Editing Wenham, Massachusetts (section)

==History==
{{More citations needed section|date=September 2022}}
Wenham was settled in 1635 and officially incorporated in 1643.<ref>{{cite book | author=Frank E. Moynahan | title=Danvers, Massachusetts | url=https://archive.org/details/danversmassachus00moyna | year=1899 | publisher=The Danvers Mirror | page=[https://archive.org/details/danversmassachus00moyna/page/5 5] }}</ref>

English settlers came to Wenham in the 1630s, but the area had been home to the [[Agawam people]], an [[Eastern Algonquian languages|Eastern Algonquian]] tribe whose numbers were greatly reduced by a massive epidemic around 1617, possibly [[smallpox]].<ref>{{Cite web|last=Massachusetts Historical Commission|date=1986|title=MHC Reconnaissance Survey Town Report: Wenham|url=https://www.sec.state.ma.us/mhc/mhcpdf/townreports/Essex/wnh.pdf}}</ref>

Three grandchildren of Agawam [[Chief Masconomet]] pressed a claim to the lands of Wenham, Beverly, and Manchester in 1700, and Wenham selectmen paid them three pounds and ten shillings for the quitclaim.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Perley|first=Sidney|url=https://archive.org/details/indianlandtitles00perl|title=The Indian land titles of Essex County, Massachusetts|date=1912|publisher=Salem, Mass. : Essex Book and Print Club|others=The Library of Congress}}</ref> Indian artifacts were found frequently throughout Wenham, and a representative collection is in the possession of the Wenham Museum.

[[File:Wenham Museum.jpg|thumb|left|Wenham Museum and Claflin-Richards House]]
Wenham was originally a part of [[Salem, Massachusetts|Salem]]. Salem's minister [[Hugh Peters]] preached to a group on a hill by the [[Wenham Lake|Great Pond]] around 1638, probably to encourage settlement. The earliest land grants in the Wenham area roughly coincide with Peters' sermon. The hill was leveled in later years to make room for the [[Wenham Lake Ice Company]] at the Great Pond.

In September 1643, the [[General Court of Massachusetts]] granted that Wenham should be a town in its own right and send a representative to the General Court. It was the first town to be set off from Salem. Wenham provided volunteers in [[King Philip's War]] in the 1670s, and the [[French and Indian War]] in the mid 1700s. In 1774, the town voted to select 15 men as [[minutemen]], and from that time on [[Loyalist (American Revolution)|Loyalists]] were not welcome in Wenham.

In 1909, steel magnate [[Henry Clay Frick]] bought the Iron Rail property so that his daughter Helen could create a vacation home for the mill girls throughout [[New England]].<ref>{{cite web | title=Iron Rail Commission | work=Town of Wenham, MA | url=http://www.wenhamma.gov/dpts_bds_comms/iron_rail.htm | access-date=11 September 2012 }}</ref> Helen Frick transferred the Iron Rail Vacation Home to the Girls' Clubs of America in 1954, and the town of Wenham bought the property in the 1970s.

[[File:Wenham Tea House.jpg|thumb|left|Wenham Tea House]]

In 1921, the Historical Committee of the Wenham Village Improvement Society bought the 17th-century Claflin-Richards house at the center of town. They eventually added the museum and "the Barn", which became Burnham Hall. The Wenham Historical Association and Museum became independent from the Village Improvement Society and underwent a major renovation and expansion in 1997.<ref>Cole, Adeline P., ed., Notes on Wenham History 1643-1943, Wenham, MA:  Wenham Historical Association, 1943.</ref><ref>"Wenham in Pictures and Prose", Wenham, Ma:  Wenham Historical Association, 1992.</ref>{{verify source|date=September 2012}}