Haverhill Heritage Series
How Haverhill Was Really Founded
|
Part one of a series, “A Town Named Haverhill”
Editor’s Note: Families can be complicated. The true story of the founding of Haverhill, Mass., is a testament to this fact with the founding minister’s father and brother-in-law being shown to be real estate schemers and his brother being a burglar expelled from Harvard. Much of the story of Haverhill’s founding has been steeped in fanciful folklore, but David Goudsward reveals the truth is much more colorful. The key date in the founding of Haverhill is 1639, a year before the first 12 settlers arrived at the banks of the Merrimack River near today’s Mill Street. The year 1639 is when John Ward arrived in Ipswich, joining his father, the Rev. Nathaniel Ward.