Ipswich, Massachusetts

“ The town was founded under the name of Aggawam in 1633 by John Winthrop, jun., and twelve others, with a view to preventing the French from occupying the N. part of Massachusetts, and in the next year it was incorporated under its present name. ”

“ In 1631 he followed his father to New England, and he was shortly afterward elected an assistant of the Massachusetts colony, which post he retained for eighteen successive years. In 1633 he took the chief part in the settlement of Ipswich, Mass., where he acquired a considerable estate. In 1634 he went to England on public business, and he returned, in 1635, with a commission from Lords Say, Brooke, and others, empowering him to build a fort at the mouth of Connecticut river, and constituting him governor of that region for one year from his arrival. ”

“ Ipswich is the only town in the Commonwealth which has thus directly received its clam flats as its own property, and naturally has done more to improve its natural clam resources than any other town in the State.
The history of the industry shows little change; some few flats once considered worthless have been opened and utilized; others once productive have been dug out and allowed to become waste. On the whole, the industry is following the trend of the shellfisheries everywhere, and slowly but steadily declining. ”

“ While living in Ipswich they had four children, Abigail, Ezekiel, Nathaniel, and Thomas; two more, William and Susanna, were born later, in Charlestown. Their son Ezekiel must have lived to a good old age, at least seventy-seven years, for as late as 1731 his name appears in the annals of the village parish of Salem, where he became heir to Captain Lathrop's real estate; while their son Thomas, born in 1658, was graduated at Harvard College in 1677, was settled as a minister at Malden, Massachusetts, and later at Rumney Marsh (Chelsea) , Massachusetts, where he died at a good old age. ”

“ Our number is made up of very busy people—housekeepers, teachers, young men of business, etc. We attended—that is, most of us—the Framingham Assembly, and there became filled with enthusiasm which terminated in the foundation of our circle.”——Another Massachusetts circle is heard from at Ipswich, whence the secretary writes: “This fall a C. L. S. C. was formed in our town in time to begin work October 1. We organized with about fifteen members; since then our circle has steadily increased, additions being made at every meeting, until now we are thirty in number. ”

“ The first English settlers in America were familiar with the county as a district for the administration of justice, and they brought with them coroners, sheriffs, and quarter sessions. In 1635 the General Court of Massachusetts appointed four towns—Boston, Cambridge, Salem, and Ipswich—as places where courts should be held quarterly. In 1643 the colony, which then included as much of New Hampshire as was settled, was divided into four "shires,"—Suffolk, Essex, Middlesex, and Norfolk, the latter lying then to the northward and including the New Hampshire towns. ”

“ Lying in a valley surrounded by hills, up which the town is gradually climbing, and watered by the picturesque Orwell, which elevates the town to the dignity of a port, and within little more than an hour and a half’s run from London by the Great Eastern Railway, Ipswich may claim to be a place well worth visiting, while to the trader it is known and appreciated as a busy and thriving town. ”

“ Industries include large engineering and agricultural implement works, railway plant works, the making of artificial manures, boots and shoes, clothing, bricks and tobacco and malting. The port has a dock of nearly 30 acres, accommodating vessels drawing 19 ft. and a large extent of quayage. Imports are principally grain, timber and coal; exports agricultural machinery, railway plant, artificial manures, oil cake, &c. Ipswich is a suffragan bishopric in the diocese of Norwich. The parliamentary borough returns two members. The corporation consists of a mayor, 10 aldermen and 30 councillors. ”

“ Christ Church is now on sale. Ultimately it is to be hoped it will be purchased by the Corporation for a people’s palace and park.
In the old times Ipswich must have been a much more picturesque place than it is to-day. All its old records are religiously preserved by a worthy townsman, Mr. John Glyde, in his Illustrations of Old Ipswich, a handsome work, which is a credit to the town, and which ought to find a place in the library of East Anglians wealthy enough to purchase it. ”

“ It is the centre of a rich and populous agricultural mining and manufacturing district. Coal is worked on the banks of the river with but little labour, as it crops out on the surface. There are a woollen factory, several saw-mills, and foundries and large railway workshops at North Ipswich. The first settlement was made here in 1829; the town was incorporated in 1860.
IPSWICH, a municipal, county and parliamentary borough and county town of Suffolk, England, 69 m. ”

“ When Ipswich has climbed up its surrounding hills, and taken up all the building sites at present in the market, it will be a goodly and gallant town, almost fitted to invite the temporary residence of holiday-making Londoners who are fond of the water. At all times it is a pretty sail to Harwich and thence to Felixstowe, that quiet watering-place, a seaside residence that has still a pleasant flavour of rusticity about it, with a fine crisp sea-sand floor for a promenade. ”

“ Ipsus, a small town in Phrygia, the scene of a great contest between the generals of Alexander for succession to the empire.
Ipswich (57) , a town in Suffolk, on the Orwell, 12 m. from the sea; is an old town, and has a number of interesting, as well as some old-fashioned, buildings; is well provided with churches and educational establishments, and was the birthplace of Cardinal Wolsey; manufactures agricultural implements, and exports besides these leather, oil, coke and agricultural produce. ”

“ There was not much half-and-half work in the Ipswich politics of my young days.
When people fight fiercely in politics, it is natural to expect an equal earnestness in religious matters. It was so emphatically with respect to the Ipswich of the past. ‘The Reformed religion, after those fiery days of persecution,’ writes John Quick, ‘was now revived, and flourished again in the country, under the auspicious name of our English Deborah, Queen Elizabeth; and Ipswich, the capital town of Suffolk, was not more famous for its spacious sheds, large and beautiful buildings, rich and great trade, p. ”

“ The tide was out at that time, and the banks of the Orwell are to this day a marvellous acreage of muddy foreshore at low water. But Ipswich has always been a prosperous town, and its leading inhabitants flourishing men of mark. In these days it is the headquarters of agricultural implement manufacture, sending labour-saving machinery to all parts of the world. The busy ironworks extend along both banks of the river. New docks are established where a new cut has been made to serve them. ”

“ Ipswich may claim to be the most prosperous and enterprising of all the Suffolk towns. It goes with the times. Its citizens are active and pushing men of business, and have enlightened ideas as well. They are also Liberal in politics and practical in religion, and are never behind in coming forward when there is a chance of benefiting themselves or their fellow-creatures. And yet Ipswich has a history as long as the dullest cathedral town. It was a place of note during the existence of the Saxon Heptarchy. Twice it had the honour of publicly entertaining King John ”

“ All this while, which was usually from Michaelmas to Lady Day, the masters lived calm and secure with their families in Ipswich; and enjoying plentifully, what in the summer they got laboriously at sea, and this made the town of Ipswich very populous in the winter; for as the masters, so most of the men, especially their mates, boatswains, carpenters, etc., were of the same place, and lived in their proportions, just as the masters did; so that in the winter there might be perhaps a thousand men in the town more than in the summer, and perhaps a greater number. ”

“ From the town itself you can see nothing, but you can in no direction go from it a charter of a mile without finding views that a painter might crave, and then the country round is so well cultivated.” A good deal has been done for Ipswich since Cobbett’s day. It has its public promenades and in the neighbourhood of the river there still lingers somewhat of the scenery Gainsborough loved to paint. There is also a good deal of literary association connected with Ipswich. The White Horse Inn still remains in much the same state as it was in the times of Mr. ”

“ The country round Ipswich, as if qualified on purpose to accommodate the town for building of ships, is an inexhaustible store-house of timber, of which, now their trade of building ships is abated, they send very great quantities to the king’s building-yards at Chatham, which by water is so little a way that they often run to it from the mouth of the river at Harwich in one tide. ”

“ I know of no town to be compared with Ipswich, except it be Nottingham; and there is this difference in the two; that Nottingham stands high, and, on one side, looks over a very fine country; whereas Ipswich is in a dell, meadows running up above it, and a beautiful arm of the sea below it. ”

“ Had he been orthodox his fame would have been greater still.
One of the oldest houses in Ipswich is that known as Christ Church, the dwelling place of the Fonnereaus for many generations. It is one of the oldest houses in England, and has been inhabited for 350 years. There is not a better example of Elizabethan building to be p. 31met with anywhere. More than once has Royalty been hospitably entertained there. The most celebrated Royal visitor was Queen Elizabeth, who made a tour of the Eastern Counties in 1589, and rode through Essex and Suffolk with a crowd of attendant cavaliers. ”

“ This is Ipswich, the ancient Agawam; one of those steady, conservative villages, of which a few are still left in New England, wherein a contemporary of Cotton Mather and Governor Endicott, were he permitted to revisit the scenes of his painful probation, would scarcely feel himself a stranger. Law and Gospel, embodied in an orthodox steeple and a court-house, occupy the steep, rocky eminence in its midst ”

“ On which account I may freely advance this, without any compliment to the town of Ipswich, no place in Britain is equally qualified like Ipswich; whether we respect the cheapness of building and fitting out their ships and shallops ”

“ Ipswich closes the estuary of the Orwell, and Ipswich is a genuine town that combines industrialism with the historic sense. No American can afford not to visit it, because its chief hotel has a notorious connection with Mr. ”

“ Six miles up Harwich water stands Ipswich; which is a gallant town and rich. This Town is such a place for the Busses, as in all England and Holland I know no place so convenient. First, it is the best place in all England for the building of Busses; both for the plenty of timber and plank, and excellent workmen for making of ships. There are more there, than there are in six of the best towns in all England. Secondly, it is a principal place for good housewives for spinning of yarn, for the making of pouldavice [canvas] ; for there is the best that is made. ”

“ Two hundred years ago, no city man was better known than Thomas Firmin, who was born at Ipswich, described in his biography as ‘a very large and populous town in the county of Suffolk,’ in 1632. He was of Puritan parentage, and bound apprentice in the city of London, and then began business as a linen-draper on the modest capital of £100. ”

“ An intelligent spirit of enterprise is evinced by the citizens, and everything goes to show that this is destined to be a populous and prosperous centre. As to the climate, it is simply perfect, the mean temperature being set down at 69°.
Ipswich, about twenty-five miles from the city, on the road to the Darling Downs, has a population of ten thousand. Gympie, a gold-mining town a hundred miles north, has about the same number of inhabitants. Maryborough, on the banks of the Mary River, is another thriving town equally populous ”

“ Wemyss flourished his halbert, the soldiers uttered a shout, and poured forth to the muster-place.
It was a clear frosty night; the whole sky was of the most beautiful and unclouded blue. Seven tolled from the bells of St. Peter's church. The winter moon, broad, vast, and saffron-coloured, rising above a steep eminence called the Bishops' Hill, poured its flaky lustre through the narrow and irregular streets of Ipswich, which in 1688 differed very much from those of the present day. ”

“ If you have your bicycle with you, or are content to hire one, you will find that rolling Suffolk country the most delightful in the world for quiet spinning. (But carry a repair kit, for there are many flints!) Ipswich itself is full of memories—of Chaucer, and Wolsey, and Dickens (it is the "Eatanswill" of Pickwick) , and it is much pleasure to one of Suffolk blood to recall that James Harper, the grandfather of the four brothers who founded the great publishing house of Harper and Brothers a century ago, was an Ipswich man, born there in 1740. You will bike to Bury St. ”

“ To Beckle is eight miles more, which, in all, was 36 miles from Ipswich, but exceeding long miles. They do own they are 41 measured miles. This is a little market town, but it is the third biggest town in Suffolk—Ipswich, Berrye, and this. There are no good buildings in the town, being old timber and plaster work, except Sir R. Rich’s, and one or two more. There is a bigg market Kross and a market kept. At the town’s end one posses over the river Waveney, on a wooden bridge railed with timber, and so you enter into Norfolk. ”