[2] Located on the Merrimack River, Haverhill began as a farming community of Puritans, largely from Newbury Plantation.

[3][4] Pentucket was renamed Haverhill (after the Ward family's hometown in England) and evolved into an important industrial center, beginning with sawmills and gristmills run by water power.

By the end of 1913, one tenth of the shoes produced in the United States were made in Haverhill, and because of this the town was known during the time as the "Queen Slipper City".

Settlers such as John Ward, Robert Clements, Tristram Coffin, Hugh Sheratt, William White, and Thomas Davis aided in the purchase of Pentuckett.

First Court appointments given to end small causes were given to Robert Clements, Henry Palmer, and Thomas Hale.

However, he grew disenchanted with the town's stance against his strong ales, and in 1659 left Haverhill to become one of the founders of the settlement at Nantucket.

Haverhill was for many years a frontier town, and was occasionally subjected to Indian raids, which were sometimes accompanied by French colonial troops from New France, in which dozens of civilians were murdered.

During King William's War, Hannah Dustin became famous for killing and then scalping her native captors, who were converts to Catholicism, after being captured in the Raid on Haverhill (1697).

In the late 19th century, it was Woolen Mill Tycoon Ezekiel J. M. Hale that commissioned a statue in her memory in Grand Army Republic Park.

[11] Her captivity narrative and subsequent escape and revenge upon her captors caught the attention of Cotton Mather, who wrote about her, and she also received from the colonial leaders a reward per Indian scalp.

[12] In 1708, during Queen Anne's War, the town, then about thirty homes, was raided by a party of French, Algonquin and Abenaki Indians.

Haverhill residents were early advocates for the abolition of slavery, and the city still retains a number of houses which served as stops on the Underground Railroad.

In 1841, citizens from Haverhill petitioned Congress for dissolution of the Union, on the grounds that Northern resources were being used to maintain slavery.

It was Ezekiel JM Hale, age 21 and graduate of Dartmouth College that came to the rescue when fire destroyed the operation in 1845.

In the early morning hours of February 17, 1882, a massive fire destroyed much of the city's mill section, in a blaze that encompassed over 10 acres (4.0 ha).

Firefighting efforts were hampered by not only the primitive fire fighting equipment of the period, but also high winds and freezing temperatures.

Finances played a part into the annexation; a lot of people who lived in Bradford had businesses in Haverhill and wanted lower taxes.

Finally, another reason why Haverhill wanted to annex Bradford was to return the town to majority English instead of the plurality of Irish, French Canadians and Central Europeans (Hungarians, Slovaks, Germans, and Italians) it had become with the influx of mill workers.

Haverhill became the first American city with a socialist mayor in 1898 when it elected former shoe factory worker and cooperative grocery store clerk John C.

In the early part of the 20th century, the manufacturing base in the city came under pressure as a result of lower priced imports from abroad.

The Great Depression exacerbated the economic slump, and as a result city leaders enthusiastically embraced the concept of urban renewal in the 1950s and 1960s, receiving considerable federal funds used to demolish much of the north side of Merrimack Street, most of the Federal homes along Water Street (dating from the city's first hundred years of development), and throughout downtown.

During Urban Renewal, the iconic high school—the inspiration for Bob Montana's Archie Comics[22]—was declared "unsound" and slated for demolition.

Housing trends, combined with a rezoning by the city led by longtime Mayor James Fiorentini and the use of Federal and State brownfield's money to clean up abandoned factories, resulted in the conversion of several abandoned factories in downtown into loft apartments and condominiums.

The city was also able to obtain federal, state and local money to put in a new boardwalk and boat docks in the downtown area aside the Merrimack River.

The highest point in the city is found on Ayers Hill, a drumlin with two knobs of almost equal elevation of at least 335 feet (102 m), according to the most recent (2011-2012) USGS 7.5-minute topographical map.

Much of the soil within Haverhill is consolidated glacial till; inceptisols with moderate pedological development being the most common, as well as spodidols seen within the coniferous forests local to the area.

The river systems within Haverhill have also been heavily altered by glacial activity, with drainage patterns being inconsistent and variable.

Within close proximity of the Clinton-Newbury fault line, the bedrock topography of Haverhill is part of the Berwick Formation, consisting of metasandstone quartzite and sulfuric mica schists dating from the Silurian period.

Hispanic or Latino made up 14.5% of the population (5.8% Puerto Rican, 4.6% Dominican, 0.9% Mexican, 0.5% Guatemalan, 0.3% Salvadoran, 0.3% Colombian, 0.2% Cuban).

The University of Massachusetts Lowell has a satellite campus in Haverhill in the Harbor Place building, and also offers several courses at Northern Essex Community College.