Photo Friday ~ Essex Ship Building Museum

DEDICATED TO THOSE MEN

OF CHEBACCO AND ESSEX

WHO BY THE SKILL OF MIND AND

HAND AND WITHIN SIGHT 

OF THIS SPOT CREATED NEARLY

4000 WOODEN VESSELS

1650 - 1982

Essex men raising the frame of a new ship

Planking the sides of a wooden schooner

My grandfather was born in Essex, both his parents had lineages going back to the 1630s in Essex, back in the days when it was known as the Chebacco parish of Ipswich, Massachusetts.  In looking at town records, census records, and town directories, these ancestors were employed as ship builders and ship carpenters.  Their occupations are listed as carpenters, ship wrights, ship joiners, carvers, block and pump makers, ropemakers, caulkers, riggers, painters, blacksmiths, and also just as day laborers.   In the 1850 Federal census, the three main means of employment in Essex were farming, shipbuilding and shoemaking.

Ship building is still an occupation in Essex.  Wooden schooners are still being made by Harold Burnham, a distant cousin.  Many of the wooden schooners operating as tourist attractions were built in Essex.

Essex Shipbuilding Museum  http://www.essexshipbuildingmuseum.org/

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Copyright 2013, Heather Wilkinson Rojo