May Day is a day with many associations and representations: an “olde” festival with attendant Green Man and maypoles, a cross-quarter celebration of spring and surviving the winter, a day to celebrate and demonstrate the power of workers everywhere, a signal of alarm. In between its folkloric and political roles, however, it appears to have taken on the more mundane role of annual weather check. I went through some Massachusetts newspapers published in the nineteenth century to see how May Day was celebrated, if at all, and while there were occasional references to May Queens and lots of bad poetry, I found many more assessments of what’s in bloom and how present May Days compared to the past in terms of flora. Actually it was often more about the climate than the weather. Here’s a great evaluation from the Newburyport Herald in 1837: On the whole, we may consider ourselves as gainers in regard to climate. We enjoy longer summers, milder autumns and shorter winters than our ancestors enjoyed. Spring is the only season in regard to which we are losers. The celebrated season of “ethereal mildness” seems to be entirely degenerated — it is nothing but a constant alternation of summer and winter weather. Spring losers!
Dwight William Tryon, Early Spring in New England, 1897. Smithsonian Institution, Freer Gallery of Art. Gift of Charles Lang Freer.
The Salem papers presented poetry for May Day in the earlier decades of the nineteenth century but then switched to more wary but still hopeful assessments of the day and the weather at mid-century. In their stories on the first heralds/flowers of spring, one is immediately struck by the lack of references to tulips and daffodils: bulbs must have been a later thing? It’s all about woodland natives, found in the “Great Pasture” off Highland Avenue. The Salem Gazette heralded a “May Morning Bouquet” in 1849, noting that May comes to us this year out of the atmosphere of an iceberg, as it were, but it may prove as pleasant a month as the poets avow it to be in less fickle climes. Five plants made up this bouquet: hepatica (which was generally called liverwort), Sanguinaria canadensis (bloodroot), anemones, mayflowers (trailing arbutus), and violets. These hardly flowers “will amply reward a search on May morning amongst the thickets and rocks in the neighborhood. But then it may rain, or freeze, or snow!”
Liverwort and Bloodroot in Charles F. Millspaugh’s Medicinal plants : an illustrated and descriptive guide to plants indigenous to and naturalized in the United States which are used in medicine, their description, origin, history, preparation, chemistry and physiological effects fully described (1892).
Anemone from William B. Barton’s Flora of North America (Volume 2), 1821.
Arbutus (also called Epigaea repens or Mayflower) in Jacob Bigelow’s American medical botany :being a collection of the native medicinal plants of the United States, containing their botanical history and chemical analysis, and properties and uses in medicine, diet and the arts (1817).
Violet from Jacob Sturm’s Deutschlands Flora in Abbildungen nach der Natur mit Beschreibungen (1798).
These are lovely little wildflowers: I have bloodroot in my garden and (unfortunately) violets too, but a bouquet? I think not, we need more robust flora for that. And please, I would prefer to stroll in a sunny green pasture rather than among the “thickets and rocks.” Maybe we should not have abandoned our devotion to the Green Man over here in Puritan New England: we have consequently become spring losers!
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”.
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.
We are the Freaks Float, Nelson Dionne Salem History Collection, Salem State University Archives and Special Collections, Salem, Massachusetts.
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.
Felicie Waldo Howell, Salem’s 300th Anniversary, 1926, Christies.
Building in 1779-1780: now that’s confidence. Elias Hasket and Derby began construction on Salem’s Maritime’s 
Still very much in demand: bêche-de-mer at a Hong Kong market, photo by G. Clayden
Cokanauto in Charles Wilkes’ United States Exploring Expedition (1845): 3:122.
The Zotoff (1922 lithograph) and Emerald returning to Salem, (c. 1950 postcard issued by the Salem Chamber of Commerce).
Bure Kalou (Spirit House), Fiji. Peabody Essex Museum. Gift of Joseph Winn Jr., 1835. 
Of course the victims of 1692 were NOT witches, but Airbnb puts a special focus on “haunted” or themed Salem rentals in October, like this one featuring a “100% that witch” bedroom./Airbnb
Washington Post
How and when my Salem house was built.
First up in my neighborhood, I wanted to showcase these two houses whose owners have invested in a lot of work! Kudos to them! Both are on Chestnut. As you can see, the first house has a way to go, but its very impressive entrance was just re-attached. It’s such a great house, with an amazing garden. Nathaniel Hawthorne lived briefly in the blue house. A rare Salem front garden on Essex—and this house has been thoroughly renovated as well. Besides the Witch House and the House of the Seven Gables, the only historic house that Salem tourists seem interested in these days is the Ropes House, because it was featured in Hocus Pocus of course. The Ropes Garden is consequently very crowded in the fall, but I caught it during a relatively calm time: more ropes in the Ropes Garden than ever before. This gate on Federal Court started off my iron hunt–I’m obsessed with it.
Downtown is quite a vibrant shopping scene with more than occasional bones and bats, and porta-potties, of course. There are some very well curated shops amidst the general kitsch, particularly 
Ghosts might trump witches this year eveywhere but Salem, of course. The ironwork at the Peabody Essex’s Gardner-Pingree House (which is never open) is simply astounding! A very busy Common, as the annual Food Truck Festival was underway, but once you get into the realm of Salem Maritime along Derby Street, not so busy. I still haven’t been in the Derby House even though it has been open this summer. The last photo just above is to remind me that I want to plant that particular variety of clematis next year!
I finished up my walk on Charter Street, where the Witch Trial Memorial and Burying Ground is located. As soon as I entered the latter, I was confronted by these strange mannequins, propped up right against the Cemetery’s gate and stones! So Salem: the juxtaposition of the sacred and the tacky, remembrance and exploitation, enduring and ephemeral.
Phillips Library PHA 67 & 151.
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).
