Beverly, Massachusetts
A Short History of Beverly
From a fishing settlement on Salem’s north shore, to the harbor that launched George Washington’s first warship, to the birthplace of the American cotton mill.
Before the City
The land along Beverly’s shore was home to the Naumkeag people, part of the Massachusett, long before any English settlement. In 1626 a group led by Roger Conant moved to the area as part of the colony at nearby Salem, fishing the harbor and farming the coastal land. For its first decades the community was simply the north side of Salem.
A Town of Its Own
In 1668 the settlement separated from Salem and incorporated as its own town, taking the name Beverly after Beverley, a town in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. Fishing and maritime trade drove the early economy, and the harbor filled with schooners working the Atlantic.
The Birthplace of America’s Navy
In the fall of 1775, with the Revolution underway and no American navy yet in existence, George Washington ordered the schooner Hannah outfitted at a Beverly wharf and sent to sea to raid British supply ships. The Hannah sailed from Beverly Harbor on September 5, 1775, the first armed vessel commissioned in service of the new nation. Beverly has claimed the title Birthplace of America’s Navy ever since, a claim its neighbor Marblehead has long disputed.
Mills and Machines
Beverly helped start the American Industrial Revolution. In 1787 the Beverly Cotton Manufactory opened here, the first cotton mill in the country, watched over by investors that included members of the Cabot family. A century later the city became home to the United Shoe Machinery Corporation, whose enormous riverside plant employed thousands and made Beverly a center of industry well into the twentieth century.
Becoming a City
Beverly grew through the 1800s as railroads connected it to Boston and wealthy families built summer estates along the shore at Beverly Farms and Prides Crossing. In 1894 the town incorporated as a city, adopting a mayor and council form of government. President William Howard Taft made Beverly his summer White House in the early 1900s, governing the nation for a few months each year from the North Shore.
Modern Beverly
The great factories eventually closed, and Beverly remade itself as a residential city and a hub of the North Shore. Today it is home to Endicott College and Montserrat College of Art, a restored downtown theater called the Cabot, a commuter rail line into Boston, and a working harbor that still sends fishing boats out at dawn. The city balances its deep history with the everyday business of schools, streets, and a growing waterfront.
Sources: Historic Beverly; City of Beverly; Massachusetts 250; U.S. Census Bureau.