The Covered Wagon That Left Massachusetts: A North Shore Story

On Bay Road in Hamilton, along Alternate Route 1, a stone marker carries the words "The Covered Wagon." It was erected in 1930 by the Massachusetts Bay Colony Tercentenary Commission, part of the statewide observance of the 300th anniversary of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1630-1930.

The inscription is brief, and it reads like the beginning of a much longer story. It records that on December 3, 1787, the first covered wagon to leave Massachusetts for the west set forth from this spot, arriving the following spring in the Northwest Territory and helping to found Marietta, Ohio. That is the kind of marker this region does well: a few lines of granite that ask you to stop and think about what happened here.

The date on the marker, December 3, 1787, is a cold-weather departure. A covered wagon leaving Massachusetts in early December was a serious undertaking: winter roads, uncertain shelter, and a destination in territory that was still being organized.

The wagon train set forth from this spot and arrived the following spring in the Northwest Territory. It was the first covered wagon to leave Massachusetts for the west, and the people who made that journey were doing something no one from their corner of the country had done before.

When I drive past the marker, I think about what that departure must have looked like, and about the settlers who trusted a minister from Ipswich enough to follow him into the unknown.

The journey was organized by Manasseh Cutler, a minister from Ipswich. Cutler helped organize the Ohio Company, the group formed to purchase and settle land in the Northwest Territory, and he led the first settlers westward.

Cutler is one of those North Shore figures whose name deserves more attention than it gets. He was a minister, a scientist, and a founder, and his work helped turn the idea of the Northwest Territory into an actual settlement.

He later retired to Hamilton, and he is buried there, which means the town that watched the first covered wagon leave is also the town that holds his story. That connection between Ipswich, Hamilton, and the founding of Marietta is a thread that runs straight through Essex County.

The settlers arrived the following spring in the Northwest Territory, and they helped found Marietta, Ohio, in 1788. Marietta is remembered as the first organized settlement of the Northwest Territory, the place where the American west, as a settled idea, began.

What began as a covered wagon on a Hamilton road became a town, and that town became the seed of a new part of the country. The distance between the marker on Bay Road and the streets of Marietta is the distance of a single journey, and of a very large idea.

I share this story with buyers and homeowners who appreciate the depth of history in this area, because it is a reminder that the pioneering spirit that pushed west began right here in Essex County. The North Shore is not only a place of harbors and old houses. It is a place people left from, with purpose, to build something new.

When you buy a home in Hamilton or Ipswich, you are not just buying into a town. You are buying into a region that has been making history since long before the first covered wagon rolled west.

That is the kind of story I love to tell, because it makes the ground under a home feel a little more meaningful. If you are curious about the towns where this history lives, I would love to walk them with you.