"The people of Marblehead are a peculiar race; and as utterly unlike their neighbors as though they belonged to another age or country. The lines of their character are perhaps a little less marked than formerly, from their wider intercourse in later years with other places, but still they are deep and permanent, strong and full of meaning.

They are a generous, brave, humane, honest, straightforward people; sagacious in their own affairs, but not wise beyond them; confiding and unsuspecting; hospitable by nature, though stinted in means; with a love of home scarcely paralleled, and an indifference to the show and splendor of wealth, which cannot be easily imagined; frugal and laborious; content with ordinary means, neither rejecting learning nor overanxious for its attainment. The very rocks of their shores, the very barrenness of the strand on which their buildings rest, the very scantiness of the mother soil on
which they were born, and in which they expect to lie buried when they are dead,
have to them an indescribable charm. They love it with an intensity of interest which neither time nor distance can control. They seem perpetually to exclaim, 'This is my own, my native land.'"

-- Joseph Story (1779-1845) was an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
from 1811 to 1845, professor of law at Harvard University from 1829 to 1845,
and a native-born Marbleheader.