NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
AND REMINDER 
Vol. XIII 
Manchester, Mass., Friday, July 30 
———e 
No. 31 
of oa ee 
Ipswich and its Beautiful Winding River 
By HELENE SHERMAN 
PUBLIC LIBRARY, NO. 
HERE is one town in old New England, that has 
changed so little with the passing of the years that 
Governor Endicott, himself, would hardly feel a stranger 
here were he to step into her peaceful streets today.  !t 
is Ipswich, quaint, beautiful town, lying, quietly, soberly 
among her low hills. The broad, shady streets, the comfort- 
able substantial homes, combine to give the place an air of 
restfulness and well-being so delightful in these hurried 
days. ‘The place whispers to us of the time of our Puri- 
tan forbears in every hill and winding road, and there is 
hardly a town in New England so rich in traditions of 
the colonizing period as is fair Ipswich. Captain John 
Smith said of it in 1614: “This place might content a 
right curious judgment; but there are many sands at the 
entrance of the harbour, and the worst is, it is imbayed 
too farre from the deepe sea.’ He named it Southhamp- 
ton, but the early settlers preferred to retain the more 
picturesque Indian name, Agawa'r, until 1624, when the 
General Court granted permission for the name to be 
changed to Ipswich for the town of that name in Eng- 
land, “in acknowledgement of the great honor and kind- 
ress done to our people, who took shipping there.” With 
such a man as John Winthrop, Jr., as the first settler, :t 
is hardly a matter for wonder that the very flower of the 
colonists were attracted to Ipswich, making it for many 
years second only to Boston. It had a variety of advan- 
tages unsurpassed in any New England town. ‘The valu- 
able fisheries ‘of that day have disappeared almost en- 
tirely, and while there are still some pretty farms, manu- 
facturing is the leading industry in present-day Ipswich. 
The hills, the natural divisions of the town, the long 
roads furnish a study in colonial nomenclature as inter- 
esting as it is quaint. Candlewood, now a pleasant farm- 
MAIN ST., IPSWICH 
ing section, is believed to have been covered with a forest 
of pitch pine in the days when our forefathers settled at 
Agawam. The name seems to suggest something of the 
sort from the use of the word in that early period when 
the settlers lighted their humble homes with thin strips of 
pitch pine, which they called candlewood. — Linebrook, 
Jeffries Neck, and the Argilla Farms are among the other 
neighborhoods of Ipswich which carry us back to the old 
days. The roads which separate these districts have quaint, 
old colony names, which have figured prominently in New 
England annals. Candlewood is that section cut off by the 
Fissex and Candlewood Roads, and the intersection of 
these ways was originally called the Parting-of-the-Paths, 
and was later contracted to Pardon Paths. ‘The Argilla 
Farms were not unimportant in the early Ipswich history 
and the road which still bears the name skirts the base of 
a hill which has been the theme of as many a poem and 
story as has the town itself. It is Heartbreak Hill, where, 
the legend says, an Indian maiden watched in vain for 
her sailor lover until she died. It is rather a damper up- 
on the old, romantic story to learn that the hill was known 
by the very prosaic name of Hard-brick Hill too years 
ago, and is so designated on a town map of 1830. By 
common consent, however, the old name has been for- 
gotten in the more poetic one, which is also quite fitting 
for our Puritan forefathers must have had a heartbreak 
hill in every New England settlement. ‘‘Labour-in-Vayne 
Road,” as it is spelled in the early records, **Labor-in-vain 
Road,” as we see it now, is another name, which, perhaps, 
commemorates the fruitless struggles of some early set- 
tler. “The Way to Jeffries Neck, the Turkey Shore Road, 
Old England Road, and Pine Swamp Road are the quaint 
appellations of some of the pleasant, winding roads which 
