AMESBURY, a town of Essex county, in north-east Massa chusetts, U.S.A., on the Merrimac river, between the city of Newburyport and the New Hampshire border, 43 m. N. of Boston. It is served by the Boston and Maine railroad, and is connected by electric line with Haverhill and Newburyport and summer resorts on the coast. The town covers a land area of about 13 sq. miles. The surface is hilly. The population in 193o was 11,899. The principal manufactures are automobile bodies and accessories, hats, bent glass, abrasives, castings and shoes; the total factory output in 1927 was valued at $19,772,024.
Amesbury was settled in 1642, as a part of Salisbury, and in 1654 became practically independent, although not legally a town ship until 1666. It was named (1667) after the English town in Wiltshire. Quakers settled here as early as 1701. Josiah Bartlett a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was born here. Shipbuilding was an important industry in the 18th and especially in the first quarter of the igth century. A nail factory, one of the earliest in the country, was built in 1796. The manu facture of iron began about 171 o ; of hats in 176g ; of carriages in 'Soo; and of cotton goods in 1812. Amesbury was the home of John G. Whittier from 1836 to 1892, and many of his poems describe the surrounding country and the life of the community.
See Joseph Merrill, History of Amesbury (Haverhill, 188o) ; S. T. Pickard, Whittier-Land: a Handbook of North Essex (Boston, New York, 1904) .