The short tour (in red) starts from the Public Library. The longer tour (in red) starts at the Ipswich Visitor Center.

The historic neighborhoods of Meeting House Green, High Street, the East End, and the South Green offer well-preserved streetscapes of 17th to 20th century homes.

Walking tours of historic Ipswich are led on weekends by Town Historian Gordon Harris, who tells the stories of the town’s historic houses and the people who lived in the them.

Tour Schedule

Scheduled Sunday afternoon tours begin in the spring and continue into the fall. The charge is $10 per person., which you can pay with cash or check at the beginning of the tour. Small children are free. Please leave your name and the date of the tour you are interested in joining. Tours are canceled if there are no pre-registrations. Email Gordon Harris at historicipswich@gmail.com.

To reserve a regularly scheduled tour or to arrange a custom group tour, email Gordon Harris at historicipswich@gmail.com. The minimum charge for special group tours or custom tours is $100.

Historic Ipswich Walking tour from the Ipswich Visitor Center - Join Ipswich Town Historian for a tour of the South Green, the East End, Meeting House Green, and the Ipswich River, sharing the stories of the town's historic houses and the people who lived in them.

Walking Tour of Historic Ipswich from Meeting House Green - This tour of the most historic areas of town starts in front of the Ipswich Public Library at Meeting House Green and includes North Main, Summer, East, and Water Streets. The tour generally takes 1 1/2 - 2 hrs.

Self-guided tours

A comprehensive self-guided tour can be viewed online or downloaded as a PDF document.

• View the comprehensive 4-mile Historic Ipswich tour online
• Download the complete tour as a PDF document

Custom Ancestry Tours

The National Trust for Historic Preservation defines heritage tourism as “traveling to experience the places, artifacts and activities that authentically represent the stories and people of the past and present.” Ipswich is the country’s best-preserved Puritan town, and its residents have been the proud custodians of its history. Many people trace their roots back through several generations to Ipswich, one of the earliest towns in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.  Town Historian Gordon Harris leads customized tours for people wishing to “walk in the footsteps of their forefathers,” in which we visit the neighborhoods, houses and gravestones of early settlers and their descendants. In July 2019 he’s led tours for descendants of the following early settlers:

• Isaac Cummings
• William Fellows
• Reginald Foster
• Richard Kimball

Other suggested settlers and early residents whose homes and graves are still standing include:

• Samuel Appleton
• John Baker
• Edward Browne
• James Burnham
• John and Sarah Dillingham Caldwell
• Cogswell
• Thomas Dennis
• Robert Dutch
• Dodge
• Michael Farley
• Thomas Hart
• Thomas Harris
• John Heard
• Daniel Hovey
• William Howard
• Nehemiah Jewett
• Thomas Knowlton
• Archelaus  and Solomon Lakeman
• Robert Lord
• John Lummus
• Joseph Manning
• Robert and William Paine
• Jacob Perkins
• Benjamin Pulsipher
• Richard Rindge
• John Shatswell
• Jabesh Sweet
• Simon Tuttle
• Nathaniel Treadwell
• Nathaniel Wade
• John Wainwright
• Joseph Whipple

Some scenes from the tour:

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