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is a city in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 39,862 at the 2000 census. A resort, residential and manufacturing community, Beverly includes Beverly Farms and Prides Crossing.
Beverly is located on the North Shore, 17 miles northeast of Boston, and is home to Endicott College and Montserrat College of Art.
Originally part of Salem and the Naumkeag Territory, the area was first settled in 1626 by Roger Conant. Because of religious differences with Governor John Endicott, Beverly would be set off and officially incorporated in 1668, when it was named after Beverley in Yorkshire, England. Surviving from the settlement's early history is the Balch House, built (according to recent testing) about 1679.
The first ship commissioned by the United States military (actually the US Army, as the US Navy did not yet exist), was the armed schooner
. It was outfitted at Glover's Wharf, and first sailed from Beverly Harbor on September 5, 1775. For this reason Beverly calls itself the "Birthplace of America's Navy" -- a claim disputed by other towns, including nearby Marblehead. The
can be found on the patch of the city's police department. Beverly is also the site of the first cotton mill in 1788, as well as one of the first Sunday schools in the country in 1810. Beverly would be incorporated as a city in 1894.
In 1902, the United Shoe Machinery Corporation built at Beverly a quarter-mile stretch of factory buildings, which in 1906 went into production. Closed in 1987, the complex was bought by Cummings Properties in 1996, and developed into a campus of hi-tech companies and medical offices. Cherry Hill Industrial Park, straddling the boundary with Danvers, is home to many businesses and offices. Parker Brothers, makers of Monopoly and other games, has offices in Beverly. The city is also home to the Landmark School, known world-wide for the education it provides to learning disabled students.
President William Howard Taft maintained a summer home in Beverly; in the summers of 1909 and 1910, he lived in a house located at what is now the site of the Rose Garden in Lynch Park, the city's principal public park.
Beverly has a former Nike missile site on L. P. Henderson Road, right near the Beverly Municipal Airport. This site was in operation from March 1957 until August 1959, when the Army handed it over to the National Guard. It is now used by Beverly as a storage site and is under the scrutiny of many environmental organizations, as it and the surrounding areas -- such as Casco Chemical -- have polluted the ground water, which could be potentially hazardous to the nearby Wenham Lake water supply.