Gloucester is a city in Essex County, Massachusetts, in the United States. It sits on Cape Ann and is a part of Massachusetts’s North Shore. The population was 29,729 at the 2020 U.S. Census. An important center of the fishing industry and a popular summer destination, Gloucester consists of an urban core on the north side of the harbor and the outlying neighborhoods of Annisquam, Bay View, Lanesville, Folly Cove, Magnolia, Riverdale, East Gloucester, and West Gloucester.

The boundaries of Gloucester originally included the town of Rockport, in an area dubbed “Sandy Bay”. The village separated formally from Gloucester on February 27, 1840. In 1873, Gloucester was reincorporated as a city.

Native Americans inhabited what would become northeastern Massachusetts for thousands of years prior to the European colonization of the Americas. At the time of contact, the area was inhabited by Agawam people under sachem Masconomet. Evidence of a village exists on Pole’s Hill in the current Riverdale neighborhood.

In 1606 Samuel de Champlain explored the harbor, and produced the first known map of Gloucester harbor titling it ‘le Beau port’. This map suggests substantial Native American settlement on the shores of the harbor. In 1614 John Smith again explored the area, identifying the indigenous inhabitants as Aggawom. In 1623 men from the Dorchester Company established a permanent fishing outpost in the area.

At the Cape Ann settlement a legal form of government was established, and from that Massachusetts Bay Colony sprung. Roger Conant was the governor under the Cape Ann patent, and as such, has been called the first governor of Massachusetts.

Life in this first settlement was harsh and it was short-lived. Around 1626 the place was abandoned, and the people removed themselves to Naumkeag (in what is now called Salem, Massachusetts), where more fertile soil for planting was to be found. The meetinghouse and governor’s house were even disassembled and relocated to the new place of settlement.

At some point in the following years—though no record exists—the area was slowly resettled by English colonists. The town was formally incorporated in 1642. It is at this time that the name “Gloucester” first appears on tax rolls, although in various spellings. The town took its name from the city of Gloucester in southwest England, perhaps from where many of its new occupants originated but more likely because Gloucester, England, was a Parliamentarian stronghold, successfully defended with the aid of the Earl of Essex against the King in the Siege of Gloucester of 1643.