This house is legendary in Ipswich as a stop on the Underground Railroad. A trap door in a rear room opens to a hand-made ladder to the basement and a small brick chamber with a cast-iron door where the fugitive slaves probably hid.
Thomas Manning was the son of legendary Dr. John Manning and the grandson of Dr. Thomas Manning. He went to England for his medical training, as did his father, and returned in 1799 with a sample of the smallpox vaccine, which he cultured and made available to other members of the medical profession. He also constructed the Willowdale dam to power a stone mill that made wool blankets for soldiers in the Civil War.
Thomas Manning’s wife Margaret was the daughter of wealthy John Heard, whose home is today’s Ipswich Museum, and who surely helped to build this Federal-style house. She died in 1829 and when he died on February 3, 1854 at the age of eighty, his will bequeathed the greater part of his estate to establish “a High School in the town of Ipswich, which should be free to the youth of the town of both sexes.” Four years later, Margaret’s brother Augustine Heard deeded the home to the Congregational Church as a parsonage. Today this house is a private residence.
Read the entire story of the Doctor Thomas Manning House at the Historic Ipswich site.
Historic Ipswich 