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Ten years after settling the town of Newbury in the 1630s, the town voted to move the entire settlement from the Parker River to the banks of the Merrimack River. In 1764, the port was so prosperous that it broke off from the rest of the rural community to become the city of Newburyport. May… Continue reading When Newburyport Was Sliced in Half
In 1950, Republican senator Joseph R. McCarthy gained a large national following as he began using his chairmanship of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to hunt for Communists in government. He baselessly charged that hundreds of Communists had infiltrated the State Department and that homosexuals working in foreign policy could be blackmailed by the… Continue reading “This Is No Time For Men To Keep Silent”
In honor of Martin Luther King Day, I'm sharing a letter to the editor of the Atlanta Journal from my father, David Aubren Harris, in support of President Truman's civil rights initiatives. Although my dad was a lifelong Mississippi resident, he served as a radio engineer on a B17 during WWII, and after returning, became… Continue reading My Father’s Letter
By Gordon Harris Thomas and Martha Lake Harris were among the early Puritan settlers of Rowley, MA, and relocated to neighboring Ipswich in 1652. Within a century, there were dozens of Harrises living in Ipswich. Their grandson Sgt. John Harris transported accused witches to Salem in 1692. The Harrises were carpenters by trade, and Ipswich… Continue reading How I Came to Ipswich
Gordon Harris 