Andover, Massachusetts
A Short History of Andover
From the Cochichewick lands of the Pennacook, through the 1692 witch hysteria and the founding of Phillips Academy, to the brick mill village of Shawsheen and the modern town that still governs itself by Town Meeting.
Before the Town
Long before English settlers arrived, the land that became Andover was home to the Pennacook and other Algonquian-speaking peoples, who fished the rivers and farmed the floodplains. The brook the town seal still names, Cochichewick, comes from their language. English colonists began settling here in the early 1640s, and the town was incorporated in 1646, named for Andover in England. For its first two centuries it was a large farming town that included what is now North Andover.
1692: The Witch Hysteria
When the witchcraft panic spread out from Salem Village in 1692, it hit Andover harder than almost anywhere else. More Andover residents were accused than in any other single town, dozens of them, after a local man asked Salem’s afflicted girls to name who was tormenting his sick wife. Three Andover residents were executed: Martha Carrier, Samuel Wardwell, and Mary Parker. It is not a comfortable story, but it is a real one, and it is part of why Andover students learn early how fear and rumor can override the rule of law.
Phillips Academy
In 1778, in the middle of the Revolution, Samuel Phillips Jr. founded Phillips Academy in Andover, the oldest incorporated boarding school in the country. Its seal carries the Latin motto Non Sibi, not for self. The academy shaped the town for centuries, drawing scholars, money, and national attention, and its hilltop campus of brick and white clapboard is still the image many people picture when they hear the name Andover.
Mills, Rivers, and a Split
The Shawsheen and Merrimack rivers powered Andover’s 19th-century economy. Mills produced flax, thread, and woolen goods, and the Smith and Dove company made Andover a center of flax manufacturing. In 1855 the older North Parish broke away to become the separate town of North Andover, leaving the South Parish as the Andover we know today.
Shawsheen Village
In the 1920s, William M. Wood, president of the American Woolen Company, built an entire model community in Andover called Shawsheen Village. He laid out brick Georgian buildings, housing for executives and workers, shops, and a clubhouse around his company’s offices, a planned industrial town within a town. Much of it still stands, one of the best-preserved company towns in New England.
Modern Andover
Today Andover is a prosperous Merrimack Valley suburb of about 36,500 people, known for its schools, its conservation land, and a growing, more diverse population. Office parks and technology firms replaced the mills, and the town has become one of the most sought-after addresses north of Boston. Through all of it, Andover still does the most important thing the old way: it governs itself by open Town Meeting, where any resident can stand up and be counted.
Sources: Town of Andover; Andover Center for History and Culture; Phillips Academy; Memorial Hall Library; U.S. Census Bureau.