Tag Archives: Commemorations

January 27, 2025

Headline History

By daseger

I went up to the Phillips Library in Rowley to look through some scrapbooks memorializing the Salem Tercentenary of 1926 late last week and found myself enchanted by the presentation and curation of one particular album put together by a certain Frank Reynolds. There were two big scrapbooks actually, and while I was expecting photographs (I guess that would be an album, rather than a scrapbook), there were only newspaper articles pasted in in a meticulous and chronological manner with attached white labels. At first I was disappointed, but then I went with it, and found the juxtaposition of the headlines really interesting. Then I came upon one particular article that really illustrated the concept of “headline history” and then I had my post.

Thus inspired, I divided my Tercentenary headlines into several categories:  1) The Big Row; 2) Getting Ready; 3) Advice to Tourists; 4) Dress Up; 5)) Crowds; 6) Presidential Address.

The Big Row was over the date of the founding of Salem, actually no, it was over what “founding” meant. Everyone knew that Roger Conant came down from Gloucester to Salem in 1626 with the “Old Planters” but William Crowninshield Endicott, Jr., the President of the Essex Institute, insisted that Conant and his colleagues were mere “fishermen and squatters” and Salem wasn’t really founded until his ancestor John Endecott arrived with the first royal charter in 1628. So Salem’s Tercentenary should be delayed for two years. The most eminent Salem historian of the time, Sidney Perley, made it clear that this was a ridiculous stance, and resigned in protest from his curatorial postition at the Essex Institute. Then Endicott resigned, and that was the situation in March of 1926, only a few months before the celebrations were to begin. I’m really not sure how it was resolved, but it took a lot of meetings and made a lot of headlines. Endicott went on to become President of the Massachusetts Historical Society, so maybe all the Boston Brahmins got together and offered him a bigger prize to back down.

Full speed ahead! We get some great headlines about getting ready. A lot of focus on cleaning Salem up. There was one big new project—a pineapple-topped bandstand on Salem Common—but much more of an emphasis on restoring and scrubbing (reports on parades later on often noted how clean Salem’s streets were). Hamilton Hall was stripped of its paint; the massive train depot was sandblasted.

There were some interesting marketing campaigns associated with the Tercententary. Every Salem store seems to have dressed up its windows with historical scenes; Parker Brothers reissued its first board game, The Mansion of Happiness. There seems to have been an outreach to Quebec, because of Salem’s large Franco-American population, but also to other areas of the country, and I think that might explain these odd witch headlines. The Salem Tourist Camp at Forest River Park seems extraordinary to me: this very same space hosted a refugee camp after the Great Salem Fire just twelve years earlier (and no, the Fire was not “kind to the city.”)

So many “antiques”! The word is used very broadly: houses, dresses, furnishings, all on display. There was a great opening of houses throughout Salem, and also a great opening of attics. While the parades presented a broad overview of Salem’s centuries, the open houses and performances were very focused on the Colonial: and its revival.

The entire July week was jam-packed: THREE parades, a big bonfire on the fourth in the Salem tradition, fireworks in the Willows along with a triple parachute jump from a hot air balloon and then an attempted quadruple jump two days later by Louise Gardner (who would fall to her death before an Atlanta crowd of 15,000 two years later), athletic competitions, lectures, a ball, all sorts of exhibitions. The Massachusetts papers covered everything in detail, as did some national papers, and there were a lot of headlines about crowds. For the Historical and Floral parade at the end of the week, the participants were estimated at 10,000 and the crowds at nearly 100,000.

By all accounts the Salem Tercentenary was a resounding success, but clearly there was a need for a presidential nod to cap it off. I had always thought that Calvin Coolidge was dissing Salem by not attending the big event as he always summered nearby, but apparently this year he was in another part of the country. So he sent Vice-President Charles Dawes, who interrupted his annual fishing trip to Maine. The Vice-President reviewed the first tercentenary parade, and gave a speech on how the radio could safeguard the constitution from rampant populism. But even that sounds better than President Coolidge’s note, below. So enthusiastic: “even if Salem ships no longer circle the world and the life of the community goes on in less picturesque and spectacular channels” Salem still has its history! You’d think Silent Cal would have congratulated the city on putting on such a big party, but no. The President does make the point that anniversary of the Declaration of Independence was being celebrated in the Salem year as Salem’s 300th and this year we have another concurrence with the 250th anniversary of the beginning of the American Revolution. From what I’ve seen so far, I think Revolution 250 is going to leave Salem 400+ in the dust, but we shall see.

Tercentenary font? Quincy is up this year: you can check out their schedule here.

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

January 5, 2025

2025: the Anniversary Year

By daseger

I like to look ahead to the coming historical anniversaries at the beginning of every year, and in 2025 it’s pretty clear that two wars are going to dominate the commemoration calendar: the beginning of the American Revolution and the end of World War II. The Fall of Saigon occurred in 1975, so you could add a third. Here in Massachusetts, we’ve been gearing up for revolutionary remembrance for quite some time, under the aegis of a coalition called Revolution 250. Even the City of Salem, pretty passive when it comes to matters of heritage and seemingly oblivious to our City’s key pre-revolutionary and revolutionary roles, is getting in on the action by jumping on board the 250th anniversary of “Leslie’s Retreat” in late February. A Revolution Ball at Hamilton Hall—the successor to the pre-Covid Resistance Ball— will also be held in the midst of a very busy commemorative weekend in Salem. The commemorations of the battles of Lexington and Concord in April and Bunker Hill in June promise to be huge, even though the latter will be “fought” in Gloucester rather than Charlestown. Then the focus will shift to Cambridge, where Washington formed the Continental Army: I don’t think it was quite as orderly a process as the Currier & Ives lithograph below presents!

Revolutionary remembrance in Salem and Massachusetts: a view of “Leslie’s Retreat,” when a Salem crowd and dialogue convinced British Lt. Colonel Alexander Leslie and his soldiers to retreat while cannon were carried away, 1955 Emma Crafts Earley Map Salem Massachusettes With History, Phillips Library. This event is widely heralded in Salem as the “first armed resistance by the Colonies to British Authority,” which is just not true, but I think I can accept “the first armed resistance to British in 1775.” The Revolution Ball will be held on February 22: more information here. The Battle of Lexington, Bettman Archive; “An Exact View of the Late Battle at Charlestown, June 17, 1775.” and “Washington Taking Command of the American Army,” Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

While most of the Revolutionary commemoration will likely be exuberant, remembering the end of World War II will be much more nuanced, marking victory and liberation but also loss and destruction. The 80th anniversary of VE Day (May 8) could be “a shared moment of celebration” but obviously Holocaust remembrance will be more solemn, as will the anniversaries of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I probably shouldn’t even reference these atrocities in a post on history anniversaries as their remembrance is quite appropriately ongoing and perpetual, but the eighty-year mark is noted everywhere. A major exhibition, Portraits of the Hibakusha | 80 Years Remembered, featuring a series of 52 lenticular portraits of the survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, has already opened and will travel to museums and galleries around the world. Eighty years ago this very month (on January 27), Auschwitz was liberated by soldiers of the 60th Army of the First Ukrainian Front of the Red Army: here is more information about the observances scheduled for this site on this particular International Holocaust Remembrance Day, from which Russia has been excluded for the third straight year.

It seems to me that in terms of public remembrance, we tend to remember bad things more than good, ostensibly because we do not want to repeat the bad. Ultimately (I think!) war remembrance is a hopeful process rather than a macabre one, but it is wearing and wearying. I teach a European history survey pretty much every semester and I always get wary when we approach the twentieth century, but there were two very consequential conflicts from my own period that will also be commemorated in 2025: King Philip’s War (1675-76) and the German Peasants War of 1525, both bloody conflicts between desperate insurgents and established regimes—well, perhaps the colonists of southern New England were not that established when an indigenous coalition under the leadership of Wampanoag chief Metacom, later known as King Philip, attacked English settlements over a 14-month period. Several Salem men, including Nathaniel Hawthorne’s first American ancestor William Hathorne, fought in this conflict, which left hundreds of colonists and thousands of Native Americans dead. Northeastern University Emeritus Professor of Public History Martin Blatt has called for more commemoration of King Philip’s War, but I don’t see any big event on the 2025 calendar. There is, however, some amazing scholarship on the War and its remembrance in New England over the centuries. The German Peasants’ War was the biggest uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution, extending to much of the Holy Roman Empire. It was notable for being not just a large peasant revolt but one in which an expansive “working class” (a term we don’t usually use before the Industrial Revolution), including miners and urban workers, rose up against serfdom and its remnants, brandishing a document callled The Twelve Articles which justified their demands in scripture. It’s the first sign of the potentially radical impact of the Reformation, and Martin Luther was so horrified by the rebels’ confusion of spiritual and secular “freedom” that he called for the “murderous theiving hordes of peasants” to be cut down. And so they were.

Because of its early expression of “class consciousness,” East Germany commemorated the 45oth anniversary of the Peasants War in 1975 with this stamp and other events. For the 500th anniversary in 2025, the Thuringian state has organized a traveling exhibition.

Lightening up quite a bit. Jane Austen was born in that consequential year of 1775, and given her popularity over these past few decades, I have no doubt that the 250th anniversary of her birth will be commemorated in a big way in Britian—and no doubt elsewhere. Just a few clicks and I realized that the events that constitute Jane Austen 250 make the very busy Revolution 250 calendar look quiet! In Bath, and Winchester, and throughout Hampshire there will be festivals and costume balls and dress-up days and parades. At Jane Austen’s House in Chawton, each book will get its own festival starting with Pride and Prejudice this very month and there will be a special year-long exhibition called Austenmania. Bath has been on the Austen bandwagon for quite some time so there’s a lot going on there but in Winchester, the city where Jane spent her last years and was laid to rest, there’s a bit of a controversy about a new statue to be installed on the Cathedral grounds. There are concerns about overtourism in general and the sanctity of its proposed location in particular, with one critic opining that “I don’t think we want to turn it into Disneyland-on-Itchen. I don’t think the Inner Close is the place to attract a lot of lovely American tourists to come and have a selfie with Jane Austen.” (sounds vaguely familiar) They’ve spent quite a bit of money on the statue, so I think it’s a go, but Winchester is clearly the only place in the region where there are any clouds on the horizon: everywhere and everyone else seems geared up for an enthusiastic Austen year.

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October 1, 2024

Salem 1774: Tea, Fire and a new Congress

By daseger

I just want to wrap up Salem’s long hot Revolutionary summer of 1774 with a finale first week of October and then I’ll be turning to Salem’s intense Halloween—I am not escaping this year because I’m working at the Phillips House and both my husband and I are so busy we can’t really handle the commute to Maine. So I’ll be going to various “attractions” and writing about them; it should be……….interesting. But today, a “tea party,” a “great fire,” and the convening of a brand new autonomous Provincial Assembly for Massachusetts, all right here in Salem in the first week of October 1774. After reading about the pre-Revolution all summer long I now subscribe completely to super-historian Mary Beth Norton’s assessment of the importance of 1774: here in Massachusetts, maybe even here in Salem, the Revolution began.

The Massachusetts Spy piece gives you a sense of what the late summer and early fall was like in Massachusetts: a ship arrived with 30 chests of tea, its purchaser confronted and cargo sent off to Halifax. Local and county meetings continue, as do congregations to prevent the royal courts to convene. Legal officials who are appointees of the Governor/King “recant and confess.” Boston is ever more fortified by Royal troops and Benjamin Franklin is America bound! You can feel it coming (but of course hindsight is 20/20). Salem remains the official port of entry (with Marblehead) and colonial capital, all the elected representatives to the General Court called by General Gage for October 5 received instructions from their communities throughout the month of September to resist royal encroachments on their liberty and call for a return to the William and Mary charter from nearly a century before. And then Gage called off the big assembly!

Boston Evening-Post, 3 October 1774.

Too much tumult! There would be no royally-convened General Court assembly at Salem on October 5: it was postponed by Governor Gage to some “distant day”.  Ultimately a more representative body will convene, but before everyone that Salem happening there were two fires in town: one very little, the other, “great.” The little one was a PUBLIC burning of tea conveyed to Salem in a cask which was loaded onto a wagon belonging to Benjamin Jackson in Boston. I find this whole story so interesting because several weeks before 30 chests of tea had arrived in Salem but people seem more upset by this little cask! An unfortunate and anonymous African-American man, “belonging to, or employed by Mrs. Sheaffe of Boston,” had requested the cask be conveyed to Salem, and it was, and he was identified as offering it for sale rather than his owner/employer: “it was taken from him and publicly burnt,” upon its arrival, “and the Fellow obliged immediately to leave town” on October 3. Some chroniclers have labeled this a “Salem Tea Party,” but I’ve read too much about tea resistance in Salem in the revolutionary Summer of 1774 so it seems like a minor affair to me.

Several days later, the long suffering Tory Justice of the Peace Peter Frye, whose statement is above, had his house and commercial buildings destroyed in the “Great Fire” of 1774, which devoured a block of buildings in central Salem. Frye had tried to find his way back to “friendship” with his Salem neighbors, but they had never been able to forget his commercial and judicial dealings contrary to Patriot proclamations. He would leave Salem for Ipswich shortly after the fire, and cross over to Britain in the next year. Salem had a bit of a reputation as a Tory town before 1774, but it had certainly lost that identity by this time.

While the fire was still simmering and smoking, representatives from across Massachusetts converged on Salem for the meeting of the General Court, even though they all knew it had been canceled by Governor Gage the week before. They wanted to meet. They made a show of waiting around for the Governor, and then met on their own, in a completely autonomous assembly, a new Provincial Congress. This body, with John Hancock as its chair, became the de facto of Massachusetts, strengthening its resolve and powers with successive meetings in Concord (October 11-14) and Cambridge. But it started in Salem.

John Hancock drawn by William Sharp.

 

Two events in commemoration of the formation of the Provincial Congress:

In Salem, October 7: 250th Anniversary of the First Provincial Congress: https://essexheritage.org/event/250th-anniversary-of-the-first-massachusetts-provincial-congress.

In Concord, October 11: Exploring Our Democracy— Our Rights and Responsibilities: https://www.wrighttavern.org/programs/#october11.

 

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

May 13, 2024

A Big Salem History Project, 1952!

By daseger

I receive gifts from readers of the blog from time to time and they are all very special and much appreciated. A reader sent me a slim, illustrated and bound History of Salem prepared by a “committee of students and teachers of the Salem Public School System” in 1952 several years ago, and I was immediately charmed by it but not quite inspired to post about it. But yesterday I woke up and it was the first thing on (in?) my mind. I think I’m inspired by the end of the academic year and the completion of academic projects, by my own local history project, and by the Salem Quadricentennial planning, or lack thereof. The City has not put a lot of resources or time into planning for Salem’s 400th anniversary in 2026, and there have been meetings only for invited “stakeholders” rather than the general public. A dedicated website went live only last week, and the dedicated coordinator seems largely on her own. I was getting quite depressed about this, especially the lack of public engagement, but last week we came up with a neat (public) initiative at Salem State, so my depression turned into excitement—-and then I thought of this little book.

This little book has a strong voice, and it is a voice from 1952. It really captures the perspective of that year, that moment. Of course, there is the “White Man” and there are the “Indians” and they seem to have a very Thanksgiving-esque relationship. There are entire chapters on civic responsibilities (including a relatively long discussion of TAXES) and “Salem’s Contributions to our Country’s Call.” There are no women, and no one with anything but a very Anglo name, included in the chapter on “Famous Citizens of Salem.” It’s pure unbridled mid-century optimism, but from more of a working-class than privileged perspective. Students from the Salem Vocational High School contributed to this volume (including the great illustrations which I am including here—trying not to crop the names of the illlustrators), along with those from the Salem Classical and High School and the Phillips, Pickering, and Saltonstall Schools. This history portrays a city to which many visitors come to see the architecture, but is not yet Witch City. The Salem Witch Trials get a few pages; the Revolution gets more—even the Civil War gets more (we read about all the Union generals that visited Salem and that in 1866, “111 applications for financial assistance were received by the Naumkeag Army and Navy Relief from Civil War veterans and their families.” Details, details!)  The Salem Fire seems like a very, very recent memory: their parents and grandparents must have impressed it upon them.

And of course, World War II is a much more recent memory, even their memory. At the end of each chapter, there are “suggested activities” for students and two such activities were to “talk with relatives and friends and learn their reaction to the Pearl Harbor affair on December 7, 1941”  and to “bring in any decorations that your relatives have earned.” Pride characterizes this activity and this chapter, but really the tone throughout the entire text is one of pride, pride in Salem because it is an “important” city characterized by beautiful architecture and busy mills (not a contradiction in their representation) and its citizens have made “important” contributions to the nation. The students feel sure that [their readers] will be proud to say “I live in Salem, a city rich with dramatic reminders of the past, a city which with its great industrial power offers me a bright and promising hope for my future.” 

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

January 17, 2024

Good Queen Bess

By daseger

It’s the first week of a new semester, and I’m still working on my Salem book for imminent submission, so I have to admit that I don’t have much time or energy to post here. But it’s also coronation week for Queen Elizabeth I (in 1559) and I’ve come across a lovely children’s book which has captured my teaching imagination—why these scenes? why these stories? Sometimes the blog is a nice break from pressing responsibilities, and that is the case here. Good Queen Bess (1907) is a quarto containing 23 illustrations by the artist John Hassall and text in red by Miss Brenda Girvin. The visuals are striking in their color and context, with some editorial choices immediately apparent (of course we need to see Sir Walter Ralegh’s puddle-covering cloak) while others are a bit more elusive, but all portray the iconic queen as a person first and foremost, beginning with her childhood.

It’s a children’s book, so it might be a bit jarring to depict the young princess alone, as the orphan she was. Instead, she’s with her longtime companion Kat Ashley, cuddling by a fire with dog and toys nearby. Years later, her situation more precarious during her sister Mary’s reign, she is “imprisoned” at Woodstock, with Ashley and more dogs nearby. Not too scary, but still an experience that will shape the young Elizabeth. Somehow her character got her out of that situation, and she is next pictured accompanying Queen Mary at her entrance into London, echoing another entrance image in Parliament. Hassall misses a great opportunity to show the poignancy of the moment in which Elizabeth is informed of her sister’s death and her own ascendance at Hatfield, depicting her in a crowd rather than alone under the venerable oak tree of legend. At this moment, and again at her coronation, Elizabeth’s profile is that of the majestic mature Queen in white (with “wings”) rather than the young woman that she actually was, with her hair down. As Queen, she has to have that majestic look, whether she is stepping on Ralegh’s cloak, dancing (as she loved to do), receiving the famous authors of her reign (Shakespeare and Bacon), refusing the crown/title offered by Dutch emissaries at war with Spain (an odd choice for a children’s book) or addressing her troops at Tilbury with her “heart and stomach of a king” speech.

Elizabeth is defined by her own personal characteristics and experiences but she also represents a “Golden” Age so we must see some scenes without her: a man in stocks represents her policy towards “tramps” (better known as “masterless men” in her own era), reluctant Elizabethans cultivate the potato (perfect, this is my favorite illustration, although cultivation began long after introduction), and then of course we must see the glorious defeat of the Spanish Armada, a fitting finale.

6 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in books, Culture

January 2, 2022

What About Fort Pickering?

By daseger

I love commemorations: I have posted about them often here, particularly at the beginning of a new year like 2020, during which the long-planned commemorations (of the achievement of women’s suffrage, the Mayflower voyage, and the bicentennial of the state of Maine) didn’t quite go off as planned, obviously. As I spend much of my time thinking about the past, I relish any moment in which a more collective present is so engaged. In four years’ time, Salem is going to be thrust into a big commemorative year, even bigger than 2020 and hopefully more celebratory and reflective: 2026 will mark the 250th Anniversary of the beginning of the American Revolution and the 400th anniversary of the first European settlement in Salem. Revolution 250 has been planning the regional observance of the Revolutionary anniversary for quite some time in a collaborative and dynamic manner, because “commemorations bring people together.” I think there is some Salem participation in this effort, but I’m really not sure. I’m even less sure about what is being planned for Salem’s 400th anniversary: when I look at the organizing that has been going on in two other cities facing big anniversaries, Portsmouth and Gloucester, I see much more organization than is in evidence here in Salem, but then again these cities’ 400th anniversaries are next year so they better have their acts together! Salem certainly has time, but from what foundation and inspiration will it proceed? Who is in charge and who is involved? What will “Salem 400” entail and hope to achieve? I google that term from time to time but all I get is this. Without a professional historical society or heritage commission to shepherd such an initiative, there is no doubt that the 400th anniversary of Salem’s founding will be a much more “top-down” initiative than that of its sister cities, or even its own Tercentenary, which inspired a multi-layered calendar of commemorative events and expressions, including a parade of 10,000 participants, pageants and performances, musters and medals, open houses, bonfires, and headlines in national newspapers.

Official Tercentenary Program, 1926: you can see some great photographs of the events here.

I can’t imagine 10,000 people turning out for a Quadricentennial parade in 2026! The past century has transformed history into a product in Salem, something to be exploited rather than contemplated or celebrated. A singular focus on 1692 seems to have deadened the city’s interest in nearly everything else, save for the occasional nod to the military or the marginalized. I’m not sure how anyone can engage in history in Salem, save for nostalgic facebook postings. The few references to plans and goals for 2026 seem to acknowledge this by emphasizing places over people, and the present over the past: foremost among them is Mayor Kimberley Driscoll’s “Signature Parks Initiative,” which is “focused on planning and carrying out improvements and preservation work in six of Salem’s busiest and most beloved public parks and open spaces, ensuring that they will remain available and enjoyable for future generations to come: Forest River Park, Palmer Cover Park, Pioneer Village, Salem Common, Salem Willows and Winter Island.” Certainly this initiative is welcome, and will be beneficial to Salem’s residents (as will more trees, also a part of “quadricentennial planning”) but is it commemorative? Is it engaging, inspiring, and challenging the public, as opposed to simply providing for them? Maybe it is for some, or even many, but not for me: I want more history—and more humanity—in my quadricentenary. Compare Mayor Driscoll’s Signature Parks Initiative with the centerpiece of the Gloucester 400 commemoration: the 400 Stories Project, “a citywide undertaking whose goal is to collect, preserve, and share 400 stories of Gloucester and its people” from 1623 until 2023. The Project’s administrators invite Gloucester residents to “help us make history” by sharing their stories. This is a pretty sharp commemorative contrast between these two old Essex County settlements.

“Our People, Our Stories”: I wonder what the tagline of Salem’s Quadricentenary will be?

So far the most conspicuous work of the Signature Park Initiative in Salem has been in evidence at Forest River Park in South Salem: one end of the park now features new public pools and trails along with an enlarged and renovated bathhouse while the other is slated for a dramatic alteration revolving around the exchange of the Colonial Revival reproduction “Pioneer Village” currently situated there with the YMCA camp formerly located at Camp Naumkeag in Salem Willows. The writing has been on the wall for Pioneer Village, built for the Massachusetts Tercentenary of 1630, for quite some time as the City has neglected its buildings and landscape for decades and expanded the adjacent baseball field more recently. However, the exchange plan has hit a snag recently, as the City had to apply for a waiver of its own demolition delay ordinance before its own Historical Commission in order to remove the buildings at Camp Naumkeag, which was first established as a tuberculosis camp over a century ago. So far this waiver has not been granted, and a notable resistance to both the destruction of Camp Naumkeag and the relocation of Pioneer Village has emerged. I wrote about Pioneer Village at length last summer, and I have been rather ambivalent up until last month, when several admissions shifted me into the wary and possibly-even-opposed zone: I’m still thinking about it as I find it a particularly vexing public history problem! This is an ambitious plan: Pioneer Village is not simply going to be relocated but rebuilt and re-interpreted with the addition of a visitors’ center and a new focus on the relationship between the European settlers and the indigenous population of pre-Salem Naumkeag. This is an admirable goal for sure, but to my ears, the new interpretive plans sound vague, simplistic and ever-shifting, and above all, lacking in context. They are supposedly the work of the numerous consultants who have worked on the project, paid and unpaid and including several people whom I admire, so it might just be a matter of presentation, but there are several statements that I find concerning. In the first Historical Commission hearing, one consultant responded to the argument that Camp Naumkeag was itself an important historical site because of its role in public health history with an assertion that that role would enhance the new Pioneer Village’s focus on the virgin soil epidemic which devastated the indigenous population even before settlement, as if infectious diseases were interchangeable and detached from time and place! [“Pioneer Village Complicated by History,” Salem News, September 16, 2021] Several months later, the City posted its plans on its website, with this all-encompassing but yet incomprehensible statement of goals: increased access and visibility to the breadth of Salem’s history as represented by the breadth of the site’s history, including Salem Sound’s natural history, the original inhabitants, Fort Lee and the Revolutionary War, the Willows, Camp Naumkeag, and the Pioneer Village. So now it seems as if the newly-situated Pioneer Village will be utilized to interpret almost the entirety, or breadth, of Salem’s history, and in a space which the accompanying plan revealed will have parking for only ten cars. In terms of both interpretation and logistics, this is a flawed plan as presented: its reliance on the seasonal trolley for access is confirmation of its orientation to tourists over residents as well as its seasonal status, in contradiction to the breadth of its stated goals and costs.

The current Plan for the new Pioneer Village on Fort Avenue, on the site of the present-day Camp Naumkeag.

While at face value the inclusion of yet another long-neglected Salem historical resource, Fort Lee, looks like a good thing, I find it concerning. Why should Fort Lee be included in the interpretation of the faux Pioneer Village and not its very authentic (and far more important) neighboring fort on Winter Island, Fort Pickering? This is the guiding principle of the the 2003 study commissioned by the City and the Massachusetts Historic Commission, the Fort Lee and Fort Pickering Conditions Assessment, Cultural Resources Survey, and Maintenance and Restoration Plan: that the forts should be “restored, maintained and interpreted together [emphasis mine] as part of the Salem Neck and Winter Island landscape for enhanced public access.” To its credit, the City has begun a phased rehabilitation of Fort Pickering, but I see much less energy and far fewer resources committed to it than to the Pioneer Village project, which is perplexing given its authenticity and historical importance. Winter Island has served successively as a fishing village, a shipbuilding site, and in continuous military capacities from the very beginning of Salem’s settlement by Europeans to the mid-twentieth century.  The storied fortification which became known as Fort Pickering in 1799 was built on the foundation of the British Fort William, part of a massive effort by the new American government to fortify its eastern coastline beginning in 1794 under the direction of French emigré engineer Stephen Rochefontaine. Fort Pickering was manned, and rebuilt, on the occasions of every nineteenth-century conflict, and was especially busy during the Civil War. Another regional Rochefontaine fort, Fort Sewall in Marblehead, shines under the respectful stewardship of that town. Salem is so fortunate to have so much built history:  why can’t we focus our energies and resources on preserving and re-engaging with authentic sites, rather than creating new ones? (And could someone please find our SIX Massachusetts Tercentenary markers? Every other town in Massachusetts seems to have held on to theirs).

Talk about a site that can illustrate the BREADTH of Salem history: Winter Island was an early site for fishing and fish flakes (and even more substantial “warehouse” structures) as well as the location of Salem’s first fort William/Pickering. The Salem Frigate Essex (depicted by Joseph Howard) was built adjacent to the Fort in 1799, and Winter Island also served as the site of Salem’s “Execution Hill” in the later eighteenth and nineteenth century and of a Coast Guard air station from 1935-70. Members of the US Coast Guard Women’s Reserve, or SPARS, were stationed on the island during World War II. Rochefontaine’s 1794 plan and block house sketches and Frank Cousins’ photographs of the island and fort in the 1890s, Phillips Library of the Peabody Essex Museum. Marblehead’s Fort Sewall on the last day of December, 2021.

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

March 12, 2021

Renaissance and Reign of Terror

By daseger

1904 was a big year in Salem’s commemorative history: it was the centennial of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s birth, and his birthplace received both regional and national attention. This was squarely in the midst of the time when Witch City and Hawthorne/Colonial City were duking it out to see which one would define Salem’s identify going forward: the former won, of course. Hawthorne was born on July 4, so in the midsummer there were lots of stories on Salem in the Boston papers, with a notable focus on material culture: his houses, other storied Salem houses, Salem gardens, Salem streets. As Hawthorne was so often focused on the past, so too was his commemoration.

Homes and Gardens in Salem, Boston Daily Globe, July-August 1904.

Salem was also featured in a book on American architecture published in 1904: American Renaissance. A Review of Domestic Architecture by Joy Wheeler Dow, Architect. This first caught my attention because I assumed “Joy” was a woman architect, but it turns out that Joseph Wheeler Dow preferred to be called Joy. He was a prolific writer and critic around this time, publishing in several “shelter” periodicals, and had a very forthright style. I like opinionated authors, and even though Dow was very snobby, concerned when anyone who lacked a Harvard education was in any position of authority and using the term “Anglo-Saxon” a bit too much for my taste, he’s still fun to read. His concept of the material “Renaissance” was strictly Victorian but he detested Victorian architecture: his division of American architecture centered on a Renaissance of craftsmanship and style in the colonial and first half of the nineteenth century and a “Reign of Terror” thereafter in which too much money and fashion (as opposed to style) created objectionable buildings. He loved Salem and placed its building firmly in the era and style of the American Renaissance.

Dow’s captions are great, so I included a few of them above: if you want atmosphere and plenty of it, go to Salem! (exclamation point mine, as that is how he writes). We’re so fortunate to have all of the houses above still standing, and they still provide a wonderful context and atmosphere. I don’t share Dow’s opinion of Victorian architecture, either residential or commercial, and I think buildings from that era—and after—add context and atmosphere as well. If I were to divide Salem’s built environment into periods I would have a long “Renaissance” era extending up to the twentieth century, perhaps even to the Great Salem Fire of 1914, then a rebuilding/accommodating the car era (not sure what I’d name it) and the “Reign of Terror” would begin in 2000 or so: we are clearly in a Reign of Terror now. It’s hard to characterize all of Salem’s new buildings: several appear to have tried for some context in the details but ended up as plastic pastiche, others could have been built everywhere and anywhere. I can’t explain the first building below, Salem’s new Hampton Inn: I really have no words. I’m not really sure what to think about the Brix, a new condominium development built on the site of the former District Courthouse: it’s a big boxy building but its downtown location can support that, even as the transition to a side street, Church Street, is rather abrupt. I guess it’s just the roofline that bothers me: why the overhanging eaves? This is the third or fourth new Salem building with similar roofs: has there been some secret pact to transform Salem into an exemplar of a revived Prairie Style? Maybe that’s the new “atmosphere” we’re going for but it seems odd given Salem’s illustrious architectural past. Away from the downtown, but not too far, are the new Halstead Apartments, which manage to represent a shadow of Salem’s vibrant industrial past in a rather reassuring, even atmospheric, way.

Salem’s new multi-colored Hampton Inn (+apartments) and multi-style River Rock development on Goodhue/Boston Streets; The new Brix condominium building on Washington and Church Streets; the Halstead Apartments on Flint Street.

4 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Architecture, History, Salem

August 31, 2020

Lafayette Fangirls

By daseger

I just love the idea and the historic reality of the “Farewell Tour” taken by the Marquis de Lafayette in 1824: the exuberant reception, and the deep appreciation expressed by both Americans and Lafayette again and again and again, everywhere he went. I also like all the things that were produced for this occasion: prints, plates, paintings, ribbons, all manner of print and material commemorative culture. In honor of its namesake, Lafayette College has amassed a large collection of Lafayette memorabilia but it is by no means the only repository of such items. Like every American town and city where Lafayette alighted, Salem greeted him with great enthusiasm, on this very day nearly 200 years ago, and Lafayette left his mark: the main southern thoroughfare to Marblehead was named after him, as well as one of my favorite rooms (the room with the bar!) in Hamilton Hall. The Hall was the site of the elaborate dinner (including 65 separate dishes) for the General/Marquis prepared by its increasingly-renown African-American caterer John Remond and his wife Nancy, with the ladies of Salem providing the decorations: the Salem Gazette reported that the “whole effect was beyond our powers of description” on the next day.

Lafayette in Salem Collage

Even more so than the Hall, it’s these ladies that I am interested in, as I bet they were all decked out. I love the Lafayette ladies’ accessories from this era: the ribbons, hats, gloves, and fans which were worn at the parades in his honor and then tucked away in some keepsake box, perhaps brought out at the time of his death in 1834, and then packed away again. They’re not difficult to find, as Lafayette’s tour was so extensive, and women who could afford to displayed their patriotism in a very exuberant and festive fashion: we have to remember that Lafayette was not only a valiant foreigner who answered America’s call at a crucial time, he was also the last living Revolutionary General in 1824. He was more than “the Nation’s Guest”, but he was also French, so deserving of a display.

Lafayette Gloves

Lafayette Bag Cooper Hewitt

Lafayette-Ribbon-Lafayette-CollegeGloves with Lafayette’s image from the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; a silk bag from the Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt Museum, and a ribbon from the collection at Lafayette College.

Fans are the most elaborate of Lafayette mementos, in my humble opinion, and several Salem ladies had fans for the farewell tour–whether they were domestically produced or French imports I do not know. There’s a lovely Lafayette fan featured in the Museum Collections of the Essex Institute which I assume is still in the collection of the Peabody Essex Museum, but I can’t find it, of course, because PEM. The Museum of Fine Arts has two fans which likely belonged to Elizabeth and Sarah Derby, if the initials are any indication. If they did in fact belong to the Derby girls, I don’t know if they had them in hand on that day, this day, in 1824: all of the newspaper accounts reported heavy rain in Salem. And after that he was gone, but the adoration continued: in a piece that was reprinted up and down the east coast the Salem Gazette observed that “Everything is Lafayette, whether it be on our heads or under our feet…..” in October.

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Lafayette Fan Elizabeth Derby MFA

Lafayette Fan Sarah Derby MFA

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Fans in the collections of the Essex Institute (Peabody Essex Museum?) and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Salem Gazette, October 12, 1824.

5 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in History, Salem, Women's History

June 13, 2020

Women on a Pedestal

By daseger

Obviously statues have been in the news of late, so I thought I would tap into the national (and international) focus by looking at some of our country’s more notable monuments to women, either striving for the franchise or striving in general, for this week’s #salemsuffragesaturday post. It doesn’t matter what your political inclination is, everyone seems to agree that there are not enough statues of women anywhere and everywhere, and corrective measures are being taken, along with initiatives associated with this Suffrage Centennial year. The husband and wife team who constitute Statues for Equality have established that statues of women represent less than 10% of public monuments in several American cities, and far less in most. In Salem we have only one statue to a woman: Samantha Stevens from Bewitched, situated in our city’s most historic square. She never accomplished anything (because she never actually existed) and her prominent situation and whimsical depiction mocks the real victims of the 1692 trials who were falsely branded “witches”, but nonetheless she is deemed worthy of monumental representation in Witch City. There are so many more women (real women) that deserve to be put a pedestal in Salem—that’s what this year has been all about for me.

pixlrSamantha is currently wearing an ensemble by local artist Jacob Belair, which I think is lovely on its own but also because it covers part of her up! I wish it extended to her unfortunate pedestal. I’m not in Salem now, so I asked my stepson ©Allen Seger to take the photos of Samantha in crochet.

Let’s turn to some more serious representations. Ever since it’s installation 15 years or so ago, the Boston Women’s Memorial has been one of my favorite monuments: not only is it aesthetically pleasing and immediately engaging, but it represents a spectrum of women who shaped Boston’s history (as well as that of Massachusetts and the nation): Abigail Adams, Phillis Wheatley, and Lucy Stone. These women are not just on pedestals (actually they have come off their pedestals) but depicted by sculptor Meredith Bergmann in the process of thought and activity, with their words accompanying them. Monumental women are in large part, active women, the feminine counterpart of all those masculine equestrian statues.

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Screenshot_20200612-082234_ChromeThe Boston Women’s Memorial by Meredith Bergmann; photographs from her website.

Meredith Bergmann was also commissioned to create the most anticipated installation of this Suffrage Centennial Year: the Women’s Rights Pioneers Statue in Central Park in New York City, which will be unveiled on August 26, the date on which the ratification of the 19th Amendment was certified in 1920. This will be the park’s first statue honoring real women, and it also focuses on their activity: Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton are gathered around a table, intently focused on drafting a document. The statue had a controversial conception in that Truth was originally excluded, but public discussion and debate resulted in a more inclusive—and representative—monument.

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Screenshot_20200612-082623_ChromeModel and Mock-up of the first and final monument to the Women’s Rights Pioneers by Sculptor Meredith Bergmann, to be unveiled in Central Park on August 26, 2020.

As the state which ultimately ratified the 19th Amendment in August of 1920, Tennessee takes its suffragist history very seriously and has produced two notable monuments to the women who worked so hard to make it happen (because it’s really not all about a wavering state senator is it?) There is the Tennessee Woman’s Suffrage Memorial (2006) in Knoxville, depicting Lizzie Crozier French, Anne Dallas Dudley, and Elizabeth Avery Meriwether, and the Tennessee Woman Suffrage Monument (2016) in Nashville’s Centennial Park, featuring Dudley along with Abby Crawford Milton, J. Frankie Pierce, Sue Shelton White and Carrie Chapman Catt. Even more recently, the Commonwealth of Virginia—always the site of so much statue furor—dramatically increased its commemorative depictions of accomplished women with its Virginia Women’s Monument: Voices from the Garden initiative, honoring the “full scope” of women’s achievements with twelve representative statues.

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Screenshot_20200612-072336_ChromeThe Knoxville and Nashville Suffrage statues—both by Tennessee sculptor Alan LeQuire—and the unveiling of seven statues of prominent Virginia women last fall: former Virginia First Lady Susan Allen points to a statue of Elizabeth Keckley, dressmaker for Mary Todd Lincoln, and suffragist Adele Clark among the crowds (Bob Brown/ Richmond Times-Dispatch).

I like the fact that so many of these monuments are collective, featuring women engaged with each other. Sometimes they are working, sometimes they are simply “conversing”—or meeting for the first time like one of the most famous Suffragist monuments, the “When (Susan B.) Anthony met (Elizabeth Cady) Stanton” statue in Seneca Falls, New York, portraying the moment when these two icons were introduced by Amelia Jenks Bloomer in 1851. My very favorite “conversation piece” is the lovely statue of two prominent Rochester, New York suffragists, Anthony and Frederick Douglass, having a cup of tea: I would love to have been a fly on the wall (or the bench) for that conversation!

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Screenshot_20200613-080112_ChromeThe Anthony-Stanton-Bloomer statue (1998) by Ted Aub in Seneca Falls; Ira Srole’s “Let’s Have Tea” (2009) in Rochester.

The most official Suffrage statue of all, Adelaide Johnson’s “Portrait” monument to Anthony, Stanton, and Lucretia Mott completed (and dedicated) in 1921, is also a collective representation but the women don’t seem particularly engaged with each other: it’s not my favorite statue but that doesn’t mean I think it should have been hidden away for most of the twentieth century! The “unfinished” appearance of the work also engulfs the women in their “pedestal” rather than placing them on it, but rumor has it that Johnson was making room for at least one more prominent woman—perhaps the first female president—to be carved out of that raw marble in the back at some point in time. Clearly not 2020.

Capitol StatueOffice of the Architect of the Capitol.

14 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in Art, Culture, Current Events, History, Salem, Women's History

March 3, 2020

Witness to the Massacre

By daseger

This week is filled with events in commemoration of the Sestercentennial  (or Semiquincentennial?) of the Boston Massacre on March 5: the usual reenactment, and much more. For a full calendar check out this post on Boston 1775, one of my very favorite history blogs. For my commemoration, I am focusing on a Salem witness for the prosecution in the ensuing trial of Captain Thomas Preston of the 29th Regiment of Foot, the commander of the soldiers who fired on the crowd on that dark, cold night, killing five colonists. William Wyatt, a Salem coaster, happened to be on the scene, and was consequently called to provide testimony on several occasions. He is one of two notable Salem people connected to the Massacre and its aftermath: the other, Judge Benjamin Lynde, is arguably more “notable”, but I’d like to experience the event through the eyes of an average bystander, and Lynde was neither average nor a bystander.

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A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston, Perpetrated in the Evening of the Fifth Day of March 1770, by Soldiers of the XXIXth Regiment, Which, with the XIVth Regiment, were then Quartered There, with some Observations of the State of Things Prior to that Catastrophe. Printed by Order of the Town of Boston: London: Re-printed for E. and C. Dilly, and J. Almon, London, 1770.

Though their separate trials did not take place until seven months later (so that tempers might simmer down), Captain Preston and the eight soldiers under his command were taken into custody and indicted immediately, as the Town of Boston put together a committee to investigate, gather evidence and depositions, and get the narrative (and the Pelham/Revere image) out there. Wyatt’s deposition is included among many in the appendix of A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston, perpetuated in the Evening of Fifth Day of March 1770. It is quite detailed, and he is firm in his conviction that Captain Preston, referred to as the said officer below, ordered his men to load and fire: damn your bloods, fire, be the consequence what it will. And then, after the “consequences” were all too apparent, the said officer waved his sword in front of his men and said damn ye, rascals, what did ye fire for? This characterization of Captain Preston’s character, or lack thereof, caused John Adams, the defense attorney for the accused soldier, to challenge Wyatt in court several months later, asserting that his “diabolically malicious” portrayal of the Captain was in contradiction to all of the other testimony presented.

Wyatt Testimony Horrid (2)

William Wyatt testimony 2 Horrid (2)

William Wyatt testimory 3 Horrid (3)

Wyatt Testimony Horrid 4 (3)

I am always fascinated to find instances of regular people going about their business and then bumping into HISTORY: this seems to be the case with Wyatt. He was not a dashing Salem sea captain or wealthy merchant, but rather a “coaster”, plying his trade along the coast between Salem and Boston in his sloop Boston Packet. He seems to have supported himself and his family doing this quite well: he had a house on lower Essex Street as well as some land in Northfields that he sold a year after the Massacre. But there’s not much more to tell than that.

Wyatt Boston Harbor (3)

Wyatt 1775 Intrenchments Map 1775 (3)

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William-Wyatt-Salem_Gazette_1796-12-13 A coaster’s approach to Boston Harbor and its wharves: John Hills, Boston Harbor and Surroundings, c. 1770-79 & A plan of the town of Boston with the intrenchments &ca. of His Majesty’s forces in 1775 : from the observations of Lieut. Page of His Majesty’s Corps of Engineers, and from those of other gentlemen, Boston Public Library Leventhal Map Center; Essex Gazette, 1771-1774; Salem Gazette, 1796

Given the importance of the Massacre and the remembrance which was almost immediately assigned to it, this must have been a huge event in William Wyatt’s life. I wonder if he was disappointed—or angry—that Captain Preston was acquitted. I wonder if he felt that he bore some responsibility for this acquittal, given the fact that Adams made such a point about his contradictory characterization of Preston as well as his display of some confusion about the color of the Captain’s “surtout” in his trial testimony:

I heard the Bell, coming up Cornhill, saw People running several ways. The largest part went down to the North of the Townhouse. I went the South side, saw an officer leading out 8 or 10 Men. Somebody met the officer and said, Capt. Preston for Gods sake mind what you are about and take care of your Men. He went down to the Centinel, drew up his Men, bid them face about, Prime and load. I saw about 100 People in the Street huzzaing, crying fire, damn you fire. In about 10 minutes I heard the Officer say fire. The Soldiers took no notice. His back was to me. I heard the same voice say fire. The Soldiers did not fire. The Officer then stamped and said Damn your bloods fire be the consequences what it will. Immediately the first Gun was fired. I have no doubt the Officer was the same person the Man spoke to when coming down with the Guard. His back was to me when the last order was given. I was then about 5 or 6 yards off and within 2 yards at the first. He stood in the rear when the Guns were fired. Just before I heard a Stick, which I took to be upon a Gun. I did not see it. The Officer had to the best of my knowledge a cloth coloured Surtout on. After the firing the Captain stepd forward before the Men and struck up their Guns. One was loading again and he damn’d ’em for firing and severely reprimanded ’em. I did not mean the Capt. had the Surtout but the Man who spoke to him when coming with the Guard. 

This is confusing and apparently Adams made the most of it, as Preston’s blazing crimson overcoat was universally acknowledged. But Wyatt corrected his statement—as you can see above— and was in good company in his descriptions of the unruly crowd and the general confusion over competing cries of fire. Perhaps he did see the Captain in back of his men at one point, while others saw him in front at another, indicating that he would not have given such an order in the interest of self-preservation. At the very least, I hope that William Wyatt felt heard and the records of the Boston Massacre and its aftermath indicate that he was.

For more views and sources, check out the Massachusetts Historical Society’s online exhibition Perspectives on the Boston Massacre.

3 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in Current Events, History, Salem