On Monday, yet another sparkling summer day, I drove over to Framingham to look at an old house which has a direct connection to Salem, having been built by refugees from the Witch Trials of 1692. The Peter and Sarah Clayes House, appropriately situated on Salem End Road, has been in a state of decline for quite some time, and there is an ongoing and apparently intensifying effort to save it and attain placement on the National Register of Historic Places. Both of my parents grew up in Framingham, my father very close to the Clayes house, but I don’t remember ever visiting it or even hearing about it when I went to visit my grandparents: it was only later–after I moved to Salem and became curious about all things Salem–that I first became aware of it. And when I first saw it a few decades ago it looked a lot better than it does now.
Even in its present dilapidated state, the house doesn’t look very First Period: it has been extensively remodeled in several phases over its 300 year history (oddly there is no HABS report at the Library of Congress, but there is an inventory at MACRIS). As originally built by the Clayes after they fled Salem, it was a much smaller saltbox–and the center of a community of Salem exiles that came to include some 15 families in what was first known as “Salem Plain” and later as “Salem End”. For reasons that are a bit murky, Sarah Towne Bridges Clayes (or Cloyce, as she was known in Salem) managed to escape the fates of her sisters Rebecca Nurse and Mary Easty, who were among the 19 “witches” hanged on Gallows Hill in 1692. She too was arrested and imprisoned (in Ipswich, rather than Salem) but ultimately liberated through the combined efforts of her husband Peter and Deputy Governor Thomas Danforth, who had served as a magistrate in the early phase of the trials but apparently had serious regrets afterwards. Danforth had acquired large grants of land in the region west of Boston over the years, comprising what came to be known first as “Danforth’s Farm” and later as Framingham, and presumably he offered the Clayes and their fellow refugees sanctuary from Salem. So even before the official pardons, public apologies, and the legislative restitution that were decreed in the aftermath of 1692, the Clayes House stands as physical symbol of all of the above–and hopefully will for quite some time.
The Sarah and Peter Clayes House Preservation Project
August 20th, 2014 at 8:01 am
I think this would be great for Framingham…maybe they can partner with the university to provide internships/jobs for history students.
August 20th, 2014 at 8:06 am
Absolutely–but first they’ve got to save the house!
August 20th, 2014 at 8:14 am
BUY IT!! I have read a lot about the trials but for some reason i have not had much info on the apologies and recriminations, interesting.. c
August 20th, 2014 at 8:16 am
No way–too much work and I think it needs to be a public property. Apparently there is some legal issue with the title which is slowing everything down—you’re right, Cecilia–there is not enough focus on the aftermath.
August 20th, 2014 at 8:37 am
from the side view: the center chimney of the original saltbox is still there as is the overhang in the attic, a ‘jetty’, which would be early construction as well. So it seems to have been ‘updated’ around the original frame. I know a number of other houses that were also re-imagined in the 1790’s.
It looks tight, so the frame would be intact, though perhaps some rotted sills as it seems to sit very close of the ground.
I hope it can be saved
August 20th, 2014 at 10:47 am
That’s what the inventory basically says, Jane. To my amateur eyes, the main house did indeed look tight, but all the additions and dependencies did not.
August 20th, 2014 at 8:47 am
Something I didn’t know . . . well, actually most of what you write and show I don’t know, but I’m surprised I’d never even heard of this, given the notoriety of the witch trials.
August 20th, 2014 at 10:49 am
You know, Brian–it’s not my field–so I am continually finding out new details about the Witch Trials. I think that everyone tells the same story over and over and over again.
August 20th, 2014 at 1:27 pm
And as one of your other readers points out, the aftermath gets little attention, beyond Hathorne, Ann Putnam’s apology, and the efforts of the witch descendants to get their ancestors exonerated.
It’s an interesting problem I’ve often considered: when does it pay to investigate a well-known story, looking for a new angle? Clearly, it helps if one has a new angle in mind, else one is engaging in a fishing expedition.
August 20th, 2014 at 9:13 am
The chimney looks a little crooked to me. That’d be hardest to fix, I think.