Quick History Stops: Ipswich, MA, Part 3

Today, I continue with my miniseries on quick history stops in Ipswich, MA. As a quick history review, last week I shared a pair of banks, a post office, murals on a factory building, and a story from the Industrial Revolution in Part 1. On Monday, I shared the Riverwalk, a war memorial, the town visitor center, a commercial block, and other historic buildings in Part 2. I will discuss the history of three churches, a school building, the library, and informational signage in Part 3.

First Church of Christ, Scientist in Ipswich is a Greek Revival style whitewashed building that looks like many other New England churches except for the mid-century addition on one side. However, the building has not been as long as one might suspect, since a row of shops including a post office stood here until the early 20^th century. This church does not have an active website with its individual history. I have been to several Christian Science sites in the past, including the Mother Church, “How Do You See the World?” Experience, and Mapparium in Boston, MA; religion founder Mary Baker Eddy’s houses in Lynn and Swampscott, and a house where she stayed in Amesbury. These are all good resources to learn more about the views likely held by members of this church.

Ipswich has great resources describing the history of its schools, including a pamphlet published in 2008 by local teacher and principal William E. Waitt, Jr. and an article summarizing the pamphlet on the blog Historic Ipswich. The first “Dame School” in Ipswich was run by lifelong teacher Goodwife Collins and appears to have started the same year the town was founded in 1633. Small schoolhouses proliferated throughout the town from the 17^th through mid-19^th centuries with many still standing as houses and community buildings. The neoclassical red brick building that I photographed is Ipswich High School built from 1935 to 1937 and dedicated to World War I veterans.

Ipswich Public Library was founded in 1869 thanks to a pair of wealthy local friends. Merchant Augustine Heard, son of John Heard who built Heard House where the Ipswich Museum is now located, gained his wealth through the China trade, likely tea and opium. Daniel Treadwell worked as a science professor at Harvard College, now Harvard University, along with inventing a cordage machine that spun hemp into rope. This invention spurred on the Industrial Revolution and provided superior equipment to the United States Navy. The library lived off its endowment until 1974 when the town took over the organization as an added line item to the budget. This is the fifth library I have visited that belongs to the Merrimack Valley Library Consortium, along with Amesbury Public Library, Newburyport Public Library, and Manchester-by-the-Sea Public Library, and Topsfield Town Library.

Ascension Memorial Episcopal Church had its roots in a congregation from 1839, but the construction of its church was not begun until 1869. The church was funded by Daniel Fuller Appleton, a successful farmer and businessman who lived at his family's generational homestead called Appleton Farms, which is now managed by The Trustees. The church building was designed by James Renwick, Jr. who also designed the Smithsonian Institution Building, also known as The Castle, on the Mall in Washington, D.C., and many other churches across the United States. A recreation center called Boone Hall after the recently deceased minister Carman Daniel Boone was added in 1960 and used as an extension of the public school for several years. Interestingly, the church website attributes the founding of their denomination to Queen Elizabeth I, considering this an act of wisdom and embracing diversity. However, historians widely understood the founder to be her father Henry VIII who wanted a divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, to marry Elizabeth’s doomed mother, Anne Boleyn, and was excommunicated by Pope Paul III for his foolishness.

While a Methodist Society had existed in Ipswich since 1824, Living Faith United Methodist Church was not built until 1859. According to local legend, because the church steeple was so tall for the time, sailors would use it to figure out where they were while on the water. After the steeple burned down in 1973, the church was steeple-less until 1996 when a cell phone company paid to rebuild it and put a cell phone tower inside. This building has seemingly been abandoned since the sanctuary ceiling collapsed in 2018, and the congregation now meets in Beverly, MA. Next door to the Methodist church is the former Odd Fellows Building built in 1817. It also served as a court and the town hall but currently holds local businesses.

First Church in Ipswich is a United Church of Christ (UCC) congregation formed around the time the town received its charter in 1630 and led by Reverend Nathaniel Rogers, now interred in Old Burying Ground. The current building is the sixth church erected in 1965, hence its mid-century modern design. The first church was a basic log design, while churches two through five seem to have been in a more traditional New England style. The most interesting part of this site is a mark on a slab of granite near the church called the Devil’s footprint. According to local lore, itinerant preacher George Whitefield (whose grave I would visit later) spoke with such authority that the Devil hiding on the steeple got scared and jumped away, leaving his footprint on the stone. The church website claims the sermon was antislavery, but since Whitefield owned enslaved people, this seemed even more unlikely than the jumping Devil bit.

Finally, a pair of historical signs stand near the green. A sign for Revolution of 1689 erected by Massachusetts Bay Colony Tercentenary Commission described a rebellion led by local minister John Wise after being told to pay taxes by Governor Edmund Andros, who was quickly overthrown. The other sign highlights Lafayette’s Tour, a farewell trip taken by the French aristocrat turned American Revolution soldier Marquis de Lafayette in 1824. He stopped in a nearby building that had previously been a public house. A similar sign can be seen on the Old Lyme Walking Tour in Connecticut.