Haverhill, Massachusetts
A Short History of Haverhill
From the Pentucket of the Pennacook people to the “Queen Slipper City” that once made a tenth of America’s shoes, Haverhill’s story runs through nearly every chapter of New England history.
Pentucket & the Pennacook
Long before any English settler arrived, the land along the bend of the river was Pentucket, the “place of the winding river,” and it belonged to the Pennacook people, led in the early colonial era by the sachem Passaconaway. In 1642 settlers recorded buying that land from two local figures named Passaquo and Saggahew, said to act with Passaconaway’s permission, for three pounds and ten shillings. Hold onto that price. It is the moment a whole world changed hands.
Colonial Settlement (1640-1700s)
English Puritans from nearby Newbury settled here in 1640, and the town was incorporated in 1641, taking the name Haverhill from the English hometown of its first minister, the Rev. John Ward. This was a frontier, and it bled like one, through King Philip’s War in 1675 and the French and Indian Wars. In a raid in 1697, Hannah Duston was taken captive, escaped, and was later honored with a downtown statue that ranks among the first in the United States to depict a woman. From the same era, Haverhill’s Judge Nathaniel Saltonstall is remembered for stepping back from the Salem witch trials rather than sending the accused to die.
Shipbuilding & Early Industry
Through the 1700s and into the 1800s, Haverhill lived off the river: farming, fishing, shipping, and shipbuilding along the Merrimack, powered more and more by water-driven sawmills and gristmills. Woolen mills and tanneries followed, laying the groundwork for the boom that would define the city.
The Queen Slipper City
Starting in the 1830s, with the Boston & Maine Railroad pulling goods to market, Haverhill turned into one of the great shoe-making cities in the country. Its population exploded from about 3,000 in 1820 to 30,000 by 1892, and in 1893 the city’s Board of Trade called Haverhill “the largest shoe and boot town in the world.” By 1913, roughly one in every ten shoes made in America came out of Haverhill, which is how it earned the name the “Queen Slipper City.” Irish, Italian, French-Canadian, and other immigrants poured in to work the factory floors, and their descendants are part of why the city looks the way it does today.
City Status & the Annexation of Bradford
Haverhill became a city in 1870, and in that same year it absorbed the neighboring town of Bradford, on the south bank of the Merrimack. Bradford is still a Haverhill neighborhood, which is why people there will tell you they live in Bradford and in Haverhill both.
The 20th Century to Today
The shoe industry slid into a long decline after World War I. Western Electric brought a wave of new jobs in the 1950s, and then that plant left too. Through urban renewal and a long downtown revival, Haverhill has remade itself again as a diverse Merrimack Valley city, one that keeps its factory-town history in plain sight while building something new on top of it. The city you are reading about is the latest version, not the last.
Sources: City of Haverhill; Massachusetts Historical Commission reconnaissance report; U.S. Census Bureau; published histories of Haverhill and Essex County.