The Knickerbocker, Vol. 22, No. 4, October 1843

Transcriber's note: The following Table of Contents has been added for the convenience of the reader.

Vol. XXII. OCTOBER, 1843. No. 4.
BY AN AMERICAN ANTIQUARY.
The old town of Ipswich, in the Bay State, exhibits many rare relics of antiquity. Purchased under the title of Agawam, in the early settlement of the colony, and granted in the year 1632 to twelve freeholders who made oath of their 'intention of settlement,' it dates back its origin among the very first townships of New-England. At that time, and for many years afterward, it was the northern frontier of Massachusetts, and was constantly exposed to the attacks of the tribes of Indians in its neighborhood. Though its population was composed mostly of tillers of the soil, the buildings, unlike all other farming towns of the commonwealth, were erected for common safety upon a single street; and even to this day its sturdy yeomanry live in town, though the farms they cultivate are many of them miles distant in the country.
The old street is still in existence, and we venture to say that it has not its parallel in all New-England. Antique domicils, exhibiting the English architectural style of the seventeenth century; sturdy block-houses, erected to defend the early settlers from the hostile incursions of the crafty foe; barns, shops, and crazy wood-sheds, leaning and trembling in extreme decrepitude; and chairs, tables, bureaus, bedsteads, and pictures, all relics of a former age, each one of which would be a gem in the cabinet of an antiquary, daily exposed for sale in the windows of the trucksters or on the counter of the auctioneer; are found in rich profusion through this old street of the Pilgrims. But better than all else is the church-yard, the original burial-place, with its green graves and gray headstones; its turf-sward running far up the hill to the tall elms and luxuriant evergreens that crown the summit; and its nameless hillocks, catching the evening sunlight as it falls in long lines athwart the green-slope, and reflecting it back upon the passer-by with peculiar brightness! I love those old grave-stones, half sunk in the church-yard mould; mid the rudely-carved cherubims with their swollen cheeks and distended wings, or the more frequent emblems of skull and cross-bones, are to my eye far more grateful and appropriate than the modern blazonry upon heavy shafts, on tall, slim marbles.