Hamilton, Massachusetts, United States

🇺🇸 Hamilton is a town in the eastern central portion of Essex County in eastern Massachusetts, United States. Currently the town has no manufacturing industry and no industrially zoned land.

Though Hamilton is a landlocked town in the North Shore region of Massachusetts, its proximity to it provides easy access to the Atlantic seashore with its reservations, beaches and boating. The town includes many historic houses, pastoral landscapes, and old stone walls that accompany winding tree-lined roads. It also has a rich equestrian heritage, which remains strong due to the influence of the many horse farms and of Myopia Hunt Club, which holds frequent equestrian events, including polo most Sunday afternoons. (Myopia also hosts a Thanksgiving Day fox hunt each year that the public may attend.) Thus, people visiting Hamilton may well share the secondary roads with horse and pony riders. Patton Park, one of the parks in downtown Hamilton, was named after General George S. Patton. The park is a centre of activity for the town.

Hamilton is closely tied to neighboring Wenham, sharing a school system, library, recreation department, commuter rail station and newspaper. In 2010, the community of Hamilton-Wenham was listed among the "Best Places to Live" by Boston Magazine.

Hamilton includes South Hamilton, a part of Hamilton that the Postal Service has assigned the zip code 01982. "Hamilton" and "South Hamilton" differ only in zip code and are otherwise the same town.

History In June 1638, John Winthrop the Younger, son of the founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, bought most of present-day Essex County from Masconomet, chief of the Agawam Indians, for the sum of twenty English pounds. A memorial stone on Sagamore Hill in south-eastern Hamilton marks where Masconomet was buried with his gun and tomahawk around 1658.

Hamilton was first settled in 1638 and was originally a section of Ipswich known as "The Hamlet". The first recorded land grant in the Hamlet was Matthew Whipple's farm, dated 1638. Three years later the new stagecoach road from Boston to Newburyport (Bay Road) was laid out through the Whipple land. Other early settlers of the Hamlet, including the Appletons, Winthrops, Lamsons, and Dodges, were attracted by countryside similar to the English farms and estates they had left behind.

The town was incorporated on June 21, 1793, and named for Alexander Hamilton, whose portrait became the town seal in 1903. With the arrival of the Boston and Maine Railroad in 1839, the population centre moved gradually southward toward the depot.

The farm village proved to be an attractive location for Boston groups seeking land for recreation and renewal. A Methodist ministers' association first held a camp meeting at Asbury Grove in 1859. In the 1880s, the Myopia Hunt Club, which had been named in jest for its nearsighted founders, moved from Winchester, Massachusetts, to the Gibney Farm in Hamilton. Beginning as a lawn tennis and baseball club, it turned to polo, the hunt, and golf as members built large summer estates in the area. Myopia donated the site for the General George S. Patton Memorial Park to the town of Hamilton. The park continues to be a recreation centre for the town.

In 1921, the Mandell family built the Community House in memory of the eight men in Hamilton and Wenham who died in military service during World War I, including their son, Sam. They commissioned Guy Lowell, a respected architect of Boston and New York, to design the building, and gave the Community House in trust for the use of the residents of both towns. Although in its early days the Community House offered activities such as bowling and a men's smoking room, it now features a wide range of classes and activities for all ages.

In 2021, Hamilton became the first town in Massachusetts to mandate composting.

Geography According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 14.9 square miles (38.6 km²), of which 14.2 square miles (36.7 km²) is land and 0.73 square miles (1.9 km²), or 4.89%, is water. Hamilton lies 5 miles (8 km) inland from Massachusetts Bay, and both the eastern and western portion of town are bordered by water, with the Ipswich River to the west and Chebacco Lake and several other small ponds to the east. The highest point in town is found on Blueberry Hill in Bradley Palmer State Park, with an elevation of at least 215 feet (66 m), according to the most recent (2011-2012) USGS 7.5-minute topographical map. Several areas of town are protected, including Myopia Hunt Club and parts of Bradley Palmer State Park, Appleton Farm Grass Rides, and the Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary.

Hamilton is bordered by Ipswich to the north, Essex to the east, Manchester-by-the-Sea to the south-east, Wenham to the south, and Topsfield to the west. It is located 12 miles (19 km) south of Newburyport, 8 miles (13 km) north of Salem and 23 miles (37 km) north-east of Boston.

Transport • MBTA Commuter Rail provides service from Boston's North Station with the Hamilton/Wenham station on its Newburyport branch of the Newburyport/Rockport Line. The MBTA Commuter Rail is walking distance from the town hall, homes and the many small shops in town. • There are no freeways within town; Route 128 provides the nearest access in Beverly, MA. Route 1A passes through the centre of town, and Route 22 passes through the eastern corner of town between Wenham and its eastern terminus in Essex. • The nearest airport is Beverly Municipal Airport, and the nearest national and international air service can be found at Boston's Logan International Airport.

Education Hamilton is esteemed for the regional school district it shares with neighboring Wenham, and Hamilton is where the majority of the schools in the Hamilton-Wenham Regional School District are located. The town serves two elementary schools; the Winthrop, and Cutler schools. The town only has one middle school; the Miles River Middle School. High School students attend Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School.

At Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School, students' average SAT scores are above the state average (According to numbers released by the state Dept of Education, Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School ranked 27th in the state based on combined total SAT scores for the 2006/2007 school year), and the school regularly sends top students to Ivy League schools. Boston Magazine's 2010 issue showcasing a list of the best public high schools ranked Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School 12th, placing Hamilton-Wenham's public high school in the top 10 percent of the state overall. Hamilton-Wenham also had one of the highest graduation rates, at 96.8 percent. By 2011, Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School had moved up to number nine in Boston Magazine's "Best Schools" list. More recently, Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School ranked 107th (out of 14,000) on Newsweek's 2014 list of "America's Top High Schools" and Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School was ranked the 13th-best public high school in Massachusetts in the 2016 U.S. News & World Report rankings (the same report ranked Hamilton-Wenham 344th nationally.)

According to a September 29, 2010, article in the Hamilton-Wenham Chronicle: "Of the 885 schools in Massachusetts, the Bessie Buker Elementary School ranked second in science on this year's MCAS. The fifth-grade class at the school had 93 percent of its students score advanced and proficient. In addition, all ninth-grade students passed the biology test, with 92 percent scoring advanced and proficient, ranking 20th state-wide. Cutler School scored 21st state-wide with 90 percent of third-graders scoring advanced and proficient in English language arts".

The Pingree School, a private secondary school, is located on the historic Pingree Family Estate in Hamilton.

Hamilton is also home to Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, an interdenominational evangelical theological seminary.

Historic places • Asbury Grove • Austin Brown House • Brown House (Hamilton, Massachusetts) • Emeline Patch House • Hamilton Historic District • Myopia Hunt Club, site of the U.S. Open in 1898, 1901, 1905, and 1908 • Woodberry-Quarrels House.