SOME OLD IPSWICH HOUSES.

BY THOMAS FRANKLIN WATERS.

It is a partial recompense for the sleepy, unprogressive life that has prevailed in old Ipswich for a century or more that a large number of substantial mansions of the colonial type have been preserved in their pristine simplicity. They have escaped the smart remodelling incident to vigorous prosperity, which often despoils such of their old chimneys, and improves them, as the phrase is, with porticoes, piazzas, bay-windows and modern coverings for the roof, until only a memory of the original house remains. Nearly every one of our ancient mansions retains its severe Puritan plainness of architecture, the great chimney stack, jutting-over stories, small windows and modest front door. The only change they have suffered is the ancient one which was in vogue more than two centuries ago, when new rooms were built on the back side, and new rafters were run towards the ridge-pole, giving the familiar "lean-to" roof.

Many of these houses are of venerable age, beyond a doubt, but not so old by many years, I am convinced, as popular belief assigns them. It pleases our local pride to call them relics of the earliest times. It gratifies their owners or occupants to see them gazed at with wide-eyed wonder by the stranger to whom the story of their great age is told. The visiting artist or lover of antiquarian

lore is enraptured with their appearance and the traditions that cluster about them, and straightway publishes abroad the quaint charm of these old landmarks. When our 250th anniversary was celebrated, certain old dwellings were placarded to the effect that they were built in 1635, or thereabouts. Statements of this nature are still being made at frequent intervals.

In the interest of historic truth alone, I am compelled to call attention to the facility with which error can be made in this field, the importance of recognizing certain cardinal principles of accurate historical research, and the pressing need of an unbiassed application of these principles to the antiquities of our town, before the errors already made are hopelessly crystallized.

A strong presumption against the veracity of any reputed date, before the middle of the seventeenth century at the least, is found in the known facts relating to the architecture of our earliest times.

The builders of this town found it a wilderness, hardly broken by the few squatter settlers who had dwelt here prior to their coming. They built as any pioneer builds to-day, I imagine -as the Plymouth Pilgrims did-simple homes of logs, or hand-hewed timber, with thatchroof and wooden chimney, well covered with clay to save it from burning. They had no time for elaborate housebuilding, for land had to be cleared, crops sown and tended, and provision made for their support through the coming winter. They had no material for nice carpentry. Permission to build the first saw-mill, of which any record remains, was not granted until 1649. Every joist and board was sawed by hand in saw pits, or smoothed with the broad-axe. Every nail, hinge and lock was hammered out by the blacksmith.

Adequate evidence of reputed age must of necessity be documentary.

Tradition is whimsical and fantastic. It chains poor Harry Main on Ipswich bar, and locates a ghost in his house, recently demolished, which was vanquished by the united efforts of the three ministers then resident here, and effectually cast out. It frightens old Nick out of the meeting house when Whitefield preaches and shows his footprint in the ledge.

Tradition is ludicrously unhistoric. It links the romance of the regicides with a house, that was not built until long years after the last of the famous three had been buried in his secret grave. Tradition is no more reliable than the common gossip of the town. It has a grain of truth to-day. To-morrow it will be wholly false. A month hence, its falsehood will be curious and wondrous.

A sober and reliable man recently affirmed that, in his boyhood, the farm house recently purchased by Mr. Campbell of Mr. Asa Wade was moved from a neighboring corner to its present location; but Mrs. Julia Willett, who was married in the old house that stood about where the present one is, and went to live at Willett's mill near by, states that the present house was built, where it stands, about 1833, and Mr. Francis H. Wade is confident that the house which was moved is the one now owned and occupied by Mrs. William Kimball. How easily the history of these houses is confused and misstated only sixty years away from the fact !

An ancient type of architecture is an insufficient proof of extreme age. One of our most venerable houses was torn down when Mr. George E. Farley's house was built, and its site is occupied by his residence. The old relic had all the marks of great age: huge chimney, projecting over-stories, low, sloping "lean-to" roof, great summers or central beams in the low studded lower rooms, and very small windows.

This corner was purchased by William Donnton of Thomas Lovell in 1695, an unpretending hundred-rod lot with no building of any sort mentioned as standing upon it. These old deeds are very explicit and that so large an item as a house could have been omitted in the description of the estate is incredible. At Donnton's decease his daughter Elizabeth, wife of Robert Perkins, sold her right and title in "the mansion or dwelling house and barn, with part of the homestead on which they stand to our loving brother-in-law, Joseph Holland," in 1721. In 1765, at Widow Holland's death, it was purchased by Francis Holmes, a physician. This old mansion was built, therefore, subsequently to 1695. This type of architecture, it is believed, established itself about 1660, but it continued well into the following century.

Contemporaneous documentary evidence, then, deeds of sale, wills, town records, etc., must be the decisive test, and when the credible written document conflicts with the unwritten tradition or the recorded tradition even, the tradition must go to the wall. Even this evidence must be carefully weighed, for there is possibility of error lurking here.

The question of the identity of a house now in existence with a house mentioned in an early deed or record is always pertinent. As in our own time, a man may buy an estate, remove the old house, build anew, and sell again, and no evidence of this appear in the deeds, except from an enhanced price; so a succession of houses may have occupied the same lot in the past, without a word of allusion in the deeds to any change. It is an historic fact that houses had been built very near the beginning of our town on many lots, which may be readily recognized, and on some of which old houses still remain; but it is far from certain that these are the identical early dwellings.