Joppa: The Oldest Houses

The state's historic inventory form calls this an old five-bay house, stretched with an addition on the left and much changed outside, and says the corner was a major crossroads for travellers of the day. It is one of the first corners in town. Currier's 1906 History says Chandler's lane, the street beside you, "was probably laid out by the inhabitants of Newbury as early as 1645," when the new town was settled along the river; it became King Street in 1726, and on March 10, 1789, the town "Voted that the street called and known by the name of King street be altered, and from and after this day be called and known by the name of Federal street."

Currier's History of Newbury puts an early fisherman here. In 1646 the freeholders granted Aquila Chase a house lot "on condition that he do goe to sea and do service in the towne with a boate for four years," and his house stood on the northeasterly corner of Chandler's lane and the way by the river, now Water Street. Before 1700, Currier adds, Daniel Pierce had malt-houses on the southeasterly corner and Caleb Moody built one on the northwesterly corner as early as 1673. Emery says the shipbuilder William Johnson, who died in 1741, left his homestead on the corner of Water and Federal Streets to his son Isaac, and the 1906 History says the frigate Boston was built for the state of Massachusetts in 1776 at the foot of this street, where Jonathan Greenleaf had been building small vessels. Which of those houses, if any, stood where number 1 stands now, the books do not say, and the inventory form names no first owner.

Sources: MACRIS inventory form · Currier, History of Newburyport, vol. 1 (1906), p. 336, p. 449 · Currier, History of Newbury (1902), p. 91, p. 261 · Emery, Reminiscences of a Nonagenarian (1879) · Coffin, Sketch of the History of Newbury (1845), p. 46

Currier's History of Newburyport says this was Pudding lane in 1775, running from Water Street up to Beck Street, "afterward called Ship lane, and is now known as Ship street," and the name is earned. Emery says Thomas Johnson, "amongst the earliest ship-builders on the Merrimack river," owned the yard at the bottom of the street and lived on the corner of Ship and Water Streets; William Johnson succeeded him, and in Emery's words "The ship carpenters were then one of the most influential classes in town, and William Johnson was at their head." When he died in 1741 he left the Ship Street house and half the yard to his son Eleazer. Currier's 1906 History carries the family's best story as a tradition. Eleazer Johnson told his workmen one day, "If any of you are ready to assist in an enterprise that requires courage and discretion, knock your adzes from their handles, shoulder the handles and follow me," and the ship-carpenters marched to the powder-house by Frog Pond, broke in, carried several hundred chests of tea to Market Square and burned them. Hurd's History of Essex County of 1888 calls the Johnson house near the foot of this street "probably the oldest on Water Street."

The inventory form dates this house to about 1750; its earliest known owners, from the 1851 plan, are John Porter and Mrs. Hannah Wyatt, who held number 20 until 1872. The second volume of Currier's History says Porter married Hannah Bartlet, daughter of the merchant William Bartlet, in 1811, and that Bartlet's brick mansion on Federal Street, with land running back to Beck and Ship Streets, came to her by his will. Mrs. Smith names Porter as treasurer of the Globe Steam Mill, and the inventory form thinks his half of this house was an investment: he lived on Federal Street, a garden away.

Sources: Currier, History of Newburyport, vol. 1 (1906), p. 354, p. 539 · Emery, Reminiscences of a Nonagenarian (1879), pp. 212–213 · Hurd, History of Essex County, vol. 2 (1888) · MACRIS inventory form · Currier, History of Newburyport, vol. 2 (1909), pp. 235–238 · Smith, History of Newburyport (1854), p. 287

The state inventory form thinks this may be the oldest house on the walk. It dates the house to about 1725, but says the steep roof points to the early eighteenth or even the late seventeenth century, that the windows may once have been leaded casements, and that the house was brought up to date in the early Georgian years. The street is younger than the house. Currier's 1906 History says the town accepted a way from King Street to Pudding lane on March 9, 1775, a way "subsequently named Beck street," and that it was extended from Ship lane to Lime Street in 1796; the Old South's own Origin and Annals of 1896 says the street is named for Joshua Beck, who sold the church the land its meeting house stands on. Emery remembered a dingy brick chapel on the upper side of Beck Street where, in 1814, the Old South started one of the first Sunday schools in Massachusetts.

The owners come from the inventory form. Before 1851 the house belonged to the Todd family, and Elias Todd, a pump and block maker on Johnson's Wharf, lived here; Emery says that wharf is what became of the old Johnson shipyard at the foot of Ship Street, so Todd worked a few hundred feet from his door. By 1872 the house was William Todd's, of Todd and Brown, pump and block makers at 87 Water Street, though he boarded on Fair Street and another Todd probably lived here.

Sources: MACRIS inventory form · Currier, History of Newburyport, vol. 1 (1906), p. 354 · Origin and Annals of “The Old South” (1896), p. 171 · Emery, Reminiscences of a Nonagenarian (1879)

The old histories have nothing to say about Smith's Street, so the state's inventory record is all we have on this one. It lists 3 to 11 Smith's Street as a multiple-family dwelling of about 1775, the year the town was accepting the little streets around it, and the whole street lies inside the Newburyport Historic District on the National Register. Take it as a sample of what the back streets of the South End looked like when the ship carpenters filled them.

Sources: MACRIS inventory form

The inventory form dates this Colonial house to about 1730 and calls it the Charles Currier House, and that is all it says. The street, by Currier's 1906 History, was probably laid out soon after Newburyport was incorporated and was formally accepted from Milk Street to Water Street on October 12, 1797, so the house is older than the street it stands on. What makes the corner interesting is the shipyard that stood at the foot of it. Currier's "Ould Newbury," published in 1896, says Ralph Cross came to Newbury about 1728, bought land at the foot of Lime Street and set up as a shipbuilder, and that "His house was on the lower side of Water Street adjoining his building-yard." Elsewhere in the same book Currier cites the deed of April 7, 1733, by which Cross bought the lot on the river from the Mirricks of Nantucket. Cross died on January 4, 1788, at eighty-two, and is buried on Old Hill; his sons Stephen and Ralph took a yard of their own at the foot of Federal Street, where, the 1906 History says, they built the frigates Hancock in 1776 and Protector in 1779. After the old man's death, "Ould Newbury" says, Jacob Tucker, Elias Cook and others kept the Lime Street yard going for twenty-five or thirty years; by 1896 two small houses and Isaac Poor's grocery stood on its Water Street front.

Emery adds two neighbours. She says Dr. Humphrey Bradstreet built the second house ever put up at the water side, on the upper corner of Water and Lime Streets, by her day a store; and among the handsome houses of her girlhood she places Captain John Coombs on the corner of Water and Lime, with the Atwood house up at the corner of Atwood Street.

Sources: MACRIS inventory form · Currier, History of Newburyport, vol. 1 (1906), pp. 335–336, p. 449 · Currier, “Ould Newbury” (1896), ch. "Old Ship-Yards" · Currier, “Ould Newbury” (1896), p. 494 · Emery, Reminiscences of a Nonagenarian (1879)

This is the only textile mill left standing in Newburyport, and it was a sensation when it opened. The second volume of Currier's History says Philip Johnson, Mark Symonds, Robert Bayley and Charles T. James were incorporated as the James Steam Mills on January 28, 1842, to make cotton cloth, and that "A four-story brick factory was erected between Charles and Salem streets, on land extending to Water street." Mrs. Smith, writing while it was new, gives the figures: 312 feet long, 17,000 spindles and 356 looms, two million yards of fine sheetings and shirtings a year, and "number of hands employed, 325, of whom two-thirds are females." The money, she says, came mostly from the south end of town, the heirs of William Bartlet taking half the first subscription. Before the looms went into the upper floors the weave room was the biggest hall in town, and she says Daniel Webster spoke to the citizens there before the election of November 1844, in a room that could seat five thousand. The 1902 History of Newbury describes the pipe laid in 1846 from a pond out on the turnpike, down State, High, Federal and Purchase Streets to Charles Street, sixty-four hundred feet of iron to feed the boilers.

Currier's second volume follows the owners: the company was dissolved in 1869, the property went to the Masconomet Mills in 1871 and became the Victoria Mills in 1876, making corset jeans, sateens and brown sheetings until 1897. The inventory form carries it on through the Bay State Cotton Corporation from 1907, the shutdown of the 1930s and apartments since 1984, and names the picker house, the boiler house of the 1880s and the storehouse of about 1890. Charles Street has one more story: Currier says the Old South's brick chapel from Beck Street was bought by the Catholics of the town in 1843 and moved to a lot here, their first church until the one on Green Street was built.

Sources: MACRIS inventory form · Currier, History of Newburyport, vol. 2 (1909), p. 151 · Smith, History of Newburyport (1854), p. 286 · Currier, History of Newburyport, vol. 1 (1906), p. 299, p. 436 · Currier, History of Newbury (1902), p. 303 · Origin and Annals of “The Old South” (1896), p. 53

Our own research for this site places here the shipyard of William Gerrish, who lived from 1730 to 1801 and was the wealthiest shipbuilder in eighteenth-century Joppa; nothing of the yard is left. The histories agree on the ground. Currier's "Ould Newbury" says, "At the foot of Bromfield Street, extending from Merrimack River to Hancock Street, was the yard where Mr. William Gerrish carried on the business of ship-building for many years," and Emery, remembering the yards of her girlhood, says "Mr. William Gerrish had an extensive yard reaching from South, now Bromfield street, to Somerby's court, and from the river back to Hancock street." That is a big piece of land, four blocks deep. Hurd's History of Essex County names Ralph Cross and William Gerrish as the leading builders before the Revolution, and Mrs. Smith heads her list of the port's other builders with William Gerrish. "Ould Newbury" says the next yard downstream, between Bromfield and Franklin Streets, was worked at the start of the nineteenth century by Coker, Atkinson, Hunt and Pierce.

The railroad came late. Currier's 1906 History says the Newburyport City Railroad was chartered in 1869 to run from the Eastern Railroad to tide water on this bank, was finished in July 1872 and leased to the Eastern; and that in 1873 the city was allowed to discontinue the old public landing places between the middle ship-yard and the lower end of Bromfield Street, which were filled with gravel and became part of its road-bed. The water side of this stop is that fill. Across Bromfield Street, Currier's History of Newbury says, began Joppa proper, the part of Newbury where the people lived by "catching and curing fish."

Sources: oldnbpt.com research · Currier, “Ould Newbury” (1896), ch. "Old Ship-Yards" · Emery, Reminiscences of a Nonagenarian (1879), p. 225 · Hurd, History of Essex County, vol. 2 (1888) · Smith, History of Newburyport (1854) · Currier, History of Newburyport, vol. 1 (1906), p. 365, p. 404 · Currier, History of Newbury (1902), p. 492

The state inventory form rates this a well-preserved First Period house, dated between 1670 and 1720 from its frame, with an exceptional scarf joint and a nine-foot kitchen fireplace. Currier's History of Newbury says Cottle's lane was laid out by the selectmen on March 6, 1718-19, "from High street, by Ezra Cottle's dwelling-house, to the dwelling-house of Joseph Knight, jr., on the highway near Merrimack river." In 1764 its easterly side became the town line and Newburyport called it South Street; the 1906 History says the city renamed it in 1852 for John Bromfield, who by his will "gave ten thousand dollars to the inhabitants of Newburyport, the income to be used for the purchase of shade trees and the improvement of sidewalks." Its most famous resident was a fortune teller: Emery says Madam Hooper came about 1760, kept a dame school at the south end and then told fortunes at her home on Cottle's lane, and Currier's second volume prints her death notice of 1798, "for many years a terror to weak and superstitious minds, who honored her with the appellation of witch." Where on the lane she lived, nobody says.

The first owner is not known. The inventory form takes the heirs of E. Pierce from the 1851 plan and identifies him as Enoch Pierce, who served under Ezra Lunt in the Revolution at twenty and claimed for the brig Minerva, taken by French privateers in 1798; by 1872 it was Captain Joseph Howard's, who kept a fish market on Huse Wharf. Currier's 1906 History bears this out: Enoch Pierce is a private on his roll of Ezra Lunt's company of 1775, and a claimant for the brig Minerva, valued at $3,424, in his table of French spoliation claims. Caleb Cushing's history of 1826 names an Enoch Pierce as captain of the Newburyport Artillery Company; whether that is the soldier of 1775 grown old or a son of the same name, the books do not say.

Sources: MACRIS inventory form · Currier, History of Newbury (1902), p. 426 · Currier, History of Newburyport, vol. 1 (1906), p. 335, p. 240, p. 546 · Emery, Reminiscences of a Nonagenarian (1879) · Currier, History of Newburyport, vol. 2 (1909), pp. 438–439 · Cushing, History and Present State of Newburyport (1826)