AMESBURY  , a township of

Essex county, in N.E . Massachusetts, U.S.A., situated on the Merrimac river, about 6 m. above its mouth . Pop . (189o) 9798; (1900) 9473, of whom 2448 were foreign-born; (191o, U . S. census), 9894 . Amesbury is served by two divisions of the Boston & Maine railway, and is connected by electric line with Haverhill and Newburyport, Mass., and with Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, and Salisbury Beach, Mass., two summer resorts . The township covers a land area of about 13 sq. m . The surface is hilly . The Powow river, a small stream, passes through the centre of the township . There is a public library . Among Amesbury's manufactures are hats, cotton goods, carriages, automobile bodies, carriage and auto-mobile lamps, thermometers, brass castings and motor boats . In 1905 the factory products were valued at $3,614,692 .

Ames-bury was settled about 1644 as a separate part of Salisbury, and in 1654, by mutual agreement of the old and new " towns," became practically independent, although not legally a township until 1666 (named Amesbury, from the English town in Wilts, in 1667) . It suffered repeatedly in the course of the colonial Indian wars . Quakers settled here as early as 1701 . Josiah Bartlett (1729–1795), a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was born here, and is commemorated by a statue (1888) by Karl Gerhardt . Shipbuilding was an important industry in the 18th and especially the first quarter of the 19th century, and the U.S. frigate " Alliance " was built at Salisburypoint in 1778 . A nail factory, one of the earliest in the country, was built on the Powow in 1796 . The manufacture of iron began about 1710, of hats in 1769, of carriages in 1800 and of cotton goods in 18 t 2 . Paul Moody, who with F . C . Lowell constructed in 1814 at Waltham the first successful power-loom in . America, was engaged in the manufacture of cotton goods in Amesbury . The township was the home of John G .

Whittier from 1836 to 1892; here were written most of the poems of his middle and later life, many of which describe the surrounding country . In 1876 Merrimac township was created out of the territory of Amesbury; in 1886 the west part of the old township of Salisbury was united to Amesbury . See Joseph Merrill, History of Amesbury (Haverhill, 188o) ; S . T . Pickard, Whittier-land, A Handbook of North Essex (Boston, New York, 1904) .