Andover

Massachusetts, a town of Essex County, first settled in 1643. It was named for Andover, England, a market town in the vicinity of Winchester. It is a thriving town of about 7,000 inhabitants. It is noted for Phillips Academy, a strongly endowed school for boys. The academy has long maintained a reputation for scholarship, and is known usually as "Phillips Andover" to distinguish it from a similar school of the same name at Exeter, New Hampshire. The town is noted also as the seat of Andover Theological Seminary, founded in 1807, an institution under the care of the Congregational church. The question of modifying the theological doctrines taught has given rise, at one time or another, to the famous "Andover Controversies." Successive generations have struggled, each to secure the acceptance of its views by the preceding generation, and then a few decades later taking the defensive against the younger men who were coming on. The town has several factories and a fine public library of over 12,000 volumes. Harriet Beecher Stowe lived here for a number of years, while her husband, Dr. Stowe, was professor of sacred literature in the Seminary.