Category Archives: Culture

October 26, 2026

Mapping a Century of Salem

By daseger

Salem’s 400th anniversary year has been full of events large and small. What I missed was one big “coming together” moment: maybe the parade was that, but it didn’t feel that way to me. Nevertheless, Salem has many social, cultural, and historical organizations and all of them stepped up, for sure: it’s been kind of a decentralized rolling commemoration. Salem State University sponsored several cool events, and the one I worked on was an exhibition of Salem’s last century (1926-2026) entitled Mapping a Century of Salem which was displayed in the Old Town Hall all summer long and has now moved to the Berry Library on our campus. My Salem’s Centuries co-editor, Brad Austin, and I suggested the century focus, but that was about it: the rest of the exhibition prep was pure collaboration with my colleagues in other departments, in the administration, from the library. This collaboration was almost unprecedented in my career. You might think that there are myriad interdisciplinary initiatives in a university setting, but I have never found that to be the case. And I have never worked with administrators on any project apart from accreditation and strategic planning, so the Mapping project was extra special, with deans and directors out in full force.

Packing up at Old Town Hall, and the newly-reinstalled exhibit at the Berry Library, Salem State University.

Exhibit planning developed several themes: the Salem Tercentenary of 1926 (with four parades and myriad happenings, all of which generated so many great pictures we wanted to showcase), the commercial heyday of the 1940s, when Salem was truly a “walkable city,” Salem’s “long big dig” encompassing the construction of a new train tunnel and urban renewal in the 1950s and 1960s, immigration, and the rise of Witch City tourism. All these themes can be well-illustrated by the expanding collections of the Salem State Archives and Special Collections. We were focused on, and centered by, the amazing 1946 Nirenstein real estate map of downtown Salem which illustrates the amazing commercial vibrancy and diversity of the city at mid-century and which we used as background for most of the exhibit’s sections. It gradually became clear that we needed to expand our geographical range, however, as Salem’s later 20th century immigration could not be confined to the downtown and we also wanted to tell the story of our own institution.

There are a several features of the exhibition that deserve a special spotlight in my opinion, most prominently the coverage of the home front during World War II and the focus on immigration in the 1960s and 1970s. Both topics are presented in a very personal way and enhanced by oral histories. We also invite people to tell their stories, and at Old Town Hall we collected hundreds of hand-written notes from the (11,000 by our count) visitors to the exhibition. History students are presently hard at work at turning all of these notes into a big map, which of course will be a perfect archival deposit—along with everything else. A century from now, if the organizers of Salem’s quincentenary celebration wish to discover what their predecessors were up to, they will have no problem.

 

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

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.

6 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

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August 10, 2026

The Salem Seal and Social History

By daseger

Thomas Carlyle: In a symbol there is concealment and yet revelation

I probably promised that I would not write about the Salem city seal in a previous post but here I am again writing about the Salem city seal. I just can’t help myself: the process through which it will likely be discarded has resumed again with the Salem City Council and frankly, the seal and its context, past and present, is really the only Salem topic I’m inspired to write about these days. I’m working on a much longer piece for an academic journal, so I’m using the blog as a trial run, and consequently I would love your questions, comments, and critique!

A short introduction and recap because it’s been a while. If you are new to this blog and to Salem you might presume that our city seal would depict a witch on a broomstick. This image is everywhere, including on our police cars, but in fact our official city seal, marking city documents and correspondence, depicts an East Indian merchant at its center, flanked by a ship and a pepper tree with an olive-branch bearing dove above and an assertive motto (“To the Farthest Point of the Rich East”) below. Of these two Salem emblems, you would think that the witch would be the objectionable image: the victims of 1692 were not practicing witchcraft so why are we representing them with a figure of a witch? We killed them because of that identification; they died asserting their innocence. But no, it’s the figure at the top that has been deemed “harmful” because its central figure represents an Asian stereotype or caricature (both terms are used) and its pacifist dove conceals the violence that accompaned Salem’s incredibly prosperous trade with the East Indies in the first half of the nineteenth century. In this view, the First and Second Sumatran Expeditions of the U.S.. Navy (1832 and 1838), retaliatory campaigns after Malay attacks on American ships which were indeed very violent, block out the entire extent and impact of Salem’s lucrative 40-year pepper trade, the revenues from which literally built this city.

To address concerns about the seal, a Task Force was created by the Mayor and City Council and given the charge to conduct historical research, gather public input, and review design considerations before submitting a final report with recommendations. This committee was supposed to be comprised of 11 members and sit for 18 months; it had 8 members who deliberated for 6 months. As the first charge was deemed quite important, two historians were appointed to the task force, including an academic who is an internationally recognized expert on Islamic society and culture in Sumatra. In my view, historical documentation and analysis was given short shrift repeatedly in favor of nineteenth and twentieth century images (most of which dated after the seal’s creation) curated to demonstrate an increasingly negative western depiction of Asian people over the period. Things became very interesting last summer when a succession of people from Aceh, Sumatra’s westernmost province and the region where the pepper trade was the most active, began lobbing for the seal’s preservation with assertions that they were honored by this representation. Salem’s Acehnese figure showed up on the cover of an Indonesian book entitled The Pepper Coast. A Historical, Archaeological and Economic Study of the Spice Trade in Bandar Susoh and Kuala Batu. 

Nevertheless, critics of the seal maintain(ed) that this was a local issue. Even though they are the ones represented on the seal, the opinions of the Acehnese don’t count! So much for worldly Salem. The Task Force completed its report (which excluded all documentary footnotes originally—thankfully put back in as an appendix) and submitted it to the City Council with a recommendation to change the seal. Months went by and a practically new council was was elected, which took up the matter only last week. I attended the meeting expecting to hear a vigorous debate, but instead there was a successful motion to simply accept the Task Force report and recommendation and change the seal. Despite the historical research charge embedded in the original order, several councillors asserted that the historical context of the seal was irrelevant: my own ward councillor repeated the assertion that history shouldn’t matter several times. And here we are: there has to be another vote but I think Salem’s venerable seal is history.

I find it sad that these councillors can’t see a bigger picture, because the seal has opened up all sorts of windows for me, or I should say, the figure on the seal has inspired questions and the search for answers. Who is this person? Why does the clothing change in depictions? Why does the gender of the figure change in the mid-19th century, as it appears in print and other genres? The evolution of an 1830s Sumatran figure in the original seal (top left), featuring clothing that its creator, City councilor George Peabody, would have seen, to a more generalized Imperial China depiction in Ross Turner’s 1888 “refresh” (bottom left) is particularly fascinating. Turner hadn’t been to East Asia, presumably he based his depiction on images and textiles he saw in the Peabody Museum. People in Salem in 1888 were likely far less familiar with Asian people than their predecessors were a half-century before, and the next generation would be even more removed. But certainly not disinterested. We have a great chapter in Salem’s Centuries by my colleague Michele Louro and the Salem State Library Dean Elizabeth McKeigue on Walter G. Whitman, a professor of Physical Sciences at Salem State who spent a year at the University of Nanking in 1925. During that time he traveled throughout Asia and collected and created a portfolio of images which he presented in a series of popular slide lectures when he returned home. Whitman was just one local collector/connector, illustrating the continuing ties between Salem and the East in the twentieth century.

Walter G. Whitman papers (M.7) at Salem State University Archives and Special Collections.

But even back in the “Golden Era” of Salem’s trade with East Asia a century earlier there is more to know, more to explore. I’ve been captivated by a quote from Captain Stephen Phillips about the presence of Asian “Lascars” for years, and just a cursory glance at the digitized crew lists for Salem ships from 1799-1979 at the Mystic Seaport Museum indicates there were East Asian seamen onboard—and presumably in Salem. (“Lascar” is a British term for seamen from pretty much anywhere in the entire Indian Ocean region).  Of course I’d like to know a lot more about the “servants” Phillips references as well. Who were all these people? What are their stories? Did they remain in Salem or go elsewhere to find their fortunes? Are their descendants still around?

Stephen Phillips miniature, Historic New England; Salem Crew lists at the Mystic Seaport Museum.

For me, history is about people, so the new seal, likely stripped down to as few unobjectionable objects as possible, will cease to be inspirational. The councillors of nearly two centuries ago who approved our present city seal were seeking a human connection; our current councillors are looking for something else. I’m not sure what. I just hope they don’t employ AI as was the case with that damn anime cat chosen as the mascot for our 400th anniversary! I whipped up this slop in 2 seconds and am not impressed.

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August 3, 2026

Salem’s Quadricentennial Parade

By daseger

I have been looking forward to Salem’s 400th anniversary parade all summer so my expectations were high and definitely a bit unrealistic when it finally unfolded on this past Saturday. I’ve been so steeped in Salem’s history in general, and the spectacular Salem Tercentenary in particular, that I expected a lot of elaborate floats about big historical moments, which was definitely the case in 1926. There was a lot of comparison between past and present in that year as well (very well represented by these two ladies featured on the Salem Gas Light Co. float below) and I thought I’d have the opportunity to compare 2026 and 1926. The parade was themed “Salem through the Centuries,” so my expectations were not completely unfounded, but it was also labeled as the return of the traditional Heritage Days parade, which had not been held for over twenty years.

There were a couple of floats and I saw a couple of dates pass by, but mostly it was just a community parade: local politicians, businesses, institutions, organizations, people. Marching bands, fire trucks, and Shriners: just what you expect to see in a summer parade in a small American city. There were also a lot of boats, as the parade ended at the Salem Maritime National Historic Park, which held its annual maritime festival and cardboard boat regatta and so several entries marched in the parade. Here’s a few shots from my spot on Lafayette Street: there were larger crowds downtown but I walked way up towards the beginning of the parade route. A highlight for me came fairly early in the parade: History Alive, Inc., which has been presenting immersive historical productions for Salem residents and tourists since 1992, outfitted an army of historical Salem people in crafted costumes. It was really thrilling to see John Remond, Luis Emilio, and Samuel McIntire stride down Lafayette Street.

The History Alive contingent: these costumes were gorgeous!

So I settled in to watch more people (and the occasional animal) pass by: a delegation from the venerable student exchange program between Salem and Ota, Japan, representatives of the Salem Chamber of Commerce, Salem Main Streets, the Essex National Heritage Area, the League of Women Voters, the Salem Boys and Girls Club, the House of the Seven Gables, the North Shore Asian American and Pacific Islander Coalition, and the Saint Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church. (this is not a complete list). Nathaniel Hawthorne represented the Salem Athenaeum. Marching Masons too!

Several notable businesses really showed up for the parade, including Rockefella’s Restaurant, which is located in the historical Daniel Low’s building which was also the original site of Salem’s First Church, the Hawthorne Hotel, Cinema Salem, and O’Donnell’s Funeral Home, which featured an antique horse-drawn hearse! There was an array of witches, of course, pink, green, and dancing, as well as the ever-present Halloween buskers, and the Salem Witch Museum featured a tree float representing the millions of descendants of Witch Trial victims. Two public departments, The Salem Parks, Recreation and City Services Department and the Salem Beautification Committee, went all out with their truck floats featuring the famous cement slide at Forest River Park and the Ladies of Salem figurehead installations.

And now for the vessels. Both the Peabody Essex Museum and the Salem Maritime National Historic Park featured ship floats and there was also the flotalla of cardboard creations destined for the regatta later in the day. I was so hot after the parade that I skipped that, but it has become a HUGE attraction over the past few years and I can see from various posts that it was bigger than ever this year. The parade was closed very appropriately and very well by the Salem High School Marching Band, but I didn’t get a good picture!

An Appendix: a group shot of all the History Alive parade stars! Kristina Stevick, artistic director of History Alive, is in front. The Company’s wardrobe manager is Carrie Midura. You can be sure that this photograph is going into the archives: I’m going to print it out and put it there!

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