On the Massachusetts North Shore
In 1777, the Ipswich Selectmen and the Committee of Correspondence and Safety, acting under the authority of the General Court, issued a schedule of prices covering all articles of food, clothing, wages of labor of every kind, entertainment at hotels, shipping rates etc.
In our struggle for Independence, the British military received its first setback from the inhabitants of Salem in an episode that could not have been more ludicrous or entertaining if it had been written for Monty Python.
On June 10th, 1776, the men of Ipswich, in Town-meeting assembled, instructed their Representatives, that if the Continental Congress should for the safety of the said Colonies declare them Independent of the Kingdom of Great Britain, they will solemnly engage with their lives and Fortunes to support them in the Measure.
"In Worcester, they keep no Terms, openly threaten Resistance by Arms, have been purchasing Arms, preparing them, casting Ball, and providing Powder, and threaten to attack any Troops who dare to oppose them....the flames of sedition spread universally throughout the country beyond conception.” -Gen. Thomas Gage
Despite the failure of the Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts, the British Parliament responded to the "Boston Tea Party" by passing even more restrictive acts to punish the American extremists.
John Freeman, son of enslaved Peter and Jane Freeman of Ipswich, enlisted into the militia of the Revolutionary War in the year 1777, and served in Rhode Island, Providence and Cambridge.
Of the men from Chebacco parish who were in the battle at Bunker Hill, the names of six are known: James Andrews, Benjamin Burnham, Nehemiah Choate, Aaron Perkins, Jesse Story Jr., a minor who was killed, and Francis Burnham who was wounded. Two Chebacco boys, Aaron Low and Samuel Proctor, belonged to a Gloucester company which reached Cambridge on the afternoon of the 16th.
Throughout the Revolutionary War, Joseph Hodgkins sent letters home from the battlefronts to his wife, Sarah Perkins Hodgkins.
In 1773, the selectmen ordered all houses where the disease had appeared to be closed, and dogs to be killed immediately. The fears of the inhabitants increased when permission was granted to build a smallpox hospital on Cat Island.
On the cold icy morning of December 13, 1774, Paul Revere headed out on a 60 mile gallop from Boston along the Old Bay Road through Ipswich to warn the citizens of Portsmouth that British troops may be landing.
From Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, by Thomas Franklin Waters In 1767, the Townshend Acts were passed, one of which provided for a tax on wine, glass, tea, gloves, etc, imported into the Province. During the winter, the General Court issued a Circular Letter, which was sent to the other Assemblies, notifying them of… Continue reading The “Detested Tea” and the Ipswich Resolves
Mounted securely to a stone post at the corner of Middle and Independent Streets in Newburyport, there was for many years a large cast-iron bombshell, thrown from a mortar at the Second Siege of Louisbourg, Nova Scotia in 1758.
The manner in which residents of Ipswich celebrated the end of hostilities was recorded in "The Life, Journals and Correspondence of Rev. Manasseh Cutler."
When Parliament laid a tax on tea, the British locked all the tea that had arrived in Newburyport into the powder house. Eleazer Johnson led a group of men who shattered the door and burned the tea in Market Square.
An angry mob surrounded the Haverhill home of Col. Richard Saltonstall, a Loyalist, who opened his door and stated that that he was bound to discharge the duties of the office.
Historic Ipswich 