October 20, 2026

Bewitched Miss Bly of Salem

By daseger

I was curious when I came across a Salem woman named Carrie Peabody Bly making headlines in national newspapers in the late summer and early fall of 1900. I love Nellie Bly and thought, wow, maybe Salem had a namesake intrepid journalist explorer! Bly is not a Salem name, but Peabody certainly is: could Carrie have adopted it to emulate her hero? But no, of course not, our Miss Bly was not an immersive reporter but rather an entranced “witch,” and a fly-by-night one at that (I think—she just disappears). Carrie Peabody Bly appears first in a series of articles first published by the Boston Post and picked up by the St. Louis Post Dispatch in August of 1900: her story went viral over the next six weeks or so but remained largely the same. She claimed to be a simple Salem girl who became a store clerk and milliner and then fell ill and woke up entranced and dwelling in the attic of the Witch House with regular visitors, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Roger Williams’ sister Betsy (the Witch House was then believed, incorrectly, to have been the residence of Roger Williams so Betsy was presumably familiar with it), and the “Salem witches.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne was Miss Bly’s chief spirit and “friend,” always referenced extensively in stories of her bewitchment. He appeared early on, while she was in the Witch House attic alone and about to enter one of her trance-like states. In her well-reported words, “all at once I saw a kind, benevolent looking gentleman standing in the doorway. He was a stranger to me, but the moment he spoke I knew it was Hawthorne.” The author/spirit told her to be patient in his “soft and clear” voice, as “you are to do great things. You may not wish to do them all, but remember your duty and you will be rewarded. Do them as Hester Prynne did her duty, as she patiently wore the scarlet letter on her breast.” From that moment on, he was with Carrie every day. A spiritualist Hester Prynne! With the big Hawthorne centenary only a few years away, this connection must have struck a chord with the public, and she gained more attention—too much attention, by her own admission. She preferred to dwell with the spirits.

I searched in vain for a quote from a member of the Hawthorne family about the conjuring of Nathaniel. I can’t imagine they were very happy about it, but Miss Bly might never have caught their attention. She wasn’t around for long: by November of 1900 there are no more headlines. In the following year, I could only find one reference to her, an announcement of her move to Marblehead, and then she disappears, into thin air. Though her fame was fleeting and never approached the notoriety of the “Salem Seer,” Charles H. Foster, before her or the “Witch of Lime Street,” Mina “Margery” Crandon, after her, her story is certainly a Salem one.

5 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Culture, Salem

October 13, 2026

Matthew Stickney had a very good eye

By daseger

There were many important and influential Salem collectors, and among them Matthew Stickney (1805-1894) really stands out. He remains a revered figure among coin collectors, both for his pioneering activity and the breadth and depth of his collection. He had inherited a large amount of his Continental currency from his Patriot grandfather, which he was determined to supplement with all the most important American (and some foreign) issues, and he worked with the US Mint itself and early brokers to achieve this aim. The most sought-after US coins, including the 1804 dollar (which apparently does not date from 1804 but is still referred to as the “king of American coins”), and the storied 1787 Brasher Doubloon, which seems to have had a Maltese Falcon-like hold on mystery writers and filmmakers in the mid-20th century, were all part of the Stickney Collection.

Coins were his primary passion but Stickney did not confine himself to currency. He collected Americana before there really was such a category. Anything printed—-almanacs, autographs, newspapers, diaries, election sermons, pamphlets and printed images. He collected Nathaniel Hawthorne, whom he must have also known. He was a genealogist and a historian. Stickney was an Essex County native, and spent most of his life at 119 Essex Street in Salem, a building that has not survived. Following his death in 1894, his three unmarried daughters retained his collection for quite some time before consigning much of it to two very noteworthy auctions held in 1907: a coin sale in Philadelphia in the June, and all of the American collections in Boston in November. Both made considerable headlines and set price records. Christian Remick’s perspective of an occupied Boston Harbor seems to have been (re)discovered at this time, and the papers also took note of the pamphlet recording an important debate at Harvard University, A Forensic Dispute on the Legality of Enslaving Africans, held at the Public Commencement in Cambridge, New-England, July 21st, 1773.

Matthew Stickney and his collections are interesting subjects quite apart from their context, but if we widen the lens a bit we can appreciate the “collecting culture” that was present in Salem in the nineteenth century, and later, centered around one of the two founding institutions of the present Peabody Essex Museum: the Essex Institute. We hear more about the role of the other founding society, the Peabody Museum, which was established in 1799 as the museum for the East India Society and operated as a  “cabinet of natural and artificial curiosities” collected by the Salem sea captains on their voyages around the world. The Essex Institute’s origins were in the realms of local and natural history, and like the Peabody, its members were engaged in forming its collections, but also in a vibrant intellectual community focused on scholarship and the presentation of research on these same collections. Matthew Stickney did not go to university: he was born in Rowley, Massachusetts and educated in the public schools there. In his twenties, he headed south to Peabody and Salem and worked as a retailer of West India goods. Presumably he earned enough income to support his continuous collecting and then some: he retired in the 1850s and spent the next 40 years focusing on collecting and working at the Essex Institute. Mr. Stickney had a very good eye, but he was in good company too! He was a founding trustee, frequent contributor to its Proceedings, and according to his obituary, an “honored member” of the Institute who served as Librarian and Curator. I’ve seen the central role of the Essex Institute in fostering civic and scholarly engagement among Salem men and women in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries time and time again. After the merger of the Institute and the Peabody Museum and the creation of the present Peabody Essex Museum in the early 1990s, I believe that the former’s historic role could have continued with the retention of its Phillips Library in Salem rather than its removal to a former factory in Stickney’s hometown of Rowley, but that just did not happen. The former buildings of the Essex Institute remain vacant, in the midst of busy Salem.

P.S. One blog post can’t do justice to the life and work of this man! For further research, the Stickney Family papers are located at the Phillips Library in Rowley, MA, of course.

5 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Culture, Salem

October 7, 2026

Nova Scotia/Acadia/ Mi’kma’ki

By daseger

I am just back from a delightful four days in Nova Scotia, and have several impressionistic takeaways. First, flags are definitely unfurled in Canada: I’m sure you can understand why. Second, a question: why is Canada so much better at presenting and representing its multicultural history than the United States? Third, wow so many Gothic Revivals (properly called Carpenter Gothic, I think)! I want to follow up on the second point (question) while sharing my photos, which present more of a not-very-representative overview. Why not representative? Because Canada’s (or maybe I am casting too broadly and should just say Nova Scotia’s) multiculturalism is layered and interwoven and consequently both subtle and substantive at the same time. Many wayfinding and exhibit signage are in three languages: English, French, Mi’kmaw, the language of the indigenous Mi’kmaq Nation. Three perspectives in many exhibits. By contrast, American attempts at presenting multiculturalism seem like veneers, more simple, less integrative, and I fear much less impactive.

I wanted to explore the impact and remembrance of the catastrophic Halifax explosion of 1917 and search for some Loyalist history on my visit: I accomplished the first goal but not the second. It was difficult to locate much 18th century history in Halifax (except for the exhibition I’m going to close with), and I didn’t make it to Shelburne, where the Black Loyalist Heritage Centre is located. If I had, I would have been exposed to yet another perspective! Next trip. The Halifax Explosion of December 6, 1917, was a result of the collision of the French munitions ship Mont-Blanc with the Belgian relief ship Imo in the busy harbor, creating a massive conflagration which killed 2000 people and left thousands more injured and homeless. It leveled the harborside neighborhood of Richmond, which was rebuilt as the stamped-cement, garden-city Hydrostone Neighborhood, where we stayed with friends. This district is also home to the Halifax Memorial Bell Tower and its surrounding commemorative park, layered with subtle yet striking remembrance design elements: edging with the last telegraph message, benches with the toxic contents of the Mont-Blanc. Then it was down into the Hydrostone district, also an expression of remembrance.

Downtown Halifax mixes old and new, with the expansive harbourwalk embracing both. Here were markers noting key events and people not only in the city’s indigenous, French, and English history, but also pretty much any group that ever arrived and/or settled for a spell. Given the size of the harbor and Halifax’s consequential role in maritime and naval history from the eighteenth century onwards, this recognition presented quite a melange, from Norwegians to Lebanese. I walked up the hill to the famous Citadel, so I could get an overview, but knew I wanted to return to this storied fortress when I had more time, which I did on our last day. Beautiful churches: Protestant and Catholic. We were also fortunate to get a tour of the studios of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, situated behind the individual facades of interconnected 19th century buildings, as our host is a professor and administrator there (as well as a very successful jeweler).

 

We drove north towards the Bay of Fundy on Saturday and stayed at our hosts’ charming cabin on Falls Lake, and then drove to the Grand-Pré National Historic Site the following morning. This is a poignant site for the remembrance of Nova Scotia’s Acadian community and the Great Upheaval of 1755-56, during which 80% of the approximately 14,000 French Catholic Acadians in the region were deported to British Protestant colonies down south, including nearly 1000 to Massachusetts. This is beautiful, fertile country, sustained: you can see why all who settled here cherished it so. We then circled back to Halifax by way of the very important shipbuilding port Lunenburg, which has incredible architecture—-including its own distinct dormer style! The black and white church below is St. John’s Anglican Church, which was built in the mid-18th century, “gothicized” a century later, and more recently rehabilitated after a fire in 2001. A former public school, the Lunenburg Academy/Library is also being restored. The last photo below is of the Bluenose II, a 1963 reproduction of the famous 1921 ship that is prominently featured on the Canadian dime.

Back in Halifax, I returned to the Citadel on our last morning because I wanted to see the interior and contents of this hilltop fortress. I didn’t really have high expectations, but I was blown away by its newest permanent exhibition, Fortress Halifax: A City Shaped by Conflict, which spans over more than 6000 square feet across seven rooms with dramatic visual content and cutting-edge audio-visual interpretive tools. I didn’t have high expectations because I thought I would find a more military-focused interpretation within a fort, but Halifax’s strategic location and huge harbor did make it a fortress so the title and the focus are appropriate. At the same time though, the exhibition was about much more than military history: it encompassed social, economic, environmental, cultural, and event-based history all at the same time with the very layered presentation I was referencing at the beginning of this post. Its time span extended from pre-colonial Mi’kmaq history through to the modern era, and encompassed indigenous, British, European, American, North American and even global perspectives. I’m really glad that it’s a permanent exhibition, as I will definitely be returning.

5 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Culture, Travel

September 29, 2026

Captain Lightfoot

By daseger

I was reading about the general lawlessness in England during the seventeenth century in general, and highwaymen in particular, when I asked myself: “I wonder if there were any highwaymen in colonial New England?” And then I immediately thought of New England’s most notorious highwayman, who of course has Salem ties: Captain Lightfoot! Born Michael Martin in Kilkenny County, Ireland, this colorful character served his brigand apprenticeship with John Doherty, aka Captain Thunderbolt, on the roads around Dublin before the situation became too hot and both emigrated to America. Martin arrived in Salem in June of 1819, spent a lengthy (for him—about a year) amount of time trying to earn an honest living working for Elias Hasket Derby, before returning to his life of crime on the roads of New England and bordering Canada. A brazen robbery in Medford, Massachusetts in the summer of 1821 led to a chase, his capture, trial, conviction, and execution under the newly-reinstated death penalty for highway robbery in December. In the months between his sentencing and execution, Martin offered up his “confessions” to Boston newspaperman Francis W. Waldo, and the result was a bestselling book, reprinted a century ago as the very first publication by George Francis Dow’s Wayside Press in Topsfield.

This book is a great read; I can understand why it was a bestseller. (You can read it yourself here, and the woodcut illustrations in this post are all from this edition). Martin is unapologetic and even entertaining in his confessions: they read like a stream of consciousness. About half of the book is dedicated to his life as a highwayman in Ireland and Scotland, then he’s off to America. While he may come off as a bit of an Irish patriot in the old country, in the new he is just dissolute. In Salem he tries to go straight, and obviously has a great deal of respect for Mr. Derby, but he just can’t stop himself from squandering his hard-earned money on frequent “blow outs” and then he is back to square one. After losing his job, he tried brewing in Salem and Portsmouth for a spell, but then was back to a life of lifting and robbing.

Martin “earned” and lost his passage back to Ireland several times over the next year or so, never to return. Salem definitely had a hold on him, because it was the location of a small Irish community with which remained in contact. He returned in August of 1821, determined to lay low following several conspicuous robberies up north, but nevertheless frequenting the taverns. Somehow, in the midst of intermittent blow outs, he caught wind of an upcoming dinner down in Medford at the home of Governor John Brooks, and thought that “there might be some fat ones among [the attendees].” He took off for Medford, was interrupted in his mission briefly when he ran into another of his countrymen from Salem and had to get reacquainted at a tavern, and then held up Major John Bray and his wife, who were returning home from the Governor’s dinner. Martin presented the pistol to Major Bray, demanded his money or his life, but swore that it was not cocked or loaded. Another point he wanted to emphasize was that when Mrs. Bray “began to conceal her watch-chain, I told her not to be uneasy—-that I never robbed ladies.” Neither detail worked towards his favor after his arrest or during his trial, and he was sentenced to death in October and executed in December.

Captain Lightfoot’s confessions seem to be pursuit of a folkloric outlaw status that I’m not sure he obtained in America: there was just too many moral objections to his unbridled lifestyle and there was nothing remotely Robin Hoodish about him. In Ireland, he was more of a rebel with a cause, and that is the theme of the W.R. Burnett novel Captain Lightfoot (1954) and its screen adaptation released in the following year starring Rock Hudson as the title character. In his final days, Michael Martin expressed concerns for his reputation back home, and I think he would be pleased by these twentieth-century depictions.

1 Comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Culture, History, Salem

September 22, 2026

Poetry for the Worst Day of the Salem Witch Trials

By daseger

On this day in 1692, eight people were executed in Salem after being found guilty of witchcraft. In Theodore Spencer’s 1945 poem, “Salem, 1692: Cantata for Mixed Chorus,” they are a chorus:

(And he seems to have forgotten Martha Corey).

For most of the year, I don’t really indulge in much thought about the Salem Witch Trials to be honest with you. My historical inclinations are all about discovery, and the Salem story is pretty well-established. Here in Salem, it is told over and over and over again, with the same tangents on ergot and land disputes “explored” intermittently yet repetitively. The repetition is deadening. But because I live here, I live with the presence of the trials, and so it’s an annual marker for me to think about the victims on this, the worst day. It occurred to me as I was walking around an already-busy downtown last week that the I’m not really living with the presence of the trials anymore, but rather some dimmed-down extraction or variation or actually I think I’m going to go with corrosive corruption: it’s really not about 1692 here, even though that date is emblazoned on everything. It’s just about whatever witches and spooky stuff. Samantha from Bewitched, the ladies of Hocus Pocus, any witch will do, which I supposed I should be happy about since the victims of 1692 were not witches. But why do I feel that they have been forgotten, even erased?

 

See the difference the date makes? My well-worn They were not witches sign on the right, and a sign from the Peabody Essex Museum shop. The PEM has disdained capitalization of the witch trials for decades but now is all in—their current ad campaign is something! The date is key; it makes a sign a souvenir, you can put it on a sweatshirt.

 

As I’ve discovered several times this year, the antidote for not feeling close or deep enough to or about someone or something is poetry, so I have three poets to recommend to those who wish to engage in more earnest remembrance of the Salem victims. Their poems are so poignant that they will stay in your head and give you strength even as you walk by the absolute tackiest witch shop in Salem.

First up is Nicole Cooley, whose Afflicted Girls (LSU Press, 2004) I discovered even before my recent poetry kick. Her Salem poems were inspired by a residential fellowship she spent at the American Antiquarian Association, and that archival perspective is particularly appealing to me. Here’s an opening poem, and she gets more entangled from here!

Cindy Veach, my second poet, lives locally and gets just as riled up about the commercialization of the Salem tragedy as I do though she is far more eloquent: check out her award-winning “Witch Kitsch” and this snippet from a great poem about feeding the parking meter on Essex Street in Salem on a freezing midwinter night:

Trials and hangings on repeat. Veach’s poetry is much more about remembrance than rage. She explores the lives and deaths of all the Salem victims in two recent books, Innocents (Nixes Mate) and Her Kind (CavanKerry Press), giving us poetical characterizations which read to me as reinstatement at this time of year in Salem. If you want to counter celebratory Salem 2026 with probings of the human tragedy of Salem 1692, these are the books for you. Here is her poem about Wilmot Redd, a victim of the worst day:

My last poet, wrote a book of poems about historical Marys! In Mary’s Dust (Entre Rios Books, 2017), Melinda Mueller explores a word-world of historical Marys beginning with the Virgin and including Mary Easty, who died on this day in 1692. The poem proceeds (recedes) backwards from Easty’s journey into the afterlife to the night before her execution. Much of the imagery is not pleasant, but of course nothing that happened to those “eight firebrands from hell” was. Flung with the others into crevices among the rocks. 

 

6 Comments | posted in Culture

September 14, 2026

Elephants in the Rain

By daseger

Yesterday my husband and I finally made it into Boston to see a herd of elephants on Commonwealth Avenue: the very last day of The Great Elephant Migration which brought 100 elephants to the Back Bay. They had been there since August 8, and there had been many fine days between then and now, but we just couldn’t manage to get in to see them. Yesterday was humid and very rainy: we were both soaked in the short time we walked among the elephants, but it was worth it. They really do represent a very moving plea for “coexistence” and as everyone told me, each seemed very different and possessed of individual personalities. Still, they were a herd, and that gave them a lot of power and presence.

As a public art project, the Great Migration is impressive in scale and breadth but also in craftsmanship. A community of over 200 South Indian artists under the direction of the CoExistence Collective formed these elephants from Lantana camara, a toxic invasive weed in their landscape—their creations represent both the beneficial clearance of forests and the beauty of the very same animals (along with others) that will benefit from this clearance at the same time. Very cool. The Lantana camara certainly seemed impervious to the rain! The elephants made their debut in Newport, Rhode Island in 2024 and are now off to California: you can see photographs of their past stops here. If they come near you, don’t wait for a rainy day!

6 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Culture, Current Events

September 7, 2026

Whig Workers: Salem 1834

By daseger

I wish we had more labor history in Salem’s Centuries. We have a great piece by Avi Chomsky on the Pequot Mills Strike of 1933, but I’d like a bit more on the transformation of Salem’s economy a century earlier from a labor perspective. More specifically, I’d like to understand the occupational evolution that accompanied the decline of the city’s maritime trade-based economy from the 1830s on. As an early modernist, my view of labor history is a bit more focused on occupation than organization. Someone should write a history of the Naumkeag Steam Cotton Company, which is always heralded as the engine that facilitated Salem’s transition from trade to industry, but until that time we’ll just have to fumble around in the dark nineteenth century. [Of course, we need many more studies of the Salem Witch Trials so we can shed so much more light on that unfortunate event!] I did have a cool idea to use architectural history, or I should say building histories, as a means to chart occupational change, using the wonderful house plaques of Historic Salem, Inc., but that project looks a little intimidating now. But just as I was looking around for something new/old to feature this Labor Day, I came across this great list of workers in Salem in 1834, a “memorial” assembled by the Whig Party, who represented a staunch resistance to President Andrew Jackson. The specific reference here is the “Bank War” of the 1830s,  provoked by Jackson’s (successful) policy to crush the Second National Bank of America which he claimed served only a narrow aristocracy. The Whigs believed the Bank served a much wider constituency, and Massachusetts Representative Edward Everett (he’s the guy that would give the LONG speech at Gettysburg before Lincoln’s address several decades later) brought this memorial before Congress to make that point.

Salem Gazette 4/22/1834

The Whigs were a short-lived party named for longer-lived British party, in perpetual opposition to the Crown. And so the American Whigs opposed “King” Andrew Jackson. It’s a timely exercise to explore their opposition, but I’m here for the occupational history. As you can see, the Whigs did not differentiate between labor “of the mind and the hands,” (their phrase–I think handiwork requires mind-work), and so we get the full spectrum of work in Salem, 1834. This was a transitional decade for the city: the dynamic Asian trades were dwindling but there were still other markets out there—hence a lot of “traders”. Fewer “mariners” than boot and shoe manufacturers, in addition to many tanners: this is a preview of Salem’s emerging shoe industry. As always, there was considerable overlap between the work involved in building ships and houses. Representative Everett assured his fellow congressmen that he had names and signatures, verified by Salem’s town clerk, but wanted to present a “proportion of the intelligence, capital, industry and business of all kinds of the population of the ancient town of Salem.” Just the year before, President Jackson had been politely received in Salem, but now he was “King Andrew”.

Tennessee Virtual Library

It appears that class consciousness had not quite developed in Salem in 1834, but that very same year marked the first of the strikes of the female mill workers in Lowell, just an hour or so away. Strike documents like the broadside below can give us some insights into women’s work at this time that the Salem memorial does not offer. The Whigs surveyed Salem’s male voters for their occupations; the work of disenfranchised women was of little consequence. But the Lowell “mill girls” were taking names too.

Boston Rare Maps

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Culture

August 31, 2026

Green Mountain Gothic

By daseger

I felt that I needed one more road trip before I start school later this week, so I headed to Vermont by myself to engage in some intensive “house hunting.” For me, a road trip has to have some kind of quest beyond just seeing the scenery and I’ve long wanted to chart Gothic Revival houses in Vermont. I spent my early childhood in Strafford, Vermont, where the Justin Morrill Homestead is located. This pink picturesque house became kind of the standard of “great” houses for me, as we had free rein in the village and I would visit it frequently. Later on we moved to southern Maine, and the nearby city of Portsmouth, New Hampshire with its colonial and Federal houses became my architectural ideal, and that focus eventually brought me to Salem. But my fascination for the more romantic Gothic continued, and I’m always seeking them out. We have a few Gothic Revivals here in Salem, including the very notable Brooks house, and down in New Bedford there are more, but in the back of my mind I’ve always associated that style with Vermont, so off I went to test my memory.

My ideal and my map.

Vermont is relatively small,  but I didn’t have time to survey the entire state, so I focused on its south central region, from Woodstock in the east, over to Poultney in the west, down to Manchester and back across to Putney. I did not confine myself to the highly detailed “Carpenter Gothic” style of the Morrill homestead, but looked for more general silhouettes. There’s a few churches here, but I think nearly every Vermont town has a Gothic-esque church with myriad variations of crenellated parapets instead of (or in addition to) spires. There is a lot of vernacular variation, and a lot of mixing of the two most prominent mid-nineteenth century styles, Gothic and Greek Revival. I based myself in Cavendish, and this was no accident, for I had seen real estate listing for an amazing mansion named Glimmerstone, and I drove straight from Salem to see it on Friday morning. What a bargain! (Be sure to look at the back in the listing)

Glimmerstone Mansion in Cavendish

Actually, I drove through the “Stone Village” of nearby Chester to get to Cavendish: this is a linear neighborhood of 1840s buildings constructed with the Scottish “snecked ashlar” technique and style, in which local rubblestone is used in varying large and small pieces to tie interior and exterior walls together: I think it’s a form of “Celtic Bond” but please feel free to correct me! In the midst of the Stone Village is a perfect little Gothic Revival church, but the rest of its buildings have a more classical style. The snecked ashlar technique clearly extended to Cavendish, and to Glimmerstone, as well as a few neighboring houses.

Chester and Cavendish: how great is this last house and terraced lawn!!!

And then I was off—across and around the state with some beautiful weather! Again, I could have taken many pictures of churches: the little white chapel in the western village of Wells below is very representative. There are also many versions of the “classic” white center gable house, sometimes with a porch, sometimes without, and with varying degrees of trim. Gothic Revival houses in Vermont are mostly made of wood (outside of Cavendish and Chester) but there was the occasional brick. Below is just a sampling, or a foundation on which I hope to build.

Gothic Revival variations in Vermont: Windsor (top three, front and back of the Townsend-McIndoe House), Rutland, Poultney, Wells, Manchester, Newfane.

11 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Architecture, Historic Houses

August 24, 2026

Old Bristol

By daseger

We’re on the Pemaquid peninsula in Maine and I finally feel that I have the terrain down. We’ve been alternating between the adjacent Boothbay peninsula and Pemaquid over the last few summers, and I drive around without navigation but just yesterday I came upon a peninsula off the peninsula which was still unknown territory and I have still not figured out all the islands. Pemaquid, extending south from Newcastle and Damariscotta, used to be just one big town, Bristol or “Old Bristol,” but is now divided between Bristol, South Bristol, and Bremen. Bristol has five villages: Bristol Mills, Pemaquid, New Harbor, Round Pond, and Chamberlain. South Bristol (separated and incorporated in 1915) has three villages: South Bristol, Christmas Cove, and Walpole. We’re staying in the latter, and even though it is located north of much of Bristol, it’s in South Bristol. Bremen, also located in the northern part of the peninsula but on the northeastern side, seems more distinct than the Bristols, and it was separated from Old Bristol in 1828.

The Pemaquid Peninsula is nameless on Frank and Ruth Taylor White’s  1935  pictorial map of Maine, created for Little, Brown’s national atlas (David Rumsey Historical Map Collection); an 1857 map of Old Bristol; our view from Walpole on the eastern shore of the Damariscotta River.

I was at first perplexed by the co-existence of two Colonial meeting houses on the peninsula, built just years apart in the 1770s and located just a few miles apart: the Walpole and Harrington meeting houses. Was there a huge schism? I just love Maine meeting houses–so unadorned and preserved in their spireless states (my favorite one is in Alna, just north of Pemaquid). Walpole is particularly famous, and it deserves to be, because it is beautiful. My confusion over the two proximate meeting houses is just a reflection of my Massachusetts bias regarding relative population density: because the distance was so great, there were actually three meeting houses built on Pemaquid in the 1770s: Walpole in the east, another one in Round Pond on the western side of the peninsula (no longer standing), and Harrington in the center. The Harrington meeting house is not really in the center now, as it was moved in 1840, and substantially altered at the same time. Apparently it’s been restored back to its Georgian form, but I didn’t get to go inside.

Another relic of the eighteenth century on the Pemaquid peninsula is the “Arch Bridge” in Bristol Mills, but I would say that Pemaquid has more of a late 19th century/early 20th century feel. Colonial Pemaquid includes the remains of the 17th-century Fort William Henry and an 18th-century fort house, but also a reproduction tower built in 1908. There are quite a few un-expanded and unadorned simple summer shingle cottages in every village, testifying to its continuing role as a summer place, but also wonderful capes and the full range of 19th-century vernacular styles evident of year-round  occupation, past and present. With the smaller scale of its working ports (unlike Boothbay across the way) Pemaquid seems to have found the perfect mix of tourism and residential occupation, although maybe locals would beg to differ one way or the other! I’m in my refugee-from-Salem season (which starts earlier and earlier every year, and grows longer and longer as well), so nearly everywhere looks perfect.

The Arch Bridge in Bristol Mills, Colonial Pemaquid, a house and its view from Pemaquid Harbor Road, a South Bristol cottage compound, a BEAUTIFUL house (+ barn) in New Harbor, Back Cove in New Harbor and Round Pond.

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in New England, Travel

August 17, 2026

The Phillipses’ Library

By daseger

This is my third year working at the Phillips House of Historic New England once a week or so over the summer, and it’s been such a wonderful experience for several reasons. My colleagues are great: we’re all part-time old house people who are solely interested in showcasing the house and the family who lived there to the best of our abilities. We compare and work on our tours constantly. It has been a continuous learning experience: the house is filled to the brim with the varied possessions of this wealthy Salem family, all acquired over generations, so just capturing the contents of one corner of one room takes time. And it has been equally delightful meeting every single visitor to the house: most interested in a more comprehensive history of Salem, away from the witching crowd, but even those who wander in with little felt witch hats on seem delighted to see more or something else entirely.

When I’m working at the house, there’s always a time when there are no visitors, and that’s when I wander around and look at things with more focus and purpose. The first year, I was focused primarily on the general architecture and the McIntire woodwork in the front rooms. The second year, I studied the mirrors and artwork. And this year has been all about the books. Even though the house was constructed on Chestnut Street in 1820-21 we interpret the house about a century later, when the Phillips family moved in after an extensive renovation: it’s their house. Stephen Willard Phillips (1873-1955), his wife Anna Pingree Phillips (1870-1938) and their son “Stevie” Phillips (1907-1971) were all avid readers, and looking at their books is a great way to learn more about both them and the time in which they lived. There are about 3000 books in the house, most encased in glass-fronted bookcases. This is about half of their entire library; the remainder is in storage. I’m sure many of their books, like all of their possessions, were inherited, but there are sufficient quantity that were obviously chosen by them to reveal their personal interests. The Phillipses’ books offer an introduction to both the house and the household, as one of the first things visitors see when they enter the house is the massive Gothic Revival bookcase in the room designated as Mr. Phillips’ Library. It faces stiff competition from the McIntire mantel in the same room, but in my experience, always wins! People go right to it, and to the books within.

It’s difficult to photograph glass bookcases, but I think that you can see that there are broad swaths of color among the books, representing the classic series that most libraries of this era possess: the Harvard Classics, the Waverly novels, other “great” works. But if you look closer you see more ephemeral titles, lots of works by regional authors, lots of military history and New England history. Mr. Phillips was born in Hawaii, and assembled a large “Hawaiian Library” that he eventually donated to the other Phillips Library of the Peabody Essex Museum, so that interest is not represented here.

Other bookcases reflect the same mixture of classics and topical, more contemporary texts, and as you move back and upstairs to the more private spaces the latter becomes more dominant. This is a family which lived through two world wars (well, Mrs. Phillips died in 1938) and so was clearly seeking explanations from observers (and participants) such as Winston Churchill. Mrs. Phillips liked to read novels, and you see lots of them on the second floor but very few on the first. She also clearly liked gardening books.

Stevie’s childhood books are encased in both his second-floor bedroom and first-floor playroom, reflecting interests in everything from fairies to pirates. I would really like to read The Battle of the Nations, apparently a “family-friendly” history of World War One, to determine how it manages to be just that, but it is behind glass doors. There is an adjoining boy’s history of the Battle of the Somme! Lots of sea stories in general and tales of pirates in particular.

My favorite bookcase is just outside the master bedroom on the second floor, in a hall which has its own door so it’s really kind of a suite and therefore quite private. There’s a key closet in there too. I like the bookcase because it does not have glass—instead, it just has a simple tapes running across the shelves, and for some reason this always gives me the feeling that the Phillipses just stepped away, leaving their possessions behind. One book in particular caught my attention one day, all about the Vanderbilts, and I thought wow, I guess rich families like to read about other rich families. The rest of the books in this case are an eclectic collection: biographies, novels, contemporary affairs, local history, pamphlets,  and also reference books that look well-read. These books are not as pretty as those in Mr. Phillips’ library, but they are perhaps more reflective of the Phillipses’ lives.

 

 

 

4 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in books, Historic Houses, Salem