Today is World Fisheries Day and seeing as Thanksgiving is this week, it made us ask the question, “What did the fishery on the Ipswich River look like on the first Thanksgiving?” What we know from Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, published by The Ipswich Historical Society in 1905, is that there were plenty of fish.
Did you know that in 1637 a thousand fish were put into an acre of corn, which would then yield three times more corn? And apparently between 1637 and 1644 this caused the dogs of Ipswich to get into A LOT of trouble.
Free range and collarless, they took off for the cornfields to investigate the alluring aroma of the farmer’s fertilizer. Cured by salt air and slightly fermented, their fertilizer was a tasty local delicacy for the dogs who likely angered the farmers and their owners alike.
While our early settlers were thankful for their corn, the bounty of fish, and the exuberance of the dogs, the three together presented a problem. Corn was an important staple of their diet and something had to be done about the dogs. So in 1644 the good people of Ipswich voted some of the first dog laws into the books:
“It is ordered that all doggs, for the space of three weeks after the publishinge thereof, shall have one legg tyed up. If such a dogg should break loose and be foimd in any corne field, doing any harme, the owner of the dogg shall pay the damages.”
Read more about Ipswich, our formerly thriving fishery, and dog laws in Ipswich here.