Antiques Journal: Your's Sincerely

Timber framers Jim Whidden and Jesse working on the sills
and floor frame of the Alexander Knight house.
Note the cellar hole with its fieldstone walls.

One of the many great things about Ipswich is that its records are as fascinating as its houses. And sometimes we can use one to fill a gap in the other.

There’s an interesting case in point. In the 1630s and 40s, Alexander Knight was one of the leading citizens of the town, but he fell on hard times. Some historians speculate that in 1648, he may have been so badly burned in the fire that killed his son, Nathaniel, that he was unable to work. Certainly, in the 1650s, like most paupers, he was boarding at the town’s expense. Then, in 1656, the selectmen spent a long time discussing how to help him, with the result that the Town Meeting of 1657 decided to:

“…pcure [procure] a house to be built for Alexander Knight of 16 foote long & twelve foote wyde & 7 or 8 foote stud upon his ground & to pryd [provide] thatching & other things nesasary for it, and in case he cannot pcure carpenters otherwise to warne [? Or “pcure” -- MS faded] carpenters to worke a day apiece and other workmen upon a penalty of five shillings a day if they refuse.”

I wish I knew which selectman came up with the idea of building poor Alexander a house because he couldn’t build one for himself: He deserves a footnote in history, if not more. But the case does give us a clear record of our town taking care of itself, by taking care of one of its weakest. I like living in a town with that decision among its roots.

I also like living in a town that has grabbed the opportunity to use that record to fill a gap in its living history. We have 59 First Period houses in Ipswich (built between 1633 and 1725,) but not one of them is an example of the sort of single-room dwelling in which most of our earliest citizens lived. Some of the houses, of course, probably started as one, but they were added onto and built around so that today any remnants of an original single-room home are almost indecipherable. The First Period houses that survive are, not surprisingly, the best of their day: History is, after all, the story of the winners. But it should be more than that.

Susan S. Nelson, a local architectural historian, believes that there is no other record from the period that gives such a detailed description of the humble homes that have vanished from our streetscape, and, sadly, from our memories. But soon, we’ll put that right. She is working with a group of volunteers with professional skills (timber framer, stonemason, architect, historian, arborist) to re-create the Alexander Knight House, on Route 1A, just south of town, and right beside the grand house built by the prosperous merchant, Captain John Whipple, in 1677. The history of a winner and a loser, side by side. Isn’t that a better sort of history?