The town encompasses 33 square miles. This includes marshes, dunes and beaches, uplands, forests, fields and farmland, and the Ipswich River which runs through the heart of town and empties into Ipswich Bay, beyond which lies the Atlantic Ocean.
Before Essex County was settled by Europeans, it was home to the Agawam Tribe of the Pawtucket Federation of Native Americans. The Agawams and most other Southern New England tribes were semi-nomadic. They chose to settle on sites that were easy to defend, protected from the north wind by a hill or dense stand of evergreens, and near good sources of food, drinking water, and firewood. The Agawams also preferred to live close to the sea or to lakes, streams and rivers where the fishing was good and transportation easy. Ipswich provided this in abundance.
The Agawams would probably not stay an entire year in one spot. A few weeks might be spent at the seashore or another fishing spot where they could catch and preserve fish, and enjoy community celebrations, and then the tribe would move on. It is likely the Agawams made camps by Hood Pond and along the shores of Fish Brook and the Ipswich and Parker Rivers. The Agawams survived by hunting, fishing, and collecting wild plants and shellfish. When they located their more permanent settlements, they looked for lightly vegetated areas that could be cleared and cultivated with hand tools. They grew corn, beans, pumpkins, squash, and tobacco in small fields.
In 1633, Governor John Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay Colony sent his son, John, to establish the settlement that came to be called Ipswich. Winthrop sailed up the Ipswich River in his shallop on a March day and began his settlement on the banks of the river near the present Town Wharf. The early residents of Ipswich were fishermen, farmers, shipbuilders and traders. The famous Heard family made their home in Ipswich, although their clipper ships sailed out of Boston.
Lacemaking developed as a home industry, as did the making of stockings. By the 1900s the Ipswich Hosiery Mill had become the largest stocking mill in the country. Industrial growth brought labor shortages, which in turn brought small waves of immigrants to work in the mills. English, Irish, Nova Scotian, French, Canadian, Polish, and Greek people found their way to Ipswich and have given the town its rich cultural mix.
Ipswich has the distinction of having more 17th century houses still lived in than any other town in the United States, probably because Ipswich remained a small country town through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the houses were cherished as the homes of ordinary townsfolk who could not afford to modernize them. Most of these homes are near the downtown area, and several are open to the public. A description of this intown walk is included in this booklet.
At present, the population of Ipswich is approximately 13,500. It remains a town of great diversity.
