Quick History Stops: Wenham, MA

After hiking at The Trustee’s Appleton Farms in Hamilton and the historic district in South Hamilton, I stopped in neighboring Wenham to visit its own historic district, which has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1973. While the Wenham Museum was not open, I took plenty of beautiful pictures of the town common, the church, a pair of war memorials, and the town hall.

What became First Church in Wenham, Congregational was established as Congregational Church in Wenham in 1644, two years after the first meeting house was constructed on the town common in 1642. According to a helpful summary provided by the Congregational Library & Archives, an organization dedicated to preserving the history of New England congregational churches since 1853, Wenham received its own church after the town broke away from Salem. John Fiske was the first minister, serving in this role for ten years until the church schismed, so he and seven families left for Chelmsford. The church changed its name and mission in 1833 to Congregational Parish and Society, indicating that the religious organization was no longer run by the state. The congregation took its current name a hundred years ago in 1925. As for the building itself, previous iterations were constructed in 1663, 1688, and 1748. The current meeting house is version number five built in 1843 with expansions in 1853, 1953, and 1986.

The little town common boasts not one but two fairly standard war memorials. Across the street from the church is a small park called Car-Barn Lot. According to research held by the Hamilton Wenham Public Library, the town’s first tavern once stood here, but it received its name for a railroad car barn built by the Naumkeag Street Railway based in Salem, which seems to have used horse-drawn streetcars. After several buyouts, the streetcars no longer exist, and the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) is the only remaining company. The War Memorial in the park is a granite obelisk carved with the seals of the five branches of the military and topped by a globe. A bronze statue known as “Landing Eagle” designed by local sculptor Mike Curtis stands on top of the globe, while plaques bearing the names of those who served are affixed near the base. The memorial was erected some time after 2012 and funded in part by the bequeath of World War II veteran Winthrop Perkins.

At the center of the town common is another war memorial, this one dedicated to soldiers in the American Civil War. The obelisk was erected in 1878 and features a typical 1860s soldier at the top. He stands with the butt of his rifle on the ground and his hands clasping the barrel. The trendy statue was likely mass produced by the Monumental Bronze Co. and has brothers across the country, include a nearly identical statue I have visited in Sandwich, MA.

As for the town hall across the street, the Hamilton and Wenham Library had another great resource on its history. The meeting house served as both town hall and church building after the separation of church and state in 1833. The town hall building was constructed twenty-one years later in 1854, and the project seemed to be chaotic. The decision to fill in a local pond and built the town hall atop it has led to regular flooding in the basement, and the cost was $908.77 over the $5,000 budget, equivalent to about $34,780 over a $191,350 budget in 2025. Parts of the building were used for the elementary school, the library, a jail for unhoused people, a police station, a dance hall. Even with a small fire in 1877, several renovations to make repairs and remove the cupola, and an argument over demolishing the building in the 2000s leading two its reconstruction in 2011, the building looks remarkably similar to its form in 1890.