Ipswich and Essex County are the center of Puritan New England. Read additional stories from:
- Beverly
- Danvers
- Essex
- Gloucester
- Hamilton
- Marblehead
- Newbury
- Newburyport
- Peabody
- Plum Island
- Rockport
- Rowley
- Salem
- Topsfield
- Wenham
Legends
- Mark Quilter, upon complaint against him for striking Rebeckah Shatswell
- Leslie’s Retreat, or how the Revolutionary War almost began in Salem, February 26, 1775
- Saving the Rooster
- The Devil’s footprint
- The Cape Ann Sea Serpent
- Adrift on a Haystack, December 1786
- November 5: Guy Fawkes Day (“Pope Night”)
- Haunted houses of Ipswich
- The Legend of Heartbreak Hill
- The tragic story of Rebecca Rawson, 1679
- A romantic tale from the Great Snow of Feb. 21-24, 1717
- Death in a snowstorm, December 1, 1722
- The Spectre Ship of Salem
- Peg Wesson, the Gloucester witch
- Carted back to Ipswich, 1714
- Mary Perkins Bradbury, charged as a witch
- The Witchcraft Trial of Elizabeth Morse of Newbury, 1680
- The Legend of Pudding Street
- The Legend of Goody Cole
- “Ipswich Town” by James Appleton Morgan
- The Spectre Leaguers, July 1692
- The Great Ipswich Fright, April 21, 1775
- Moll Pitcher, the fortune teller of Lynn and Marblehead
- The ghost of Harry Maine
- Dogtown, its history and legends
- Rowdy Nights at Quartermaster Perkins’ Tavern
- The Bones of Masconomet
- Wreck of the Hesperus, Dec.15, 1839
- The Newburyport Tea Party, March 1775
- Madame Shatswell’s cup of tea
- The Cricket
- Jane Hooper, the fortune-teller
- The Body Snatcher of Chebacco Parish
Stories
- Bundling
- “Dalliance and too much familiarity”
- Newburyport Turnpike opens, February 11, 1805: “Over every hill and missing every town”
- Stories from the Courts
- Flight from Rooty Plain
- Saving the Rooster
- The defiant Samuel Appleton
- Strong drink
- The bridges of Ipswich
- The Great Agawam Stable Fire
- Pingrey’s Plain, the gallows lot
- Samuel Symonds, gentleman: complaint to Salem court against his two servants, 1661
- The women of Chebacco build a Meeting House
- The Cape Ann Earthquake, November 18, 1755
- November 5: Guy Fawkes Day (“Pope Night”)
- Wreck of the Edward S. Eveleth, October 1922
- The tragic story of Rebecca Rawson, 1679
- A very old pear tree grows in Danvers
- Paul Revere’s not so famous ride through Ipswich, December 13, 1774
- Death in a snowstorm, December 1, 1722
- The boy who fell beneath the ice
- Election night in Ipswich
- Kings Rook and the Stonehenge Club, when Ipswich rocked!
- Ipswich mob attacks Loyalist Representative Dr. John Calef
- The story of Agnes Surriage, the Marblehead tavern maid
- Life in the summer of polio
- Mehitable Braybrook, who burned down Jacob and Sarah Perkins’ house, married John Downing and was arrested for witchcraft
- Early Ipswich, “A paradise for politicians”
- Killed by a swordfish in Ipswich Bay, August 19, 1886
- Hannah Jumper leads raid on Rockport liquor establishments, July 8, 1856
- The Muster Murder of 1787
- “Kiss of Death” at New England textile mills
- Luke and Elizabeth Perkins, notorious disturbers of the peace and a “wicked-tongued Woman”
- Lakemans Lane and Fellows Road
- The Hello Girls
- Let’s Go Walking……. After Midnight……
- A Sunday at Old Ipswich
- The hanging of Ezra Ross and Bathsheba Spooner, July 2, 1778
- Seating in the Meeting House
- Rum runners
- Nancy’s Corner
- “Dying Confession of Pomp, a Negro Man Who Was Executed at Ipswich on the 6th August, 1795”
- The Ipswich jails
- Rachel Clinton arrested for witchcraft, May 28, 1692
- Roads to Paradise
- William Clancy, WWI hero
- Warned Out
- Killing wolves
- The Ipswich clam
- The “Detested Tea” and the Ipswich Resolves
- A tragic story from old Gloucester
- Clam Battle!
- Haselelponah Wood
- Lord Timothy Dexter
- The Amazing Story of Hannah Duston, March 14, 1697
- Troubles with Sheep
- Four-year-old Dorothy Good is jailed for witchcraft, March 24, 1692
- The North Shore and the Golden Age of Cycling
- 1639: “The pigs have liberty”
- A short history of Ipswich dog laws
- One Third for the Widow
- Lydia Wardwell on her presentment for coming naked into Newbury meeting house
- The Ipswich lighthouse
- Bombshell from Louisbourg
- The reluctant pirate from Ipswich, Captain John Fillmore
- John Dunton’s visit to Ipswich and Rowley in 1686
- John Updike, the Ipswich years
- The steamship “Carlotta”
- Wreck of the Ada K. Damon
- Drunkards, liars, a hog, a dog, a witch, “disorderly persons” and the innkeeper
- The first jailbreak in the Colony, March 30, 1662
- Sarah Goodhue’s advance directive, July 14, 1681
- The day Nute Brown crashed through the Choate Bridge
- Great Sorrows, the Deadly “Throat Distemper” of 1735
- Ipswich Red Raiders, “a melting pot of awesome contenders!”
- Rowdy Nights at Quartermaster Perkins’ Tavern
- “Wording it over the sheep” and behaving badly
- The wearing of long hair and wigs
- The mill girl’s letter: “I can make you blush.”
- The Bones of Masconomet
- Lucretia Brown and the last witchcraft trial in America, May 14, 1878
- Santa hits the Ipswich lightkeeper’s house, December 24, 1937
- Ipswich as described by John Greenleaf Whittier
- The courtship and marriage of William Durkee and Martha Cross
- The Shatswell Fife and Drum Corps
- Behold, a Pale Corpse
- 1816, the year without summer
- The Dark Day, May 19, 1780
- Gettin’ away on the ‘Pike
- The farm at Wigwam Hill
- The Tithingman at the Ipswich Meeting House
- Madame Shatswell’s cup of tea
- Col. Doctor Thomas Berry, “Last of the Ipswich Aristocracy”
- Joseph Stockwell Manning, a Civil War hero from Ipswich
- Recollections of A Boy’s Life In The Village
- Tales of Olde Ipswich by Harold Bowen
- The sad story of Alexander Knight
- Dr. Manning’s windmill
- Freedom for Jenny Slew
Historic Ipswich 
How do I acquire all 4 books written by harold b
You probably can’t unless you’re willing to spend $100 each for them on Amazon. I have three volumes (I wasn’t aware there were 4) and many of his stories are posted at https://historicipswich.org/2014/11/28/tales-of-olde-ipswich-by-harold-bowen/. These are articles he wrote for the newspaper “Ipswich Today.”