Amesbury, Massachusetts

Amesbury was first settled in the sixteen thirties on the Merrimack River and incorporated in sixteen sixty-eight, and by the nineteenth century it had become one of the country's great carriage-making towns, earning the nickname Carriagetown. The Merrimack's current powered mills that supplied flannel and woolens alongside the carriage works. The poet John Greenleaf Whittier lived here for most of his adult life, writing his abolitionist verse and his beloved winter poem Snowbound within walking distance of the river. Today Amesbury has reinvented itself as a small arts and restaurant destination, and Whittier's home is a museum.