burial ground inventory, and 3,000+ photographs.
Ipswich Museum, 54 South Main Street. The 1677 Whipple House displays 17th century household goods and features a housewife’s garden for medicinal, housekeeping, and culinary herbs. The museum holdings include personal papers, historic books, photographs.
Old Burial Ground (1680), 28 Main Street, Essex. Rev. John Wise (1652-1725) of Chebacco Parish signed the Proctor petition and the 1703 petition. He’s buried in the center of the yard under the table-like stone. Essex Shipbuilding Museum maintains an inventory detailing the names and epitaphs on all gravestones.
Old North Burying Ground (1634), corner High Street and Route 133/1A, Ipswich. Burial place of Col. Samuel Appleton (1625-1696), who served on the 1693 grand jury
Robert Paine House at Greenwood Farm, 47 Jeffrey’s Neck Road, Ipswich. This house (c. 1694) was home to Robert Paine, foreman of the Salem witch trail jury 1692.
Research
Ipswich Burying Grounds: 10 cemeteries with descriptions and internment lists.
Ipswich Public Library, 25 North Main Street. Archives.
T.O.H.P Burnham Public Library, 30 Martin Street, Essex.
Online Books & Records
Ancient records of the town of Ipswich: vol. 1- from 1634 to 1650 by George A. Schofield (1899)
Early inhabitants of Ipswich, Mass. 1633-1700 by Abraham Hammatt (1880) Vol. 1
Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony by Thomas Franklin Waters (1905) Volume 1: Historical (1917) Volume 2: Houses and Lands
Memento mori: part the first, being an accurate transcription of the tomb-stones, monuments, foot-stones, and other memorials in the Ancient Old Burial Yard in the Town of Ipswich, County of Essex, Massachusetts, from its beginnings in the year Anno. Domi. 1634 to the present day, with a chart of the location of the same that any grave therein may be located with ease and accuracy, together with a history and description of this ancient burial yard by Arthur Warren Johnson and Ralph Elbridge Ladd Jr. (1935)
Old families of Salisbury and Amesbury, Massachusetts; with some related families of Newbury, Haverhill, Ipswich and Hampton by David W. Hoyt (1897)
Old Ipswich: a magazine of local genealogy and history by Lewis Richard Hovey (1899)