The complicated geography of the Lower Merrimack

Curious Traveler

C.J. Fitzwater

In writing, sometimes we hope a story we envision finds its way onto the page exactly as we pictured it.

I started working on a piece about George Washington’s visit to Newburyport, Amesbury and Salisbury, and it got me thinking: We really need a clever way to describe where we’re from, rather than leaning on the somewhat imposed label on the other “Burys” of “Greater Newburyport.”

There is the North Shore, of course, but our area seems to get lost once you pass Cape Ann. I assume the North Shore starts somewhere around Revere, and if you ask my wife, Nina, it ends in Danvers.

Geographically, we’re about as North Shore as it gets, we should, in all fairness, be the proudest to claim it. After all, who could argue with that? But tell a Lynn girl you’re from the North Shore and she’ll call BS the second she hears your lack of an accent. You can try to argue, but let me tell you, a North Shore Lynn girl is not someone you want to throw fists with.

Cape Ann, even though we border it by land, somehow feels quicker to reach by sea. Then there’s the Merrimack Valley, which I proudly consider Salisbury a part of, though I get the sense Newburyporters might stick their noses up a bit at being lumped in with the mill cities upriver.

And truth be told, places like Lowell and Lawrence tend to take most of the air out of the room whenever the Merrimack Valley comes up anyway. They take ownership of being the “Merrimack Valley.”

We’ve gotten a bit lost in the Valley, just like much of the Valley itself. When people start saying Newburyport, Salisbury or even Manchester, Concord and Nashua are part of it, the diehard, 45-playing, chicken-barb-eating graduates of Central Catholic are appalled.

Technically speaking, though, the Merrimack Valley includes any town along the 117-mile river that begins where the Pemigewasset (the Pemi) and Winnipesaukee rivers meet in Franklin, New Hampshire.

The Pemi starts at Profile Lake in Franconia Notch, while the Winnipesaukee River flows from the lake that shares its name. Both trace back to the White Mountains, part of the Appalachian.

I guess I puff my chest out a little more knowing the folks from Maine who call us “flatlanders” might be surprised to learn that Appalachian water runs through our river. So now we have it, no one is more Merrimack Valley than Salisbury and the Newburys because after all we are where the mighty river meets the Atlantic Ocean.

Maybe “Lower Merrimack Valley” works, but it’s a mouthful, and not exactly something you can toss around as easy geographic slang.

When someone shouts, “Where you from?” it always sounds better to say the North Shore, South Shore, the Cape, Cape Ann (the other Cape), MetroWest, western Mass., Worcester (central Mass.), even the Merrimack Valley rolls off the tongue. But “Lower Merrimack Valley”? You can practically see people sketching an invisible map in the air trying to figure it out.

Not to mention, I sound like a dork saying it. Or is it even slang at that point?

If I were from Salem, I’d be a “North Shore boy.” If I’m from Methuen, I’d be from “Minga Valley.” Being from Salisbury technically makes me a “Salisburite,” according to my good friend Michael Colburn, who claims with all his elected official authority “ only someone who knows nothing about our history would say Salisburian”.

Which is what the more well-known Salisbury brethren in Maryland, and North Carolina or our sisters across the pond near Stonehenge, would use. To me “Salisburian” is much more regal, and an easier up-town version than (with peace, and love) this downtown honktonk village can handle.

It would almost feel taboo to write about the word “yeat,” especially as a “Salisburite.” I’m not sure it’s cause for a fight, but my friend Byron Lane told me “it was used during wartime as a way to identify your own,” or as a “verbal hug, and a term of endearment, but when it’s not, it’s a term of disagreement”.

He gave me something of a master class on it (the text chain alone is as long as this story), so it’s complexity goes far beyond what I can fit here. Still, it’s a word that can be used much like any other four-letter word.

Mostly an interjection, though it can also serve as a noun, conjunction or preposition and less often a verb or pronoun, but never an adjective or adverb, but versatile all the same. It has also been used as a derogatory term, so it might be safer to stick with “Newburyporter” when referring to someone from Newburyport.

Seeing how I’ve now committed so many words to this happy accident, let me add a bit of historical geography. In 1740, King George II issued a decree separating New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

It was a compromise of sorts, granting New Hampshire its independence from the dreaded “Massholes,” something they still seem to be fighting for, while giving Massachusetts the threemile arc north of the river to the newly established border, starting at Pawtucket Falls in Lowell and running east to the Atlantic Ocean, creating that strange, curving border line, and from that point west, a straight line to New York.

Typically, a river like the Ohio, which separates six states along its 981-mile course, or even the Piscataqua dividing Kittery from Portsmouth, makes for a clean, natural boundary. But the king, in all his wisdom (or lack of it), managed to complicate things a bit.

Otherwise, we’d probably be lumped into that broad stretch of New Hampshire known as the “Seacoast,” which seems to run from the east side of Manchester all the way to Hampton Beach. It’s ironic, considering New Hampshire has the smallest seacoast of any state. And as any “Salisburite” can tell you, if we had a nickel for every time we say where we’re from and hear, “Isn’t that New Hampshire?” we’d have enough dough for a Captain Hook platter at Lena’s.

Stephen King was once asked what his method of writing was. His answer: “one word at a time.” One word at a time, however, isn’t going to get me to what I originally set out to write about (George Washington’s visit).

It clearly isn’t going to fit into this essay, so that will have to wait for the next chapter. You never quite know where writing will take you, and I’m obliged you came along for the journey.

In the end, when we travel and someone asks where we’re from, “Greater Newburyport” will not cut it, so to save time and brainpower, we usually just say Boston, but if I were from Newburyport, I’d definitely yell “Yeat!” every time.

Thanks for reading and supporting local journalism. “Curious Traveler” is a series of stories written by “Salisburite” C.J. Fitzwater. If you’re interested in meeting, sharing a meal, and telling your story, send him an email at cfitzwater@ymail. com.

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