Lunch Hour

Saw an interesting exhibit at American History today, called "Within These Walls", which featured a house from Ipswich, Mass. Built in 1760, it sounds old to us, but it missed out on the first 130 years of the town's history. The exhibit highlighted five of the thirty families who lived there before the house was saved from demolition in 1963 and donated to the Smithsonian. Quite a cross-section of American history: Abraham Dodge was a militia captain in the American Revolution, another was a leader in the Female Anti-Slavery Society of Ipswich. A swift succession of poor millworkers inhabited the house when Ipswich became a mill town in the late 1800's, and the Ipswich High School custodian, a widow, planted a victory garden and lived on ration cards. Her daughter and son-in-law lived with her; the former did secret work in a factory making fuses while the latter was a sailor in the Pacific, fighting at Okinawa and Iwo Jima. And all of that took place is just over half of Ipswich's 375-year history!