On the Massachusetts North Shore
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.
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.
The house at 88 County Road was built in 1727 by Captain Thomas Wade. His son, Nathaniel Wade, at drilled the Ipswich Minute Men on the South Green across from this house. Wade was given command at West Point by Gen. Washington when Benedict Arnold joined the enemy.
March 31, 1776, Abigail Adams to John Adams: "In the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors."
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
I listened today to an interview with author Nathaniel Philbrick on NPR, and was impressed with his fresh take on the social dynamics of the Revolutionary War, portrayed in his book, Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution. His account of the Revolution and the tragic relationship between George Washington and Benedict Arnold… Continue reading Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the fate of the American Revolution
Historic Ipswich 