Thomas Franklin Waters (1851-1919)

Perhaps no other single person has done more to document and promote the history of Ipswich than Thomas Franklin Waters – minister, civic leader, outdoorsman, and, above all, founder of the Ipswich Historical Society, scholar, and author of numerous historical publications.

Born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1851, Thomas was the son of Thomas S. and Mary Waters. He attended Salem Public Schools, and graduated from Harvard University in 1872. Three years later, in 1875, he graduated from the Andover Theological Seminary in Andover, Mass., and entered the pulpit service that summer in Edgartown, Mass., on Martha’s Vineyard.

The Move to Ipswich

In 1879, Waters married Adeline Melville Oswell of Edgartown (1856-1945), and the couple moved to Ipswich, Mass., where “Mr. Waters,” as he was always known, had agreed to become the new pastor of the South Congregational Church. In Ipswich, the Waters’ had two children: George and Miriam. Waters was also “very active in all matters pertaining to the civic advancement,” serving for many years on the local school committee, according to his obituary in the Ipswich Chronicle. He was secretary of the Ipswich Hospital Corporation, and was again “very active” in all work pertaining to the establishment of a hospital in Ipswich.

Waters was an avid gardener, and helped to restore the Giles Firmin Garden on County Road in Ipswich in memory of one of one of the town’s earliest residents. He was a “great lover of nature,” particularly Ipswich’s old trees, and enjoyed annual “tramps” in the woods of New England, especially New Hampshire’s White Mountains.

But Mr. Waters’ enduring legacy lies in the historic house he saved from destruction, and his unparalleled research and works on Ipswich’s early history. As the Ipswich Chronicle described him, “he was an author of considerable note, his work dealing principally with Colonial history and he is without doubt the best informed man in this vicinity on the Colonial history of Massachusetts.” A colleague of Waters’ at the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association in Deerfield, Mass. described him as a “persistent searcher after historical truth.”

The Ipswich Historical Society

In 1890, Waters gathered together a group of friends who, like him, wished to collect and preserve documents and artifacts relating to Ipswich history. They acquired objects, erected memorials and plaques throughout the town, and Mr. Waters conducted and published research on old Ipswich.

In 1898, Waters urged his colleagues to join him in saving the decrepit Whipple House -- one of the town’s most important “First Period” houses. In Waters’ mind, the house was “a link that binds us to the remote Past and to a solemn and earnest manner of living, quite in contrast with much of our modern life.” While Ipswich could claim more First Period houses than any other community in America (meaning, those built between 1625 and 1725), “none can compare” to the Whipple House, Waters believed.

Waters and his colleagues incorporated the Ipswich Historical Society that year, 1898. Waters was the Society’s first president; his wife, Adeline, served as secretary. On October 19, the Society dedicated its new home, the Whipple House, celebrating the “wonderful transformation without and within” they had financed. Waters had overseen much of the work himself, “adhering slavishly to the original.” When the Whipple House opened as a museum in 1899, it was one of the earliest historic house museums in the country.

Publishing and Retirement

During his tenure as president of the Historical Society, Waters published numerous essays on a variety of local historical topics, including Ipswich’s founder, John Winthrop Jr. and the history of the Whipple House. The first volume of Waters’ landmark Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony appeared in 1905 -- still considered the “Bible” of Ipswich history. When Waters retired from the South Church in 1909, he devoted even more time to research and writing. His smaller publications investigated colonial homes, the lives of the colonists, early textile history, industrial developments, and individual Ipswich neighborhoods. His published speeches and articles for the Massachusetts Magazine (which he also edited) called for historical truth and historic preservation. The second volume of Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony appeared in 1917.

At some point, the Massachusetts Historical Society recognized the quality and importance of Waters’ work by electing him to its membership. Harvard University had already paid tribute to Waters by conferring upon him an honorary Master of Arts degree when he retired from the South Church.

During World War I, Waters was the local chairman of the “Four Minute Men,” a group of amateur orators who could give speeches on a moment’s notice to drum up support for the war. Waters also served on numerous war drive committees in Ipswich.

Thomas Franklin Waters died suddenly of heart failure in 1919, just as he was about to give a speech on the “New Citizenship” before the Men’s Bible Class at Ascension Memorial Church in Ipswich. He was 68 years old, and there was nothing anyone could do. The Ipswich Chronicle summed up the town’s response: “In his death the town has lost a citizen whose place can never be filled.”

J. M. Arms Sheldon of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association wrote, “New England is the poorer for his going, because New England, and all America as well, needs, more than ever before, consecrated students of our country’s past, who value, above all things else, the absolute and sacred truth.”

In his eulogy, the Rev. Paul Griswold Macy described “Mr. Waters’ long life of service in this place, as Minister, neighbor, friend, fellow citizen, lover of Ipswich, preserver of all that is best in the town’s history…all these years he has gone in and out among you; he has woven himself so quietly into the fabric of your community life that you scarcely realize, until that fabric is torn and rent by his departure, how large a place of influence he held and how greatly he had endeared himself to all.”

Denouement

In 1927, the Ipswich Historical Society moved the Whipple House to its present location on South Main Street/Route 1A. One can only wonder what the impeccable scholar and historian Rev. Waters would have thought about the removal of a historical artifact from its original location.

In 1936, when the Ipswich Historical Society purchased the historic Heard mansion, the Society named it the “Thomas Franklin Waters Memorial” after their founder. Waters’ wife, Adeline, died in 1945.

Chronological Body of Work

In memory of James A. Garfield, president of the United States. A sermon preached in the South church, Ipswich, Mass. September 25, 1881 (1881)

In memoriam: a funeral discourse on the life and character of Hon. Charles Kimball delivered at the South Church, Ipswich, Mass., December 3, 1880 (1881)

An historical address: delivered on the 140th anniversary of the organization of the South Church, Ipswich, Sunday, July 31, 1887 (1887)

An historical sketch of the Essex South Association of Congregational Ministers and the Salem Association: re-united in Dec., 1885, under the name of Essex South and Salem Association (co-written with C. C. Carpenter) (1893)

The President's address and other proceedings at the dedication of their new room, Friday, Feb. 3, 1896 (1896)

The early homes of the Puritans: an address delivered before the local history class of the Essex Institute, March 6, 1897 (1897)

The early homes of the Puritans, and some old Ipswich houses; with the proceedings at the annual meeting, Dec. 6, 1897, and a list of contributors to the cabinet (1898)

Some old Ipswich houses (1898)

Rambles about old Ipswich (1898)

Order of exercises at the dedication of the ancient house now occupied by the society and the proceedings at the annual meeting, Dec. 5, 1898 (1899)

A sketch of the life of John Winthrop, the younger, founder of Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1633 (1899)

The development of our town government and common lands and commonage. With the proceedings at the annual meeting, December 4, 1889 (1900)

A history of the old Argilla road in Ipswich, Massachusetts (1900)

The Hotel Cluny of a New England village (1901)

The meeting house green and a study of houses and lands in that vicinity, with proceedings at the annual meeting, Dec. 2, 1901 (1902)

Ipswich mills and factories (1904)

Fine thread, lace and hosiery in Ipswich (co-written with Jesse Fewkes) (1904)

Visit to Deerfield in 1782, copied from the Diary of Rev. William Bentley (1905)

The simple cobler of Aggawam by Nathaniel Ward; a reprint of the 4th edition, published in 1647, with facsimiles of title page, preface, and head-lines, and exact text, and an essay, Nathaniel Ward and The simple cobler, by Waters (1905)

Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (volume I, 1633-1700) (1905)

The old Bay road from Saltonstall's Brook and Samuel Appleton's farm, and A genealogy of the Ipswich descendants of Samuel Appleton (1907)

The Massachusetts magazine, devoted to Massachusetts history, genealogy, biography. (contributing writer and editor 1908-1918)

The idylls of Franklin County (1908)

Candlewood, an ancient neighborhood in Ipswich: with genealogies of John Brown, William Fellows, Robert Kinsman (1909)

Jeffrey's Neck and the way leading thereto with notes on Little Neck (1912)

Address before the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association (1912)

Historic ideals (Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association proceedings, 1912)

Ipswich village and the old Rowley road (1914)

Ipswich village and the old Rowley road (1914)

The John Whipple house in Ipswich, Mass., and the people who have owned and lived in it (1915)

Augustine Heard and his friends (1916)

Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (volume II, 1700-1917) (1917)

Plum Island, Ipswich, Mass. (1918)

The history of the Essex Agriculture Society of Essex County, Massachusetts, 1818-1918 (1918)

Published posthumously by the Ipswich Historical Society:

Ipswich in the World War (1920)

Ipswich River, its bridges, wharves and industries (1923)

Glimpses of everyday life in old Ipswich (1925)

Two Ipswich patriots (1927)

Puritan homes (co-written with Sherman Leland) (1929)

Sources:
Ipswich Chronicle 24 November 1919 and 31 August 1945.

Address by the Rev. Paul Griswold Macy at the Funeral Service of Rev. Thomas Franklin Waters, A.M. (South Church, 1919).

J.M. Arms Sheldon, Thomas Franklin Waters (Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, 1921)

Ipswich Historical Society files.

Ipswich Historical Society, Order of Exercises at the Dedication of the
Ancient House Now Occupied by the Society (Independent Press, 1899).