Gloucester, Massachusetts

Gloucester (/ˈɡlɒstər/ GLOST-ər) is a city in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. It sits on Cape Ann and is a part of Massachusetts's North Shore. The population was 29,729 at the 2020 U.S. Census.[2] An important center of the fishing industry and a popular summer destination, Gloucester consists of an urban core on the north side of the harbor and the outlying neighborhoods of Annisquam, Bay View, Lanesville, Folly Cove, Magnolia, Riverdale, East Gloucester, and West Gloucester.

Country United States
State Massachusetts
County Essex
Settled 1623
Incorporated (town) 1642
Incorporated (city) 1873
Named for Gloucester, England
Government Type Mayor-council city
Adjacent Towns - Essex Co.: Essex | Ipswich | Manchester-by-the-Sea | Rockport

The boundaries of Gloucester originally included the town of Rockport, in an area dubbed "Sandy Bay". The village separated formally from Gloucester on February 27, 1840. In 1873, Gloucester was reincorporated as a city.

History

Native Americans inhabited what would become northeastern Massachusetts for thousands of years prior to the European colonization of the Americas. At the time of contact, the area was inhabited by Agawam people under sachem Masconomet.[3] Evidence of a village exists on Pole's Hill in the current Riverdale neighborhood.[4]

In 1606 Samuel de Champlain explored the harbor, and produced the first known map of Gloucester harbor titling it le Beau port. This map suggests substantial Native American settlement on the shores of the harbor. In 1614 John Smith again explored the area, identifying the indigenous inhabitants as Aggawom.[5] In 1623 men from the Dorchester Company established a permanent fishing outpost in the area.[6]

At the Cape Ann settlement a legal form of government was established, and from that Massachusetts Bay Colony sprung. Roger Conant was the governor under the Cape Ann patent, and as such, has been called the first governor of Massachusetts.[7][8]

Life in this first settlement was harsh and it was short-lived. Around 1626 the place was abandoned, and the people removed themselves to Naumkeag (in what is now called Salem, Massachusetts), where more fertile soil for planting was to be found. The meetinghouse and governor's house were even disassembled and relocated to the new place of settlement.

Second English Settlement

At some point in the following years—though no record exists—the area was slowly resettled by English colonists. The town was formally incorporated in 1642. It is at this time that the name "Gloucester" first appears on tax rolls, although in various spellings. The town took its name from the city of Gloucester in southwest England, perhaps from where many of its new occupants originated but more likely because Gloucester, England, was a Parliamentarian stronghold, successfully defended with the aid of the Earl of Essex against the King in the Siege of Gloucester of 1643.

This new permanent settlement focused on the Town Green area, an inlet in the marshes at a bend in the Annisquam River. This area is now the site of Grant Circle, a large traffic rotary at which Massachusetts Route 128 mingles with a major city street (Washington Street/Rt 127). Here the first permanent settlers built a meeting house and therefore focused the nexus of their settlement on the "Island" for nearly 100 years. Unlike other early coastal towns in New England, development in Gloucester was not focused around the harbor as it is today, rather it was inland that people settled first. This is evidenced by the placement of the Town Green nearly two miles from the harbor-front.

The Town Green is also where the settlers built the first school. By Massachusetts Bay Colony Law, any town with 100 families or more had to provide a public schoolhouse. This requirement was met in 1698, with Thomas Riggs standing as the town's first schoolmaster.

In 1700, the selectmen of Gloucester recognized the claim of Samuel English, grandson of Agawam sachem Masconomet, to the land of the town, and paid him seven pounds (equal to £1,327 today) for the quitclaim.[3]

The White-Ellery House was erected in 1710 upon the Town Green. It was built at the edge of a marsh for Gloucester's first settled minister, the Reverend John White (1677–1760).[9]

Early industry included subsistence farming and logging. Because of the poor soil and rocky hills, Cape Ann was not well suited for farming on a large scale. Small family farms and livestock provided the bulk of the sustenance to the population. Fishing, for which the town is known today, was limited to close-to-shore, with families subsisting on small catches as opposed to the great bounties yielded in later years. The fishermen of Gloucester did not command the Grand Banks until the mid-18th century. Historian Christine Heyrman, examining the town's society between 1690 and 1750, finds that at the beginning community sensibility was weak in a town that was a loose agglomeration of individuals. Commerce and capitalism transformed the society, making it much more closely knit with extended families interlocking in business relationships.[10]

Early Gloucestermen cleared great swaths of the forest of Cape Ann for farm and pasture land, using the timber to build structures as far away as Boston. The rocky moors of Gloucester remained clear for two centuries until the forest reclaimed the land in the 20th century. The inland part of the island became known as the "Commons", the "Common Village", or "Dogtown". Small dwellings lay scattered here amongst the boulders and swamps, along roads that meandered through the hills. These dwellings were at times little more than shanties; only one was even two stories tall. Despite their size, several generations of families were raised in such houses. One feature of the construction of these houses was that under one side of the floor was dug a cellar hole (for the keeping of food), supported by a foundation of laid-stone (without mortar). These cellar holes are still visible today along the trails throughout the inland part of Gloucester; they, and some walls, are all that remain of the village there.

Growth

1893 map of Gloucester

The town grew, and eventually colonists lived on the opposite side of the Annisquam River. In a time of legally mandated church attendance this was a long way to walk—or row—on a Sunday morning. In 1718 the settlers on the opposite shore of the river split off from the First Parish community at the Green and formed "Second Parish". While still part of the town of Gloucester, the people of Second, or "West", Parish now constructed their own meetinghouse and designated their own place of burial, both of which were in the hills near the marshes behind Wingaersheek Beach. The meetinghouse is gone now, but deep in the woods on the Second Parish Road, Old Thompson road, one can still find the stone foundation and memorial altar, as well as scattered stones of the abandoned burial ground.

Other parts of town later followed suit. Third Parish, in northern Gloucester, was founded in 1728. Fourth Parish split off from First Parish in 1742. Finally, in 1754, the people of Sandy Bay (what would later be called Rockport) split off from First Parish to found Fifth Parish. The Sandy Bay church founding was the last religious re-ordering of the colonial period. All of these congregations still exist in some form, with the exception of Fourth Parish, the site of whose meeting house is now a highway.

At one time, there was a thriving granite industry in Gloucester. English writer Harriet Martineau, who visited Gloucester during her travels in the United States in the mid-1830s, commented on the ubiquity of granite there:

It has great wealth of granite and fish. It is composed of granite; and almost its only visitors are fish. **** The houses look as if they were squeezed in among the rocks. The granite rises straight behind a house, encroaches on each side, and overhangs the roof, leaving space only for a sprinkling of grass about the door, for a red shrub or two to wave from a crevice, and a drip of water to flow down among gay weeds. Room for these dwellings is obtained by blasting the rocks. Formerly, people were frightened at fragments falling through the roof after a blasting: but now, it has become too common an occurrence to alarm any body.[11]

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Notable residents

• Sylvester Ahola, jazz trumpeter and cornetist
• Willie Alexander, singer and keyboard player, formerly of the Lost, the Bagatelle, the Grass Menagerie and the Boom Boom Band, before briefly becoming a member of The Velvet Underground, was raised and is based in Gloucester; much of his later work involves collaborations in various media with area's rich arts community
• A. Piatt Andrew, congressman, Assistant Treasury Secretary, and Harvard professor;[36] The Route 128 bridge connecting the island and mainland portions of Gloucester was named after him
• Roger Babson, founder of Babson College and presidential candidate for Prohibition Party in 1940
• Walworth Barbour, diplomat, lived for many years in Gloucester
• Thomas P. Barnett, painter
• Jonathan Bayliss, novelist and playwright
• Cecilia Beaux, painter and society portraitist
• Howard Blackburn, fisherman and adventurer
• Nell Blaine, painter
• Clarence Birdseye, founder of modern frozen food industry
• Kyle Bochniak, MMA Fighter
• Phil Bolger, prolific 20th-century boat designer with 668 designs to his credit, designed Canadian-built tall ship HMS Rose later renamed HMS Surprise for use in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
• Hugo Burnham, drummer and founding member of British post-punk band Gang of Four
• Virginia Lee Burton (1909–1968), children's book author and illustrator (The Little House and Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel), founder of the Folly Cove Designers group
• Roger Conant, first governor of the Cape Ann colony, moved the colony's center from the Gloucester area to Salem
• Carleton S. Coon, physical anthropologist and president of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists
• Roger Cressey, former member of United States National Security Council, terrorism analyst for NBC News, president of Good Harbor Consulting, and adjunct professor at Georgetown University
• Thomas Dalton, abolitionist leader
• Aristides Demetrios, sculptor, grew up in Gloucester as son of Virginia Lee Burton
• James Elliot, author and United States Representative from Vermont[37]
• Henry Ferrini, critically acclaimed independent filmmaker, nephew of Vincent Ferrini
• Vincent Ferrini, poet, first Poet Laureate of Gloucester
• Thomas Gardner, landed in 1624 at Cape Ann to form colony at what is now known as Gloucester
• Gregory Gibson, author of Goneboy: a Walkabout, Demon of the Waters and Hubert's Freaks
• Raymond Greenleaf, actor
• Emil Gruppe, painter
• John Hays Hammond, Jr., inventor known as "The Father of Radio Control", built Hammond Castle as his home and laboratory
• Halfdan M. Hanson, architect, most noted for collaboration with Henry Davis Sleeper on Beauport, Sleeper-McCann House
• Walker Hancock, sculptor
• Sterling Hayden, actor and writer[38][page needed]
• Helen Hayes, actor, spent her summers in Annisquam
• Winslow Homer, landscape painter and printmaker, lived and painted in Gloucester in 1870s
• Israel Horovitz, playwright and father of Adam Horovitz of Beastie Boys
• Alpheus Hyatt, naturalist and paleontologist
• Anna Hyatt Huntington, animalier sculptor and daughter of Alpheus Hyatt
• Elliott Jaques, psychoanalyst, social scientist, known for coining term "mid-life crisis"; moved to Gloucester in 1991 and lived there until death in 2003
• Alfred "Centennial" Johnson, first recorded single-handed crossing of Atlantic Ocean
• Hilton Kramer, art critic and essayist, was born in, and grew up in, Gloucester
• Fitz Henry Lane, Luminist painter, born and lived in Gloucester
• Paul Manship, sculptor
• Stuffy McInnis, Major League Baseball player and manager, Harvard baseball coach
• Tony Millionaire, artist and animator best known for comic strip Maakies and Cartoon Network's Drinky Crow Show[39]
• Shawn Milne, Cyclist
• William Monahan, Academy Award-winning screenwriter
• Sun Myung Moon, leader of the Unification Church, spent a great deal of time in Gloucester, and the Unification Church at one time owned a large amount of waterfront property[40]
• Richard Murphy, schooner captain
• John Murray, founder of Universalist denomination in the United States
• Judith Sargent Murray, feminist, essayist, playwright, and poet
• Laura Nyro, singer and songwriter, lived in Gloucester for a number of years
• Charles Olson, Black Mountain College poet
• Kris Osborn, former CNN commentator and current columnist for various military industry blogs
• Mark Parisi, author of syndicated comic strip Off the Mark, was born in Gloucester[41]
• Cy Perkins, Major League Baseball catcher
• Herb Pomeroy, jazz musician, born in Gloucester
• Jessie Ralph, actress[42]
• Marc Randazza, First Amendment lawyer, legal news commentator, columnist (Fox News and CNN)
• Russ Russo, actor
• Daniel Sargent, merchant, politician
• Epes Sargent, editor, poet and playwright
• Henry Sargent, painter and military man
• Paul Dudley Sargent, Revolutionary War hero, one of founding overseers of Bowdoin College
• Winthrop Sargent, patriot, governor, politician, writer; member of Federalist party
• Ben Smith, Olympic ice hockey coach, son of Benjamin A. Smith II, born in Gloucester[43]
• Benjamin A. Smith II, U.S. senator from Massachusetts (1960–1962), Mayor of Gloucester (1954–1955)[44]
• William Stacy (1734–1802), Revolutionary War officer, pioneer to Ohio Country[45]
• Vermin Supreme, performance artist, anarchist, politician, and activist (perennial presidential candidate)
• Martin Weitzman, economist, lived in Gloucester[46]
• Martin Welch, schooner captain, winner of first International Fishing Schooner Championship Races[47]
• Philip Saltonstall Weld, famed sailor and newspaper publisher
• Anna Maria Wells, poet and writer for children
• Alfred J. Wiggin, painter and society portraitist.

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Mural in Gloucester City Hall’s Kyrouz Auditorium, “The Founding of Gloucester,” painted by Charles Allan Winter, with quote from Franklin Delano Roosevelt. (photo by Bing McGilvray)

References

1. Wikipedia: Gloucester, Massachusetts
2. FamilySearch: Gloucester, Essex County, Massachusetts Genealogy
3. "Enduring Gloucester"
4. "The Settlement of Cape Ann: What is the Real Story?" < link > ... the fishing industry on Cape Ann was founded by Plymouth, not Gloucester. From 1620 to 1626 fishermen from Plymouth established and operated fishing stations on Gloucester Harbor and at Stage Head; at Whale Cove, Straitsmouth, and Gap Head in Rockport; and at Great Neck, Ipswich, in the vicinity of Jeffrey’s Ledge. It was Plymouth’s stages for drying fish—and those of the Native Americans who also fished and dried fish there—for which Stage Head (aka Stage Point) was named. ... The earliest histories and accounts—Smith, Bradford, Winslow, Maverick, Hubbard, Phippen, Thornton—refer to Plymouth’s role in the founding of Cape Ann, but later ones—Adams, and especially Babson and Pringle—perhaps out of civic pride—gloss them over or omit them.