6 Newbury Road, the Joseph B. Perley house (1865)

The MACRIS site states that this location was first settled by Nehemiah Abbott, a deacon of the Topsfield Church, who married James Howe, Sr.’s daughter Mary in 1659 and farmed this part of his father-in-law’s land. By the late 18th century the Perley family owned and farmed the site.

Joseph Burpee Perley was born in Ipswich-Linebrook 28 Sept., 1791. He built his home near the New Linebrook Cemetery, which was destroyed by fire. Upon the sale of the property to Ezekiel P. Potter, he occupied his parental farm. Later he purchased for his son Charles M. the ancestral estate of the Perley family, which, except a few years, had been in the Perley name since 8 July, 1651, when it was granted to Allan Perley (1).

The local newspaper thus noticed his death:

”He was a farmer, a man who never overworked and was never idle. He was diligent, careful, frugal, and many years before his death had laid up in store a competence. He was a good illustration of that steady, quiet, persevering purpose which is rare to see. So far removed from the town center, he was never vested with civic authority; he never sought it. He had a desire to owe no man aught; and to pay the worth of what he had, that what he possessed might be his own. His generous disposition showed itself more especially in his later years. He was kind, generous, and fatherly provident to his children.

He married 11 Sept., 1887, Hannah Pearson Tappan, a lady of culture, born 22 Feb., 1809, to Capt. Sewell and Hannah Tappan of Newburyport. She was the widow of Joseph Johnson, son of James and Charlotte, of that city. She died of consumption 26 July, 1870, at the age of sixty-one years, and was buried in Newburyport. He died 10 March, 1885, aged ninety-three years, five months and ten days. He was at the first Perley Reunion, the oldest Perley on the ground. The Perley children: Elizabeth, Hannah, Louis, Charles, Laura.

The Allan Perley homestead

Allan Perley, the emigrant ancestor ol the Perley Family in America, was born in Wales, England, in the first quarter of the year 1608, and died in Ipswich, Massachusetts, 28 Dec, 1675. He married, in the year 1635, Susanna Bokesen, or Bokenson, who died in Ipswich, 11 Feb., 1692, after a widowhood of sixteen years. Mr. Perley came to this country, at the age of twenty-two years, in the fleet with Governor Winthrop, and located in “Charlestowne Village.” He relocated in Ipswich, on High Street. He resided there about seventeen years, selling, 3 Sept., 1652, for £21, his “dwelling house and homestead” to Walter Roper, carpenter, of Topsfield.

Mr. Perley was a large land-holder, with possessions in Ipswich, Essex, Rowley and Boxford. In 1651, there was “granted to Alen Perlye (in exchange for thirty acres more or less at Chebacco) the sum of forty-five acres of upland lying beyond Mr. Winthrop’s farme, Joyneing up to some of the properties thereabouts.” The area was known early as The Ipswich Farms’*, or “The Farms,” a delineation that continued until the incorporation of Linebrook Parish. Allan Perley died on 28 December 1675 at Linebrook Parish, Ipswich, Essex, MA, USA, at age 67.

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