The Rail Trail: Mills, Ropewalks and Old Hill

The railroad bridge that the trail now uses had a life before the trains. Currier's History of 1906 says the Newburyport Bridge to Salisbury, a suspension bridge built under the direction of Thomas Haven of Portsmouth, was far enough along in October 1827 that the stage coaches could cross its upper section, and both driveways were open six weeks later. In March 1840 the Eastern Railroad Company bought all the iron, timber and plank of the old bridge for five thousand dollars and paid the proprietors eight thousand more for the right to build on its four stone piers and two abutments “a new bridge with two road-beds, one above the other,” carts, carriages and foot passengers below and the railroad above. On October 28, 1840, Currier says, the first train of cars crossed from Newburyport to Salisbury, and twelve days later the road was open to Portsmouth. The strain of the trains told: in 1865 a more substantial railroad bridge went up a short distance above the old one, the old bridge was laid out as a public highway in 1868, and the whole crossing was rebuilt in 1903 at a cost of three hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. Our research for this site calls this the second bridge across the Merrimack at Newburyport, after the Chain Bridge upstream. The first passenger station, Currier adds, was a one-storey wooden building on Washington Street with big swinging doors, left open for trains to pass, and a bell rung on their arrival and departure.

Sources: Currier, History of Newburyport, vol. 1 (1906), pp. 373–376, 399–400 · oldnbpt.com research

The histories have nothing on this wharf under its later name, so what we know comes from our own research for this site: this was the last home of Pearson's Bakery, and from 1934 the home of a new Caldwell distilling company, which moved here from the foot of Kent Street, where this walk is going next. The Pearsons were bakers in Newburyport long before that. Emery, listing the shops of her girlhood in the 1790s, says that “Messrs. Theodore and John Pearson's bakeries were on Centre street,” and that Ebenezer Pearson had another on Middle Street; whether the firm that ended up on this wharf descends from them the histories do not say. The river's edge here, between the two bridges, is the water the railroad crossed and the distillers and bakers shipped from.

Sources: oldnbpt.com research · Emery, Reminiscences of a Nonagenarian (1879), p. 228

Newburyport tried steam-driven cotton before it tried anything else with steam. The second volume of Currier's History, published in 1909, says a factory for making cotton cloth was put up in 1835 near the foot of Strong Street, “on the wharf next above the Newburyport bridge,” a building a hundred and thirteen feet long, forty feet wide and three storeys high, with a forty-horsepower engine to drive three thousand spindles. It was ready to run in the spring of 1836, and on March 11 of that year Enoch S. Williams, Samuel T. DeFord and Richard Stone were incorporated as the Newburyport Steam Cotton Company, with Stephen W. Marston as president. The company was dissolved and the property sold in 1843; the Essex Steam Mills, incorporated in February 1844 by James Read, George Gardner and Edmund L. Le Breton, bought the factory and made cotton cloth here until March 6, 1856, when the building burned. Mrs. E. Vale Smith's History of Newburyport of 1854, written while the mill was still running, lists the Essex Steam Mill among the town's corporations with George Gardner as president. The bigger mills that followed, the Bartlet, James and Globe mills, were built elsewhere in town, and nothing of this one is left on the wharf.

Sources: Currier, History of Newburyport, vol. 2 (1909), pp. 148–149 · Smith, History of Newburyport (1854), p. 285 · oldnbpt.com research

Currier's History of 1906 traces the iron founders of the town to this corner. Robert Russell and Eleazer R. Walker set up an iron foundry in 1840 on Brown's wharf at the foot of Green Street, and by 1854 Albert Russell had charge of it. In 1857 the firm of Holmes & Nichols leased a brick building on the corner of Merrimac Street and Williams Court and turned it into an iron foundry and machine shop, and in 1860 Albert Russell bought their stock and goodwill and moved his foundry from Brown's wharf to the westerly end of this building. In 1872 more space was added and his sons Edward P. and Albert Jr. joined him as Albert Russell & Sons; in 1906 the works were still running under William F. Runnells. The second volume of Currier's History says the city's steam fire engine No. One was rebuilt here by the Albert Russell and Sons Company in 1902. Our research for this site says the foundry cast fences, ship fittings and Grand Army grave markers into the early 1900s, and Mrs. Smith, walking up Merrimac Street in 1854, passed “on Brown's wharf, the iron foundry,” Mr. Lesley's machine shop and a marble yard before she reached the railroad bridge.

Sources: Currier, History of Newburyport, vol. 1 (1906), p. 182 · Currier, History of Newburyport, vol. 2 (1909), p. 41 · Smith, History of Newburyport (1854), p. 270 · oldnbpt.com research

This was the last rum distillery in Newburyport and for a long time the best known. Currier's History of 1906 says that of the four distilleries counted in 1820, one was at the foot of Kent Street, and that in his own day “the distillery at the foot of Kent street, owned by Messrs. Alexander and George J. Caldwell, is the only one in operation within the limits of Newburyport.” Emery, remembering the trade of her girlhood, says that “Caldwell's on Merrimac street was even then noted, for its rum, anise and other cordials.” Mrs. Smith, walking this way in 1854, found “a little beyond the railroad bridge, the distillery of Mr. Caldwell.” Our research for this site puts the founding at 1772 by Alexander Caldwell, who is buried in the Old Hill Burying Ground at the end of this walk, and says the family business closed with Prohibition in 1918, a new company opening on Pearson's Wharf in 1934.

Hurd's History of Essex County, published in 1888, gives the distillery its fullest notice. The old works had come down in the family and been run by them for a hundred years, he says, keeping the reputation of producing “the best liquor of its kind in the United States,” which he credits chiefly to the water: the south bank of the Merrimack is full of springs, and the well that fed the still was one of them, so inexhaustible that a steam fire engine made little impression on it. The works covered an acre, with a bonded warehouse, and in 1873 paid the federal government more than three hundred thousand dollars in tax, “more than a thousand dollars a day for every working day of that year.” The firm of Alexander & George J. Caldwell, Hurd says, stood first on the list of taxpayers in the city, and Alexander Caldwell had put his money into ships, cotton, paper, carpets, hats and silver as well as rum.

Sources: Currier, History of Newburyport, vol. 1 (1906), pp. 145–147 · Emery, Reminiscences of a Nonagenarian (1879), p. 228 · Smith, History of Newburyport (1854), p. 270 · Hurd, History of Essex County, vol. 2 (1888) · oldnbpt.com research

This is the oldest house on the walk, and it was built before Strong Street existed. The second volume of Currier's History says that after his first wife died, Captain Joseph Atkins bought about an acre and a half of land “at the foot of what is now Strong street,” running from the river to the land of Hathorn Coker, part of the homestead of Richard Bartlet, “and on this land he built a spacious dwelling house.” On April 7, 1730, he married Mary, widow of Francis Wainwright of Boston and daughter of Joseph Dudley, governor of the province. Emery says the house “is still standing on the lower side of Strong street,” and that when it was built it stood in grounds reaching to High Street: “a garden handsomely laid out stretched in front to the river, and a broad avenue shaded by trees led to the mansion.” Currier gives the rest of him: born at Sandwich in England, a sea commander, granted liberty in 1738, with sixty-four others according to Joshua Coffin's Sketch of the History of Newbury of 1845, to build a wharf at the foot of Market Street, and the giver, in 1741, of the land under St. Paul's Church, where he was buried after his death on January 21, 1773, in his ninety-third year. Currier's 1906 History says the street itself was accepted in March 1819 and named Strong Street, a century after the house.

The state inventory form carries it on: James M. Cooper, a house carpenter, owned it from before 1851, and his heirs kept it until 1919. The form calls the house Georgian with Greek Revival alterations, but dates it to about 1790 to 1803 while also crediting Atkins with building it about 1730; the histories are on the side of the earlier date.

Sources: Currier, History of Newburyport, vol. 2 (1909), pp. 198–200 · Emery, Reminiscences of a Nonagenarian (1879) · Coffin, Sketch of the History of Newbury (1845), p. 404 · Currier, History of Newburyport, vol. 1 (1906), p. 359 · MACRIS inventory form

Our research for this site makes this the home of Joseph Wilson, ship carver, who lived from 1779 to 1857 and carved the statues for Timothy Dexter. The histories put him on this street at the right moment. The second volume of Currier's History says that early in 1801 Dexter had wooden statues of Washington, Jefferson and Adams set on an arch over his front door on High Street, and then filled his grounds with pedestals fifteen feet high carrying statues of philosophers, statesmen and politicians, one of them of himself, inscribed “I am the first in the East, the first in the West, and the greatest philosopher in the known world.” All of them, Currier says, with four lions, a unicorn and other objects, “came from the workshop of Joseph Wilson, a young ship-carver, then living on Strong street, Newburyport.” Currier's “Ould Newbury” of 1896 adds that they were gaudily painted and had little merit as art and less as likenesses, but drew crowds. William C. Todd's sketch of Dexter, published in 1886, says Knapp had the images costing fifteen thousand dollars, but that an old gentleman who remembered Dexter and knew the artist told him “the price was $100 for each, and that Dexter made as sharp a bargain as he could with the artist, as he did with everyone.” Emery, who calls the carver James Wilson, thought better of the work than Currier did: “In this work Mr. Wilson displayed the power of a sculptor; it is a pity he never aspired to works of greater durability.”

Sources: oldnbpt.com research · Currier, History of Newburyport, vol. 2 (1909), p. 423 · Currier, “Ould Newbury” (1896), ch. "Dexter House" · Todd, Timothy Dexter (1886) · Emery, Reminiscences of a Nonagenarian (1879), p. 251

Rope was spun in long sheds, and this corner was one of them. Currier's History of 1906, describing the trade of the town in its early years, says cordage factories employing twenty-five to fifty hands made two to three hundred tons of white lines and tarred cordage a year, and that “John Tracy was a manufacturer of cordage near the Quaker burying ground, before Washington street was laid out between Winter and Boardman streets”; his bill-heads, Currier says, were engraved on copper, and he reproduces one. Emery is more exact about the lie of it: “In 1785, before Washington street was laid out, Mr. John Tracy had a rope-walk running from the Quaker burying ground to the river.” She thought a later walk of Mr. Green Pearson, from Washington to Water Street, was the same one. Mrs. Smith's History of 1854 agrees, and says this land, with its neighborhood, “was formerly called Quaker field.” Our research for this site dates the walk to 1764 and calls it one of the town's two early ropewalks.

John Tracy was no mere ropemaker. “Ould Newbury” says he was the son of the merchant Patrick Tracy, born in 1753, lived in the Lowell house on High Street next to the Dexter House, which his father bought for him, and served in Rhode Island as aide-de-camp to General Glover; with his brother Nathaniel he sent out privateers, and Emery says the Tracys' ships took a hundred and twenty prizes. Currier's 1906 History says Washington Street, from Winter Street to Boardman Street, was accepted in May 1800, which is when the ropewalk's ground became a street.

Sources: Currier, History of Newburyport, vol. 1 (1906), pp. 27, 357–358 · Emery, Reminiscences of a Nonagenarian (1879), pp. 176, 227–228 · Smith, History of Newburyport (1854), p. 47 · Currier, “Ould Newbury” (1896), ch. "Patrick Tracy" · oldnbpt.com research

This was a family burying ground that the town called the Quakers'. Emery says Samuel Coker, son of Hathorne Coker, owned a large tract at the north end of the town and joined the Society of Friends, as did his son Thomas, who built several houses here, and that “The family burial place was in a lot on Washington, nearly opposite the head of Strong street.” Currier's History of Newbury, published in 1902, traces the lot to a bequest of 1695 by Richard Bartlett to his daughter Tirzah, who married Hathorn Coker, and to an agreement of 1768 among the Coker heirs, when they divided the Coker field, that nine square rods at its northwest corner should be kept “for a Burying Place for them and their heirs forever.” The entrance, Currier says, was from the southwesterly side of Washington Street, and a low granite monument put up in June 1865 read, in capitals, the family cemetery of Hathorn Coker, who with many of his descendants lie buried here. Mrs. Smith, in 1854, says some of the Quakers “were buried in a lot of land in the rear of the westerly side of Washington street, between the railroad crossing and Boardman street.”

The Friends' own meeting house was not here but on High Street. Currier's History of Newbury says it was built in 1743 on land Stephen Sawyer gave that June to Robert Rogers, Daniel Sawyer, Samuel Coker, Hathorn Coker Jr. and others, between what are now Woodland and Ashland Streets, a plain building about thirty by forty feet and two storeys high; Mrs. Smith dates it 1744. In 1825 the society sold the lot to Josiah Little and built anew near Turkey Hill. Our research for this site says the old building was moved and survives at 36 Ferry Road, and that the stones here could still be seen in the early 1900s.

Sources: Emery, Reminiscences of a Nonagenarian (1879), p. 86 · Currier, History of Newbury (1902), pp. 389–392 · Smith, History of Newburyport (1854), p. 47 · oldnbpt.com research

The road roaring across in front of you is the newest thing on the walk, and the only one the old histories cannot describe. Our research for this site says the Washington Street bypass for Route 1 was begun in 1930 and finished in 1934, and that houses were moved or torn down to make way for it on Winter, Summer, High, Vernon and Railroad Streets. The street you are standing on is older than the one it crosses by more than a century: Currier's History of 1906 says the stretch of Washington Street from Winter Street to Boardman Street was accepted in May 1800, that Adams Street carried it on toward Olive Street in 1823, and that in 1852 the whole run from Green Street to Olive Street was given the one name. The railroad crossed Washington Street just behind you, where the trail does now; Mrs. Smith in 1854 used “the railroad crossing” as a landmark for the Quaker lot. Within a century of the first train the highway builders cut through the same neighborhood again.

Sources: oldnbpt.com research · Currier, History of Newburyport, vol. 1 (1906), pp. 357–358 · Smith, History of Newburyport (1854), p. 47

Albert Hale's Old Newburyport Houses, a 1912 collection of photographs, says the land was bought in 1792 by Abner Wood, who then built this house, “similar in appearance to the Pike-Coffin House,” and that in 1819 it was bought from Wood by Ebenezer Moseley; in Hale's day it was the home of Moseley's descendant Charlotte, Mrs. Arthur C. Nason, and he photographed the hallway. The state inventory form adds Wood's losses: three of his vessels, the brig Sally Ann, the schooner Speedwell and the brig Minerva, were taken by the French, and he claimed compensation from the government. The appendix to the second volume of Currier's History has him on the board of selectmen from 1801.

Moseley is the name the house keeps. The second volume of Currier's History says he was born in Windham, Connecticut, in 1781, graduated from Yale in 1802, came to Newburyport in 1805 and opened a law office that soon had a large practice; he was colonel of the sixth regiment of militia from 1813, a vigorous opponent of the embargo and the War of 1812, representative to the General Court from 1815 to 1819 and senator in 1821 and 1822, and he “made the address of welcome to General LaFayette when he visited Newburyport in August, 1824.” Currier's 1906 volume says that address was delivered in the Tracy house on State Street, because heavy rain had wrecked the procession; Moseley had done the same office for President Monroe in 1817. He was a presidential elector for Henry Clay in 1832, presided at the two-hundredth anniversary of Newbury in 1835, and was Daniel Webster's associate in the Goodridge robbery trial of 1816. He died on August 28, 1854. The inventory form carries the house to his son Edward S. Moseley, president of the Mechanics' Bank, and then to Mrs. Nason.

Sources: Hale, Old Newburyport Houses (1912), p. 12 · MACRIS inventory form · Currier, History of Newburyport, vol. 2 (1909), pp. 272–274 · Currier, History of Newburyport, vol. 1 (1906), pp. 415–416

You are in the railroad's own cut here. Currier's History of 1906 says the Eastern Railroad's charter was amended in 1836 to carry the line “west of the jail and under High street by a suitable tunnel,” the jail then standing near Frog Pond, and that is the route the trail follows. The burying ground above you is older than anything else on the walk. Currier's “Ould Newbury” of 1896 says the Third Parish of Newbury chose a committee in November 1729 to find a burying place, and in March 1730 the assessors were told to fence “the lot of land in the rear of Frog Pond, then known as Snelling's hill,” after Dr. William Snelling, a physician in Newbury in 1650. Currier's 1906 History says the ground was enlarged in 1790 to Pond Street on the west and Auburn Street on the north, and that a brick powder house built beside it in 1754 gave the hill its other name.

“Ould Newbury” walks the stones: the Reverend John Lowell, first minister of the parish; Daniel Farnham the loyalist; Nathaniel Tracy, John Tracy's brother; and Timothy Dexter, “The Lord of the East, Lord of the West, and the greatest philosopher in the known world,” who died October 26, 1806, which brings this walk back to the carver on Strong Street. The 1906 History adds the French refugees from Guadeloupe and Santo Domingo buried on the northwesterly side, and the seven seamen of the brig Pocahontas, wrecked on Plum Island in December 1839. Our research for this site adds Alexander Caldwell, the distiller from the foot of Kent Street, and Fortune, enslaved in the Dalton household on State Street, whose stone the Daltons set up. Currier's warning of 1896, that many stones “show signs of age, and need to be carefully repaired and relettered,” still holds. The gate is on Greenleaf Street, on the far side of the hill, for another day.

Sources: Currier, History of Newburyport, vol. 1 (1906), pp. 212–215, 399–400 · Currier, “Ould Newbury” (1896), ch. "Old Hill Burying Ground" · oldnbpt.com research