Category Archives: History

August 19, 2024

Quick About Their Business

By daseger

So I’m going back to the revolutionary summer of 1774, when Salem served as provincial capital and (with Marblehead) port of entry, Boston’s punishment for its Tea Party. Salem had a strong Tory contingent, but I think the Whigs were stronger: they prevented the new royal governor, General Thomas Gage, from even residing in the new capital. He was compelled to find housing in nearby Danvers, from where he issued a succession of proclamations, including one which prohibited “illegal combinations”. Once the Massachusetts Government Act came into effect on August 1, his power was increased dramatically: councillors previously chosen by election were now appointed by him, and town meetings could only occur with his call. Bristling under this royal representative, the most illegal of combinations, the various committees of correspondence across Massachusetts, called for county conventions to be held in September, and (illegal) town meetings to elect representatives to said conventions. This is the background to an incredible meeting that was held in Salem on August 24, right under General Gage’s watch. This notice from the Essex Gazette of August 16 represents the tensions in town: the 59th regiment were camped out at Salem Neck ready to defend Gage and royal prerogatives, and Salem’s Patriots were referring to those men who accepted appointments to the new Royal Council as “Sworn Enemies to the Sacred Rights of the good People of this Province.”

As you see, the view of the Patriots was that Lord North’s new assemblies were “unconstitutional,” and thus they went about forming their own. Shortly after the “Sacred Rights” piece was published, handbills appeared in public places in Salem, published under the auspices of the town’s Committee of Correspondence, asking the “merchants, freemen, and other inhabitants of Salem” to meet at the Town House Chamber on August 24 for the purpose of appointing deputies to the upcoming Ipswich Convention “to consider of and determine on such  as the late Acts of Parliament and our grievances render necessary.” Governor Gage issued a responsive proclamation on August 23. Thereby forbidden to meet, Salem’s Patriots met anyway, and were clearly ready to meet with any “ill consequences.”

On the next day, members of the Committee of Correspondence were summoned to a meeting with Governor Gage at 9:00 in the morning, but the town meeting had already assembled an hour before. Gage (whose office seems to have been literally two doors down from the Town House) ordered them to call it off, but it had already begun, and was essentially concluding while the conversation next door continued (despite Gage’s assertion that he was “not going to enter into a Conversation on the matter; I came to execute the Laws not dispute them”). The town meeting elected Richard Derby Jr., John Pickering, Jonathan Ropes, Timothy Pickering, Jonathan Gardner, and Richard Manning Jr. to represent the town at the Ipswich Convention in September and promptly adjourned. And thus a well-run meeting—and time management–had prevented a potential conflict, as two companies of the 59th Regiment of Foot encamped at Salem Neck were marching towards downtown Salem that very morning.

Gage ordered the 59th to return to camp, but on the following day the Governor had apparently resolved that this resistance required a response and so ordered Peter Frye, a well-known Loyalist and county Judge, to arrest the leaders of the Committee of Correspondence on charges of “unlawfully and seditiously causing the People to assemble without leave from the Governor, etc..” Two men posted bail upon their arrest, but the remaining five refused to recognize the legality of their arrests and threatened Gage with consequences of their own. This was no longer a local matter; given the rationale for the unprecedented town meeting, it really never was, but these particular proceedings brought forth “upwards of three thousand men” who converged on Salem from surrounding Essex County, “with full determination to rescue the Committee if they should be sent to prison, even if they were oblig’d to repel force with force, being sufficiently provided for such a purpose.” Both the Judge and the Governor backed down: “His Excellency has suspended the matter at Salem by dropping the prosecution. Seeing them resolute and the people so determinate, he was willing to give up a point rather than push matters to extremities” wrote Boston Merchant John Andrews to his brother-in-law in Philadelphia. The Governor could abandon rebellious Salem, and he did by the end of the month, but Peter Frye could not: his property and family were fully vested in a town that seemed to resent him fiercely. Despite his public apology and expressed “hope to be restored to that Friendship and Regard with my Fellow-Citizens and Countrymen which I heretofore enjoyed,” Andrews reported that “Colonel Frye, of Salem … has resigned all his posts of honor and profit. Indeed necessity obliged him to, as he and his family were in danger of starving; for the country people would not sell him any provisions, and the inhabitants……. dare not procure him any” in early September. And a month later, when another “illegal” assembly was convening in Salem, Frye’s Essex Street properties were torched, igniting the Great Salem Fire of 1774. Salem was a tinderbox, to be sure.

Peter Frye, one of Salem’s most conspicuous Tories (Portraits in the Essex Institute) and the consequences he suffered.

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June 17, 2024

Revolutionary Summer, Part II: Heating Up

By daseger

Today, part two of my occasional summer series on Salem’s role as provincial capital in the summer of 1774, illustrated by reenactors of the Encampment Weekend at Salem Maritime National Historic Site. Of course, there were no soldiers encamped along Derby Wharf in 1774: this was a busy, busy port, especially since the enforcement of the Boston Port Act. But they were a welcome sight (for those of us in Salem who believe that “history” happened in more years than 1692) in June of 2024, along with various townspeople, deputies to the resident General Court (including John Adams) and busy cooking and crafting women. Congratulation to Salem Maritime on a great event!

So now that we have the setting established, let’s return to the timeline. In Part I, I covered the background to Salem’s new revolutionary role and brought Governer Gage to town. He was followed by representatives from across Massachusetts to the General Court, which had its first Salem meeting on June 7. This session lasted ten days, and it did not go well from the British perspective for several reasons. The Boston Port Act had incited the majority of the representatives, and the dictates of the Massachusetts Government Act (published in the Boston Gazette on June 6) even more so: Governor Gage knew that he would soon be in a position of even more control over the government of Massachusetts, so he was completely reluctant to negotiate on anything: why they were all in Salem, first and foremost. From a local perspective, the Governor’s reactions to two very different addresses he had received upon his arrival in Salem, from the majority the majority Patriots and solid minority Loyalists, represent his point of view quite well. The former, along with their fellow Patriots in Boston and elsewhere in Massachusetts, were quite bolstered by the support from communities up and down the British Atlantic, and focused more on planning for participation in a Continental Congress than doing Gage’s bidding. When a special subcommittee submitted its plans for the Congress to the full assembly on June 17, the doors were locked to prevent any gubernatorial interruptions. Gage dissolved the General Court the same day, but it had already approved sending five delegates to the Congress, as well as a boycott on the purchase and consumption of tea and other imports from Great Britain and the East Indies. And so we move on.

Appendix: a cautionary tale!

 

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May 27, 2024

Heroes Uncovered

By daseger

Salem has three historic downtown cemeteries and the one closest to my house is Broad Street, where I go weekly to wander around and learn something new from the gravestones. Its neighbors have been stewards for as long as I’ve lived in Salem, but over the past few years the cemetery has just looked better and better, acquiring a new permanent entrance sign featuring its notable occupants and seasonal flags for those who were veterans. Yesterday, there were more waving flags than ever, as the Friends of the Broad Street Cemetery held an event showcasing the efforts of their vice-president Kenneth Dike-Glover, who has uncovered many previously unknown graves of veterans, particularly those of the Revolutionary War. Ken was aided by a newly-discovered map, a local example of the Veterans Graves Registration project undertaken under the auspices of the WPA in the 1930s, and he told us in exuberant detail how he worked with this map to mark graves that he (we) didn’t even know were there. It was a lot of work, and it is ongoing: one particular mystery involves of the most famous graves in the cemetery, that of Timothy Pickering, Quartermaster- General of the Army during the Revolution and later Secretary of War and State, who just might not be buried under the perfectly preserved and DAR-marked Pickering family stone but rather under a derelict and unmarked one a few feet over! This is just one example of the often-perplexing process of correlating written documents with physicial spaces: it’s not as easy as it sounds. Maps do not always reveal all; sometimes they create more mysteries. But there were definitely revelations in terms of uncovered ground markers and veterans less conspicuous than Pickering whose graves were “hiding” under their family markers–now uncovered, and in plain sight. Ken had marked each grave with a flag and brief biographical and historical references, so after his talk, we all wandered around and got to know these uncovered heroes. I can’t imagine a more perfect Memorial Day activity.

A beautiful day in the Broad Street Cemetery. Ken Dike-Glover and the WPA Map; City of Salem Veterans Agent Kim Emerling, and some of the marked graves, including the two Pickering tombs. The Friends of the Cemetery are soliciting volunteers to help with their inititatives and advocacy, so if you’re interested in early American history (or just cemeteries), check out their facebook page here.

As I was meandering about digesting all of this new information, I was struck by how many privateers are interred in this cemetery. I knew about Jonathan Haraden, the superstar of Salem’s privateers (on whom we have a short chapter in Salem’s Centuries, featuring lots of new research!) but Captains David Smith and Francis Dennis (among others) were new to me and I look forward to reading more about their exploits and service. Captain James Barr (one of about a score of Revolutionary War veterans who lived long enough to be photographed) is also buried in Broad Street, along with approximately 70 of his contemporary brothers-in-arms, but the cemetery also features the recently-rededicated tomb of Brigadier General Frederick Lander and on an adjacent stone, the poignant epitaph of his Civil War comrade, Brevet Colonel Samuel Cook Oliver, who was wounded severely at Antietam: died after many years of suffering, cheerfully and bravely borne.

Salem heroes, long-known and recently-uncovered.

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May 20, 2024

Streetscape and Memory

By daseger

I am taking my title from Simon Schama’s classic Landscape and Memory, but my inspiration comes from a brief cocktail party conversation a few weeks ago. I was the host of this particular party, so I was hopping around and really only getting snippets of conversation, but I woke up the next morning with a very clear memory of a bit of discussion between a film historian and a maritime historian/curator about a movie that was filmed in Salem in 1922: Java Head, based on the then-popular novel by Joseph Hergesheimer of the same title. I’ve written about this film before: its theme and narrative focuses on the cross-cultural encounters between the Chinese wife of a Salem trader and his friends and family back home. This was no backstage production: Salem served as the set for the exterior scenes of Java Head and Derby Wharf was actually transformed into a century-earlier version of itself during the height of the China Trade by a very detailed reproduction, right on top of the reliquary pier. My two historian friends were bemoaning the fact that it is extremely unfortunate that this is a lost film, as the reproduction had been informed by the memories of those who had seen the wharf when it was still in some semblance of its former glory. And so I was reminded, once again, of the power of memory—and initiatives to recall it. John Frayler and Emily Murphy, past and present historians at the Salem Maritime National Historic Site, maintain that the set designers worked from old photographs in their 2006 piece, “Java Head is Missing” (Pickled Fish and Salted Provisions, October 2006) and I’m sure that’s true, but I’d also like to think that there was an old salt somwhere in the process. This article also features what must be a very cherished photograph of the reproduced wharf—given that the film is lost, one of only a few extant images of its Salem set.

Photograph of Derby Wharf as reproduced for Java Head, from the “Java Head is Missing” 2006 Salem Maritime Newsletter, “Pickled Fish and Salted Provisions”. ALL of these valuable newsletters, and more from the Salem Maritime archives, can be found at its NPS History eLibrary site.

I’m dwelling on this long-lost film and its set because I have always been interested in, and indeed reliant on, captured memories of Salem’s streetscape. We’re so fortunate to have photographic records from the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but there are rich textual records too. Long before the field of “oral history” ever existed, or was acknowledged as such, there were people out there asking other people about their memories of Salem’s built environment: the articles which ran under variations of “Notes on the Building of……..[insert street]” in the Essex Institute Historical Collections convinced me that that institution was definitely functioning as Salem’s historical society from the later nineteenth century onwards. From 1945-1947, the Collections featured a series of reminiscences of former residents of Chestnut Street whose memories were prompted by Francis H. Lee, who was compiling his own history of the street in the 1880s. Lee wrote letters to everyone who ever lived on Chestnut, and many responded with missives of varying detail about the street and its surrounding neighborhood. I looked through the Lee Collection at the Phillips Library when I was researching our Salem book last summer, and was immediately transfixed by his photographs; I knew that all the letters were gold, but I didn’t have time for them then. I think I need to go back to Rowley, but in the meantime the Collections transcripts will have to do. They begin with Leverett Saltonstall’s 1885 letter in the January 1945 issue, in which he gives us the built and social history of the neighborhood in his childhood: schools are everywhere as well as bakeries and stables, but he also tells us who lived in which house on Chestnut and Essex Streets, and when and how they added on to their houses. In a bit of commentary about new (1880s) construction, he notes that the Bancrofts lived on the latter street “in a pretty old-fashioned gambrel roof house, once occupied by Judge Prescott, father of the historian, with a solid old elm in front, which I saw quite recently cut down while apparently in full vigor, by some vandal to display his new shingle palace.” Ah, those elms in full vigor! Saltonstall also recalls swimming in the North River with his friends when it was “a clean body of water and the swim across to “Paradise,” the fields beyond the swirling flood, was a feast for a strong boy.” For the 1880s reader or the 1940s reader, that description of the then-tannery-lined North River would have been notable, likely more so than for us. Saltonstall was born in 1825: there are no photographs of the Salem of his childhood, we must rely on his memory if we want to picture it.

Francis H. Lee photographs of the lower and upper Chestnut Street in the 1880s, Francis Henry Lee Papers, MSS 128. Courtesy of Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Rowley, MA. Saltonstall and others remember only “fields” past the Phillips House at number 134, the lighter house on the right above.

There are actually a few visual references in the Lee letters. Henry K. Oliver actually provided a plan of his house on  Federal Street, Samuel McIntire’s Samuel Cook house, and a very detailed descriptions of its interior, including the French landscape wallpaper on the walls of its east parlor, “put on in 1825 (60 years ago) and now appears fresh and unfaded.” These were not memories, but Oliver went on to recount the built history of the entire neighborhook of upper Federal Street, including houses moved to that location from the more ancient Essex Street (EIHC LXXXII, April 1946). J.B. Chisholm’s letters to Lee from February of 1885 note that “I had once thrown aside my pencil sketch of the South Meeting House in Chestnut Street (which burned down in 1903) but the possibility of its being suggestive to you induces me to enclose it with this.” (but the sketch is not included in the 1946 Historical Collections article!) My favorite recollection (so far) is that of John H. Nichols, who gave Lee an explanation for the distinct width of Chestnut Street which I had never heard before: At the time it was proposed to open the street, the owners of land on one side were unvilling to contribute their portion and it was then made of half its present width by those on the opposite side, who left a narrow strip, with a wall standing upon it, so that the recusant abuttors should not be benefitted by the new street. When, however, at a later period the latter were willing to part with a portion of their land as first contemplated their proposition was rejected, and they then made another street of the same width, leaving the wall at its center. On the erection of some house, Captain Phillips’ I think (#17), each of the workmen employed received a certain stipulated sum for carrying away a stone from the wall every time he left work, until the whole were removed, and thus the street became double the width originally designed. Two parallel streets of like width with a wall between! We’re never going to see a photograph of this, obviously, but there might be a sketch out there somewhere……..

The wide street of the 1880s (no wall): Looking up (west) and down (east) Chestnut Street, from Salem Picturesque, State Library of Massachusetts.

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Architecture, History

April 16, 2024

Jacobean Style

By daseger

Has anybody been watching Mary & George? So much texture! Dark and rich. I’m not sure what I think of the whole presentation in terms of its storyline and representations, but the ambiance and environment seem evocative to me, while also exaggerated: in the very first episode Julianne Moore’s Mary snares her second husband wearing a hat embellished by pheasant feathers and rabbit ears! Not being an art historian, I’m never sure whether or not the “Jacobean” style I admire is authentic or revived/amplified. But I like it. To me, it’s as if the early Stuarts ramped up everything Elizabethan—and then added their own more luxurious and whimsical touches. I love the very clever Anne of Denmark in this series: and she is the living, breathing clotheshorse I always thought she was. I’m not sure where the costume designer found her/his inspiration, but if I were charged with the task I would go right to a contemporary visual source: a portfolio of watercolor renderings of Royal, military and court costumes of the time of James I, “probably by an Italian artist.” I’ve been using these images in my classes for years, and while they certainly have a continental/Italian gaze, I still think they are representative of the age. Most of the experts seem to think that these images were made for a contemporary friendship album, called an album amicorum.

I assume these first three images are the King, the Queen, and their eldest son Henry Frederick, who died of typhoid in 1612—if they date from after that date, I guess that’s Prince Charles draped (like his mother) in fleur-de-lis, as the Stuarts were still claiming French sovereignty.

So many courtiers, or are these also the King and Queen? I can’t quite tell.I know those two never went riding around on one horse together, or cuddled under a tree by a big hat and a small castle.

These carriage scenes are great, but the most compelling images in this portfolio are those at the table—for meals and cards, or both. There’s just something about them: I love out-of-scale depictions and those are very BIG cards and wineglasses. The bright colors against the dark walls and the floor! The people somehow look both happy and wooden at the same time.

Julianne Moore is certainly not wooden in Mary & George and below she is in her big-eared hat: could it be a Jacobean variation on hearing all, as depicted by the more subtle (human) ears (and mouths and eyes) on Queen Elizabeth’s dress in her Rainbow Portrait and envisioned by a 21st century eye?

 

Queen Elizabeth, Julianne Moore, and Royal, military and court costumes of the time of James I, Folger Shakespeare Library.

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March 5, 2024

Dorothy Talby

By daseger

I’m starting out Women’s History Month with a Salem tragedy of the seventeenth century, and gratitude that this story popped into my mind at this time, better late than never. I wrote about Hugh Peter, the fourth pastor of Salem’s First Church and later Oliver Cromwell’s chaplain and thus a doomed regicide in England, for our forthcoming book and I tried to give him a comprehensive, current, and critical treatment even though my piece is one of our shorter “interludes.” I included his slave-holding, documented in Harvard’s recent Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery report, and did a deep dive into the recent historiography of the English Revolution. I thought I had Peter all buttoned up, but then I woke up in the middle of the night last week and thought “Dorothy Talby!” Dorothy became the first entry of a social media series on lesser-known women in Salem’s history on this past Friday and I researched her all weekend, so I could tell her story here and in my revised piece on Peter, once it comes back from peer review.

I don’t know what Dorothy Talby looked like: I’m making “silhouettes” from contemporary sources to depict the women I’m featuring on social media this month and I’m sure several will end up here. There’s a real picture problem with pre-modern women: either they are not pictured at all or they are pictured by romanticized images from the last century or so. I used one of Wenceslaus Hollar’s wonderful images from the collection at the University of Toronto for Dorothy’s “silhouette”.

Like everyone in Salem in the 1630s, Dorothy Talby was an emigré. She and her family arrived from Puritan-centric Lincolnshire in 1635, apparently following the popular pastor John Cotton. The Talbys (spelled Taulbee earlier and in variations in Massachusetts), including Dorothy, her husband John, and their five children, arrived in Salem at a rather anxious time, as several settlers—mostly women—were quite vocal in their support of the expelled Roger Williams and and critical of his replacement by Peter. And down in Boston, there was another woman stirring up schism: Anne Hutchinson and her Antimonian challenge. There’s a happy reference to Dorothy in October of 1636 when her sixth child, a daughter named Difficulty, was baptized, but after that it’s all trouble. She fell in and out of troublesome states when she was violent towards her husband, for which she received public admonishments, whipping, and eventually a sentence of being bound and tied to a stake on one of Salem’s main streets. Judge William Hathorne’s summary order used language a bit less condemning than that in his judgements against Salem’s Quakers several decades later:

Whereas Dorethy the wyfe of John Talbie not only broak that peach & love wch ought to have beene both betwixt them, but also hath violentlie broke the kings peace, by frequent Laying hands upon hir husband to the danger of his Life, & Contemned Authority, not coming before them upon command, It is therefore ordered that for her misdemeaner passed & for prvention of future evills that are feared wilbe committed by hir if shee be Lefte att hir Libertie. That she shall be bound & chained to some post where shee shall be restrained of hir libertye to goe abroad or comminge to hir husband till shee manefest some change of hir course….Only it is pmitted that she shall come to the place of gods worshipp, to enjoy his ordenances.

Dorothy’s course stilled for a spell or two, but it did not change: she strayed intently towards “future evils” as she seeemed to believe that it was her duty to remove her entire family from their earthly misery. In December of 1638, she strangled her youngest child, Difficulty, and confessed to the crime after being threatened with peine forte et dure. She was executed days later in Boston, requesting beheading but denied, stuffing the mask given to her into her collar, swinging her legs towards the ladder until she died. We don’t hear the word “revelation” from Dorothy herself, but we do from John Winthrop’s journel entry (a “revelation from heaven”) as well as from Peter, her pastor, who cautioned the attendees of her execution not to lean into “imaginery revelations”. Both men seem to be throwing Dorothy in with Anne Hutchinson and her immediate revelations, then threatening their church. Winthrop does use the m[elancholy] word; Peter does not. Melencholy was an ancient term, experiencing a revival in early modern health manuals and most especially Robert Burton’s popular Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), yet there was little effort to apply any of its old/new theories to Dorothy Talby; she was in the hands of God only in New England.

A more radical intervention of the age: itinerant surgeon extracting stones from a woman’s head; symbolising the removal of her ‘folly’ (insanity). Line engraving after N. Weydtmans after himself, 17th century. Wellcome Collection.

Centuries later, Dorothy Talby was a useful anecdote for those who wanted to shade the Puritan past, or recount “cruel and unusual punishments of bygone days.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, always ready to mine his family’s past for his own benefit, pictured Dorothy in his Main-Street:”chained to a post at the corner of Prison Lane, with the hot sun blazing on her matronly face, and all for no other offence than lifting her hand against her husband, while Oliver Wendell Holmes judged her “mad as Ophelia.” It’s so easy to diagnose the dead!

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January 7, 2024

The Salem Tercentenary, 1926

By daseger

As I’ve been finishing up the manuscript of our 4o0th anniversary volume, Salem’s Centuries, I’ve been writing and thinking about Salem’s 300th anniversary quite a bit. For some reason I thought that I had already posted about this big event on this unwieldly blog, but I haven’t. Quite a lot is out there—the archivists at the Salem State University Archives and Special Collections oversee an ever-larger collection of historical photographs of Salem, many of which they have uploaded to Flickr, and among them are some great Tercentenary views. This is really the best place to go for local history, including an array of blog posts which put their collections in context. So maybe, in my writing-and-teaching-brain-fog, I confused their output for mine? I don’t know, but there’s certainly no Tercentenary post here so I thought I’d pull one together. I’m quite impressed by the activity of the 1926 Tercentennial but it was certainly more celebration than reflection. This was not a moment to be at all critical about the city’s past; this was a party! Beginning on July 3, 1926 and commencing on the 10th, city residents were feted by parades, street parties, reunions, balloon ascensions, a big ball, a field day, a firemen’s muster, a bonfire, various illuminations, and concerts, concerts, and more concerts. Many people were involved in the planning, at least hundreds if not more. Starting in 1924 a general committee came together, followed by the appointment of chairs of the various subcommittees: the bonfire, music, fireworks, the horribles parade, sports, the military, civic, and historical parade, historical exercises, banquet, costume ball, floral parade, firemen’s muster, entertainment and publicity. Then the work began and there were some alterations: a “great” civic and military parade was severed from the floral and historical parade when it became apparent that the consolidated parade would be very, very long and that the guest of honor, Vice-President George Dawes, could be in Salem only for a short period of time. (President Coolidge was invited to the Tercentenary shortly after his election and I have no idea why he couldn’t turn up—it seems like a slight, as didn’t he summer in Swampscott?) The planning seemed to go smoothly but I have no real insights into subcommittee deliberations—I’m not sure where the meeting meeting minutes are, or if there were any. But they seem to have thought of everything, including a temporary “hospital” installed in the Phillips School overlooking Salem Common. The one big pre-celebration problem that surfaced was in relation to one of the big arches erected at the entrances to the city, specifically the arch at the Salem-Beverly Bridge. Once completed, a furor arose: it said “Greetings” rather than “Welcome” and on the wrong side! Greetings was simply not welcoming enough, and people leaving the city and crossing over to Beverly were being greeted! It cost the princely sum of $700 to fix this arch sign but it had to be fixed and so fixed it was.

I think that was it for the missteps, and then came July, and they were off! Here’s the schedule:

Sunday the 4th: Bells ring all over the city, followed by religious services, and then a huge band concert on the Common. Presumably this is what the brand new bandstand was built for, but as the band consisted of “300 pieces” I don’t think all those musicians could have fit in there. In the evening, a 100-foot bonfire was set ablaze (we are right in the midst of Salem’s big July 4th bonfire craze at this time).

Monday the 5th: The “Grotesque, Antiques & Horribles Parade” featuring Salem schoolchildren in costume competing for prizes (this is another Salem/North Shore July 4th tradition).

We are the Freaks Float, Nelson Dionne Salem History Collection, Salem State University Archives and Special Collections, Salem, Massachusetts.

Tuesday the 6th: Tours of old Salem homes open for the occasion, many, but not all, on Chestnut Street, and an exhibition of “treasures brought to Salem by the sea captains of old days.” In the evening, a balloon ascension at Salem Willows and an “illumination” of US Navy vessels in Salem Harbor.

Wednesday the 7th: the “Great” Parade, with Vice-President Dawes in attendance. This was followed by an historical address on Salem Common, another band concert, and fireworks.

Vice President Charles G. Dawes, Mayor George J. Bates, Governor Alvan T. Fuller, and Congressman William M. Butler; Nelson Dionne Salem History Collection, Salem State University Archives and Special Collections, Salem, Massachusetts.

Thursday the 8th: Family reunions for “Old Planter” families; I’m not sure about everyone else. The first Chestnut Street Day, which was quite the event, and a field day on the Common. The Tercentenary Ball was held that evening at Salem Armory.

Friday the 9th: The other parade, the “Floral and Historical Parade.” (I just love the idea of this– flowers and history!)

Floral Float No. 9, 1926 and Brig Leander Float, Leland O. Tilford photographs, Salem News Historic Photograph Collection, Salem State University Archives and Special Collections, Salem, Massachusetts.

Saturdy the 10th: A huge firemen’s muster on Salem Common, yet another parade and band concert, and fireworks on Gallow Hill.

Quite a success I think, and there were some cultural consequences too. One thing I’m curious about is Salem artist Phillip Little’s “huge” painting of Derby Wharf at the beginning of the nineteenth century: it was commissioned by the Naumkeag Steam Cotton Company for a big home exposition in the spring of 1926 and supposedly shown in Salem for the Tercentenary, but I’m not sure where or when. And where is it now? I want to see it! Since I have not seen it, I have to say that my favorite Salem Tercentenary painting remains Felicia Waldo’s impressionistic view of the first Chestnut Street Day.

Felicie Waldo Howell, Salem’s 300th Anniversary, 1926, Christies.

These civic celebrations can seem frivolous on the surface, but they also reveal a lot about the communities which are putting them on. Much of these activities would have been very familiar to Salem people in 1926: they were used to parades, and old home days, bonfires and annual field days, in which children from every neighborhood competed against each other in a variety of athletic activities on Salem Common. It’s a huge generalization which deserves much more documentation and explanation, but Salem seems much more focused on its residents than its visitors at this time, and for much of the twentieth century. The comments and the coverage from 1926 indicate that what was really new about the Tercentenary were the open historic houses throughout the City, and on Chestnut Street in particular. The national house and garden magazines went crazy with the coverage! Chestnut Street Day was so successful that it was repeated on four more occasions, with the last one occurring in 1976 (there are some great Samuel Chamberlain photographs of later Chestnut Street days from the Phillips Library at Digital Commonwealth and here). And there was nary a witch in sight in 1926, certainly not on the official Tercentenary medal.

 

10 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in History, Salem

December 22, 2023

Holiday Tables

By daseger

If I’m hosting for Christmas or any other holiday, I spend more time thinking about the table than the menu: much more time. I love setting the table, and once I attain my “vision” we’re all relegated to eating in the kitchen, no matter how many days before the big meal. Here it is, December 22, and I am hosting Christmas dinner and the table is not set! I just finished my grading, however, so I’ll get it together. I have a different animal theme every year for Christmas decorating and some animals are easier than others. Obviously deer are super easy, and I’ve also done bears, foxes, sheep, swans, pheasants, mice and hedgehogs—and more. This year, I chose lions, and they have been challenging! But I do have these great lion placemats which are everything. I’m not quite ready, however, so here’s a succession of holiday tables from both sides of the Atlantic.  First we have some Scottish tables from my trip last month, and then a succession of tables from Strawbery Banke in Portsmouth, NH: every year they have a Candlelight Stroll among and within their historic houses, featuring a sweeping and colorful view of holidays past.

Scotland: first up are parlor, dining room, and kitchen tables in the Georgian House in Edinburgh’s New Town, owned and operated by the National Trust for Scotland, then a Georgian “everything” room in another National Trust House, Gladstone’s Land. You’re looking at a table, but a lot more is going on in this room–it reminded by of another Georgian room, just below, in the Concord Museum, which I just visited last week. Back in Edinburgh, nothing is more festive than a pub table, and the city is in the midst of major gin craze. The Jolly Botanist is a great gin bar that we really enjoyed.

Back Home (well in Portsmouuth): Strawbery Banke is a museum “neighborhood” of historic houses, some of which were located in the Puddle Dock area of Portsmouth, others which were moved there when the museum was founded in the 1960s. It’s always been a part of my life, as I grew up across the river in southern Maine. The annual Candlelight Stroll features decorated houses with reenactors, representing different periods and stratas of society. The opulent Goodwin Mansion, first up below, was built in 1811, but it is interpreted as an 1870s house. Below its dining room is that of the Chase House, a Georgian structure that is interpreted c. 1818, followed by that of the Rider-Wood House (1830s), the Shapiro House (1919) and the time-capsule 1950s kitchen of the Pridham House.

My table is not set yet but here are the lions, ready to go! Best wishes for a restorative and merry Christmas.

 

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

October 4, 2023

It Happened in Town House Square

By daseger

I didn’t expect to be posting on Salem for a while as I’m on my way to Maine to escape the Halloween Hordes (haven’t quite broken away yet!) but I’m in the midst of writing the last chapter for Salem’s Centuries and I thought posting would help. It’s why I started this blog in the first place, so long ago, to indulge my curiosity about Salem’s lost history and free up my writing from its academic constraints! This last chapter is on the long history of Salem’s center, Town House Square, and I’m just kind of enraptured with everything that happened there, but also haven’t figured out the meaning of it all. I’m trying to use the chapter to summarize the book Salem’s Centuries and also Salem’s centuries by using the Square as kind of a “stage” (at least that’s the word I’m using now). So this will be kind of a sketchy post as it is a work in progress and I welcome all comments and corrections.

I’m happy with my opening paragraph:

A crowd filled Town House Square on a sunny day in June of 2005, cheering and jeering the unveiling of a bronze statue of the actress Elizabeth Montgomery in character as Samantha Stevens of the television series Bewitched. The rationale for the statue was the filming of a few episodes of the series in Salem in 1970, commencing a successful intensification of witchcraft-focused tourism in the view of those who cheered, while less-enthusiastic attendees noted the impropriety of installing a fictitious witch within view of the sites where the victims of 1692 were accused and tried. The Reverend Jeffrey Barz-Snell, 31st pastor of the First Church of Salem, which stood across the street for centuries, was among those who had urged the Salem Redevelopment Authority to reject the statue weeks before“in due deference to our history”and its location: “we must object to this statue being sponsored by the city of Salem, less than twenty yards away from site where we committed, arguably, one of the worst…..crimes in the history of this city.” This argument was countered by the majority opinion, expressed succinctly by Salem City Councilor Thomas Furey: “Salem is the Witch City. I think we all need to lighten up, take a breath, and let Salem have fun.” This moment in time and place is representative of the continuous significance of a small parcel of land, more of an intersection than a square, over Salem’s centuries. The crowd, the expression of civic identity, representations of church, state and commerce: all have had their role to play in Town House Square.

Then I go back to the seventeenth century and start with the English settlement of Salem from 1626, including a brief discussion of how the topography shaped the town and its center at the intersections of its two main thoroughfares, later called Essex and Washington Streets. This became known as Town House Square in the 18th century, and that’s still its place-name, although I wonder how many Salem residents (much less tourists) know it as such today. Then it’s all about meeting houses—-four on the same site: it really took a lot of time to figure out all that building history. First there was a small meeting house built in 1634 which was long thought to be the small building you can see in the rear of Plummer Hall on the Peabody Essex Museum’s campus, a larger though still quite simple structure built around 1670, the first “churchly” meeting house with a belfry, built in 1718, and finally the present building (1826) which long served as the Daniel Low & Co. store after the First Church departed to its present building further along Essex Street. Salem’s meeting houses are confusing, both before and after the First Church splits up into successor congregations: East, North, South and Tabernacle. Thank goodness I don’t have to go into the theological and factional disputes: I’m sticking to Town House Square.

So, once I set the stage, action will begin: here’s what happened in Town House Square, with an emphasis on the public. Obviously lots of other things happened in this vicinity over 400 years but why do some leave a mark or record and others not? And do the happenings in the Square reveal its public nature and role? Just questions I’m asking myself as I am writing.

  1. Lots of Quaker resistance: holding their own meetings right next to the First Church/Meeting House, wearing their hats into the latter, and then in 1662, Quaker Deborah Buffum Wilson, accompanied by her mother and half-sister, walked “naked for a sign” down Washington Street in imitation of an Old Testament episode (Isaiah 20.2-3) and in denunciation of the spiritual “nudity” of those who condemned them. Yes, a NAKED QUAKER walked down Washington Street. This resistance was met with an equal (or larger) measure of persecution, especially by the William Hathorne, who lived right on the Square.
  2. Anti-Royalist protests: by the same William Hathorne, who as Major of the Salem Militia, assembled his armed soldiers in Town House Square for his impassioned speech against the Royal Commissioners present in Massachusetts in 1664, after which he himself was summoned to England on the charge of refusing to submit to royal authority.
  3. The Salem Witch Trials: also happened in Town House Square once the judicial proceedings moved from Salem Village to Salem Town. Close quarters! Judge John Hathorne, son of William, lived right there, as did the Reverend Nicholas Noyes, and victim Bridget Bishop. The combined courthouse/schoolhouse at the northern end of the Square, made of the framing of the 1634 meeting house, separated the properties of Noyes and Bishop, and High Sheriff George Corwin resided at the southern end of the Square.
  4. Salem’s first July 4th: came before the Revolution! There was a huge party at the Town House (sometimes called the provincial Court House, sometimes even the State House—think of the old State House in Boston) to celebrate Sir William Pepperrell, the hero of the Siege of Louisbourg, in 1746. The cannons surounding the Town House were fired after every toast, and there were many.
  5. Big Town Meeting Protests: against British taxation, commencing with the Stamp Act (1765), at the Town House. (But less than 20 years earlier they were celebrating the hero of a war they were not willing to pay for–just a British historian’s perspective.)
  6. Salem’s “Tea Party”: a crate of tea from Boston is seized and burned in Town House Square on October 4, 1774, “in the presence of several hundred spectators.”
  7. Last meeting of the Massachusetts Provincial Assembly: against the orders of Governor Thomas Gage, electing delegates to the new Provincial Congress which met in Concord on October 7, 1774.
  8. Colonel Alexander Leslie and his regiment passed through Town House Square on their way to the North River to recover rumored cannon, and back again on their retreat, February 1775.
  9. Presidential Parades: George Washinton in 1789, and Theodore Roosevelt in 1912.
  10. Salem’s “big digs”: the first railroad tunnel built in 1839, and rebuilt in the later 1950s.
  11. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s romanticized view of colonial history set against Town House Square in two stories: A Rill from the Town Pump and Endicott and the Red Cross.
  12. Town House Square Transportation Hub: trains, trolleys, and later, buses.
  13. Daniel Low & Co. established in the former fourth meeting house of the First Church, 1867. A mail order innovator, the store also issued a catalog which projected both Salem and Town House Square to the entire country.
  14. War Bond Rallies: the Square was the center of  “community chest” and war bond events during both World War I and World War II, including one which featured  fake Germans attacking during the former!
  15. Restaurant action: I think this can take me from the second half of the twentieth century into the twenty-first, from the long-running Gerber’s “Little Town Hall” restaurant through various fast-food experiments to today.
  16. And then came Samantha……back where I started. I don’t really believe in historical objectivity, but I know that I can’t even try to write about that awful statue in a balanced way, so I better close with a reprise of Reverend Barz-Snell’s and Councillor Furey’s statements.

John Smibert’s portrait of Sir William Pepperrell, Peabody Essex Museum; the “Salem Tea Party” of October 4, 1774; there are great historic placques in Town House Square but I don’t think the tourists are really interested. Where can I Get a Car?, 1894; The Story of a Store, 1926. Boy, what a devolution of opponents: from King George to Burger King. Town House Square today, or yesterday: it’s Samantha’s neighborhood.

11 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Culture, History, Salem

September 12, 2023

The Summer of Old Photographs

By daseger

I worked all summer long on my chapters for Salem’s Centuries and a few other projects, researching and writing, researching and writing, researching and writing. Once I’m on the trail, I’m a pretty steady worker, but I do take breaks: I’ve learned from other writing projects that you have to pause to let your mind absorb and process information. Sometimes the break might be at night when you’re asleep—I got into the habit of leaving a notebook by my bedside when I was writing my dissertation and when I woke up in the morning sometimes I would see notations inside that I didn’t even remember writing! That must have been one of the benefits of a younger mind because it didn’t happen this summer, when all my breaks were conscious. Every time I went up to the Phillips Library in Rowley, I would dutifully call up boring municipal records but also collections which contained old photographs of Salem. I’d pore over them a bit and photograph them for later perusal, and by the end of the summer I had quite a collection. The Phillips has digitized two of its largest collections of Salem photographs: the Frank Cousins and Samuel Chamberlain collections, but there remain many seldom-seen images within collections. Fortunately there are great finding aids to locate such images, but also some very miscellaneous collections which yielded surprises, at least for me! I loved schoolteacher Grace Hood’s shots of the Salem and Massachusetts celebrations in 1926-1930 (PHA 67; including some completely new-to-me views of the opening day of Pioneer Village in 1930) and an unknown photographer’s depictions of a very gritty Salem encased in a large composite collection entitled Photographs of interiors and exteriors of Salem, Mass., circa 1890-1950 (PHA 151). And there’s much more.

Phillips Library PHA 67 & 151.

My favorite collection was the first one I accessed, back in May: a treasure trove of images contained in the scrapbooks of Francis Henry Lee of 14 Chestnut Street, mostly from the 1880s (Phillips Library MSS 128). Lee was the son-in-law of the woman who lived in my house, and a committed architectural antiquarian focused on documenting the history of every house on Chestnut and adjoining streets. He did not rely on hearsay, but sent queries to anyone who ever lived in the neighborhood, and his scrapbooks are filled with detailed responses, some written on black-trimmed stationery indicating that their authors were in mourning. I was familiar with his articles in the Historical Collections of the Essex Institute, but surprised to find his research materials accompanied by so many wonderful photographs.

Some of my favorites: (I filtered those that were really hazy or damaged).

Chestnut, Summer & Norman Streets from two perspectives. I’ll never get over how wonderful Norman Street was!

Riding and looking north on Summer Street, and then south (Samuel McIntire’s house is on the extreme left of the last photograph).

Broad Street, looking west.

Cambridge Street, looking north and south.

Work on Bott’s Court.

Hamilton Street, looking north.

Chestnut Street Houses—what’s going on with that figure at the third-floor level of the third photo above, which I think is #26?

Warren Street, looking towards the “Turnpike” (Highland Avenue).

There were several photographs which were especially exciting to see among the Lee papers, including those which show the magnificent formal garden in the rear of the Cabot-Endicott-Low House on Essex Street, which extended to Chestnut before no. 30 Chestnut was built in 1896. This garden was quite famous: it was prominently featured in many horticultural publications and was by all accounts quite the tourist attraction, especially in the spring. A 1904 Boston Globe article on “Beautiful Old Gardens of Salem” reports that for many years the tulip bed was the greatest feature of this garden, and each spring, when these flowers were in perfection, and upper portion of the high fence on Chestnut was removed to enable the public to view the exhibit.

Even more exciting than this lost garden were two photographs of my own house that I had never seen before, including one sans the apartment that was added on in phases between 1890-1910. Our house is the right side of a double house built in 1827: both sides were identifical until the 1850s, when one of our owners expanded the house considerably in back and altered the interior to look more fashionable at the time—round mouldings rather than square ones! The big entrance alteration reflects the changes inside, but I did not know that this guy also put new mouldings over the windows, and disdained shutters as too colonial, I guess. Several owners later, there was a sequential addition on the side of the house: first as an office for a very well-know opthamologist who lived here, and then bedrooms were built above: this is our present-day 7 1/2, a really cute apartment with the best views of Chestnut Street. I assumed that it covered up windows which were on the side of our house, but it looks like there were none. As you can see from all of the other photos of the street, Chestnut was driveway-less in the nineteenth-century: the larger houses had carriage access on Warren or Essex: the property of our house actually wrapped around Hamilton Hall next door and so our carriage house—long- demolished—accessed Cambridge Street.

10 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Culture, History, Salem