Tag Archives: Local History

March 23, 2026

Remembering the Ladies: Two Talks in Salem

By daseger

A promotional post today: I’ve got two events coming up at the end of this week and the beginning of next on women’s history in Salem for the close of Women’s History Month. Both are free and all are welcome. The first is on Saturday at Old Town Hall, and very squarely focused on women’s organized philanthropy over the centuries, but particularly in the nineteenth. Because this year is the 400th anniversary of Salem’s European founding, I am going back into the seventeenth century but the nineteenth century is so busy I have labeled it the era of “benevolent activism”! This is certainly not a discovery on my part; anyone who glances at an archival list of Salem sources is going to see that Salem women were really busy in that particular century. So many organizations were founded, and with due diligence, quite a few have survived to the present. We really wanted to include a chapter on this topic in Salem’s Centuries, but it just didn’t happen, so I’m happy to focus in on it now even though it took a bit of work for sure. To tell you the truth, I think all of the women associated with all of the organizations you see on this flyer know the history of their institutions better than I do, so I’m just providing a bit of comparative context and a more sweeping view afforded by four centuries of perspective.

Salem Woman’s Friend Society Collection, Salem State University Archives and Special Collections.

My other event is a bit more about women’s political history in Salem, though I definitely developed an appreciation for how political philanthropic work can be, as well as even more respect for disenfranchised women, when working on the charity talk. Just think about one decade for Salem women, 1920-1920: they provided care during several major epidemics (smallpox, tuburculosis) and relief after the Great Salem Fire of 1914, lost a crucial state vote on suffrage in 1915, participated in several “preparedness” initiatives during World War I and ministered to the sick during the “Spanish” Flu, and then finally won the vote in 1920. Just incredible: I would have been pretty darn mad following that 1915 referendum and retreated to my bedroom or study.

“Remember the Ladies” is a tea at the Hawthorne Hotel on March 31st at 4 (again, free and all are invited) in which I will focus more directly on women’s political activities. As the flyer asserts, the  “school suffrage”  election of 1879, when women across Massachusetts were allowed to run for, and vote in, elections for school boards, will definitely be a highlight. Salem women really turned out and won four seats, the most in the Commonwealth, and they continued to hold seats right up until 1920 and beyond. But because this is the 400th anniversary, I’m going to go back and forth from 1879. This event is the initiative of my friend Jane, a former Salem city councillor, and she chose the date because it it the 250th anniversary of Abigail Adams’ “Remember the Ladies” letter to her husband in Philadelphia. So I’m definitely going to shine a spotlight on this epistolary moment and also compare Abigail to her near-exact contemporary in Salem, Mary Toppan Pickman. Different women of the same age and time in very similar situations for very different reasons! Both minding the farm and their families while their husbands were absent: John on patriotic business and Benjamin Pickman in London hanging out with other conspicuous Loyalists.

In closing to what I intend to be BRIEF remarks, I’ll move forward to the bicentennial year of 1976, in which the first two women elected to the Salem City Council, ward councillor Frances Grace and councillor-at-large Jean-Marie Rochna, took their seats. Just as those women elected to the School Board in 1879 probably expected the vote a bit sooner than 1920, I bet those women who voted in 1920 likely thought that their city would see a female councilor before 1976, but as we all know, change takes time, and effort. But continuity does too.

I’m not sure if this is the 1976 or 1977 Salem City Council, but it is from the Salem News Collection at Salem State University Archives and Special Collections.

More information for “Organizing Generosity,” March 28, Old Town Hall @ 10: https://www.womansfriendsociety.org/events-1/organizing-generosity-centuries-of-women-supporting-women-in-salem

More information for “Remember the Ladies,” March 31, Hawthorne Hotel @ 4: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/remember-the-ladies-tickets-1985348533909?aff=ebdssbdestsearch

 

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in History, Salem

February 16, 2026

Was Andrew Jackson a Welcome Guest in Salem in 1833?

By daseger

Here I am with another Presidents’ Day post which I shall begin with my usual rant about Presidents’ Day: if you merge them all (or Washington and Lincoln) into one day of remembrance you’re going to forget some singular details. Not a fan of generic Presidents’ Day, although I realize we can’t have myriad Mondays off. That said, today I’m posting about one of everyone’s least favorite presidents, Andrew Jackson, who came to Salem at the beginning of his second term in the summer of 1833 as part of a New England tour (just like Washington decades before). Unlike Washington, the concensus is that Jackson was not popular in New England, but reading through some of the contemporary press accounts, I can’t quite tell if that’s the case. This post, probably like several this year, is an extension of research for Salem’s Centuries: I wrote a chapter on John Remond, who catered the big dinner for the President, and my research brought up several complaints about said dinner (not Remond’s cooking, but the guest of honor) and so I thought I’d “pull on this narrative thread” (to use my co-editor’s phrase) for a bit.

New England (and especially southern New England) did not support Jackson in either the 1828 or 1832 elections and so it might seem that the region was hostile territory, but it’s difficult to know whether it was the man or his policies which were unpopular. Jackson was a known enslaver but it was early days in Salem’s abolitionist movement, and while he was criticized for his policies towards Native Americans conspicuously by the genteel Elizabeth Elkins Sanders of Salem in her Conversations, Principally on the Aborigines of North America (1828), I’m not sure that was a general view at this time either. No one seems to have anything to say about the First Sumatran Expedition of just the year before. While Jackson’s response to South Carolina’s strident assertion of states’ rights during the more recent “Nullification Crisis” was popular in the North, John Quincy Adams and his friends and supporters in Massachusetts seemed to aim more personal criticism at him, generally at his lack of education and uncouth behavior. The former president went so far as to refer to the current one as a “barbarian” when he learned that Harvard University would be granting Jackson an honorary degree during his New England tour. The President of Harvard, Josiah Quincy, proceeded with the investiture nonetheless and found himself rather charmed by Jackson, admitting that “I was not prepared to be favorably impressed with a man who was simply intolerable to the Brahmin caste of my native state……”

Election maps from the Leventhal Map Center, Boston Public Library; Bernhardt Wall, Following Andrew Jackson 1767-1845 (1937).

After his Harvard reception, the President rode up to Salem through Lynn and Marblehead on June 26 in a cavalcade and was met at the town line by a reception of dignitaries; he did not stop to chat, but rather traveled directly to Nathaniel West’s Mansion House  on Essex Street where he would spend the night. He was not well, and would not make it to Remond’s dinner. Since the idea for this post started with the dinner, I think I should say a bit more about it. Compared to other events catered by Remond, the menu was not as elaborate or the preparations made as far in advance. According to the Remond family papers at the Phillips Library, Remond made the contract only on June 20, less than a week before the President’s arrival. He promised a “handsome good dinner including mock turtle soup for 150 people” and the host party requested a few additions, including cherries, strawberries, sherry, champagne and cigars. Everything else was left to Remond’s discretion. (This just seems a little casual compared to Remond’s other extravaganzas—were they dissing Jackson?) The dinner did go on even in the President’s absence, with an afterparty on Chestnut Street. There are hints that Jackson’s frequent illnesses were convenient or of his own making (which are wrong—Jackson was ill). In his Memoirs (IX, 5), John Quincy Adams asserts that Jackson’s illness was “politic……he is so ravenous of notoriety that he craves the sympathy for sickness as a portion of his glory….fourth-fifths of his sickness is trickery, and the other fifth mere fatique.” The next day he was up for a little trip around town in a barouche, however, for which people really turned out according to the Salem Gazette (June 28, 1833): “the crowd of Spectators was greater than has been witnessed in this place since the visit of Lafayette.”

Salem Directory, 1857 (two years before the Mansion House burned down).

You can’t gauge public opinion from mere numbers, so I’m not sure I can answer the question in my title. The Salem crowd was well-behaved by all acounts, but not exuberant. The most revealing detail of the Salem Gazette account was the lack of apparent intoxication among the spectators: we believe no serious accident occurred to mar the festivities of the day. And although we had frequent opportunities to examine the crowd of many thousands, we did not discover a single instance of intoxication, or disorderly conduct of any kind. And that was it, after the parade was over, President Jackson set off for Lowell and no more was said about him. In the following year, however, there was a notable incident that might reveal some sentiment towards Jackson in greater Massachusetts: the venerable USS Constitution was fitted out with a new figurehead depicting Jackson and while anchored in Boston harbor a local sea captain rowed out and cut off its head! In the print below, demons are doing the dirty work. Much later, of course, Jackson’s reputation deteriorated more dramatically, in Massachusetts and elsewhere. Even though Salem City Hall was built with surplus funds distributed to local governments during his administration, Mayor (now Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor) Kimberley Driscoll moved to remove Andrew Jackson’s portrait from the City Council Chambers in 2019, and it was eventually replaced by a striking portrait of the seventeenth-century Naumkeag/Pawtucket leaders Squaw Sachem and Nanepashemet by Indigenous artist Chris Pappan.

Crop of  “The Decapitation of a Great Blockhead by the Mysterious Agency of the Claret Coloured Coat,” (Boston?, 1834), Swann Auction Galleries.

1 Comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in New England, Salem

January 4, 2026

Salem’s Centuries

By daseger

Yesterday I received three copies of Salem’s Centuries. New Perspectives on the History of an Old American City, and Tuesday is publication day, so I thought I’d provide an introductory post. The crucible of this book is definitely this blog, so I want to thank all of its followers, readers, and commenters: I truly am grateful for your support and inspiration! I can’t believe that I’ve been writing in this space for fifteen years: that’s a long time in internet years. It started out as just a vehicle to satisfy my own curiosity about Salem’s history and showcase Salem’s architecture, though I definitely thought I would move on to more worldly topics, despite its title. But the Salem posts were always the most popular, by far (except for anything to do with maps!) And so a more sustained focus on Salem led to the book, but a book is different than a blog. What I share here are mostly stories, but Salem’s Centuries is all about the history of this storied place.

 

I “posed” the books all over the house!

Salem is indeed a storied place. You (or I) can’t walk down the street without seeing a structure that conjures up some story or inspires the search for one. Stories are part of history, but history is more: layers, context, perspectives. After Covid and the publication of The Practical Renaissance I knew I wanted to write something about Salem for its 400th anniversary in 2026, but I wasn’t sure what—or how. The easiest thing to produce would be a compilation of the Salem stories I have posted here, but I wanted more and I thought Salem deserved more, and so the thought of a proper Salem history emerged. It was an intimidating thought for me, as Salem is an important American city and as I have asserted here time and time again, I am not an American historian. I think I’ve acquired some knowledge and expertise in Salem’s history over these fifteen years, but not enough to sustain a volume that attempts to cover 400 years. So I turned to my colleagues at Salem State, and the result is a collection of essays which explore Salem’s history from different scholarly perspectives across time but centered in place. The key moment in this turn was definitely that in which Brad Austin, our Department chair, 20th century American historian and experienced editor, agreed to be my co-editor. And the rest is history!

Here’s an overview of the book, which will be released everywhere on Tuesday and showcased in a series of events, beginning with a presentation (and hopefully discussion) at Hamilton Hall on January 25. Brad and I are incredibly grateful to the Peabody Essex Museum for centering its PEM Reads podcast on Salem’s Centuries throughout 2026. There’s a lot to discuss, but as both Brad and I realized as we finished this book, there’s also a lot more to learn about Salem’s vast history, so we hope that its reception encourages further research. And that’s exactly where you want to be at the end of a history project: stories end, history doesn’t.

The First Century (note: an innovative feature of our book is its division into full-length chapters and shorter, more focused “interludes” on people, places, and specific events. This was Brad’s idea.):

“Putting Salem on the Maps” is a grand display of historical and geographical context by Brad, and a perfect orientation for our place and book. My colleague Tad Baker has written the definititve history of the Salem Witch Trials, A Storm of Witchcraft, but he is also an archeaologist and historian of the indigenous peoples of New England, and his contributions to our book showcase both these fields of expertise. “The Dispossession of Wenepoykin” gives some much needed historical background of Salem’s “Indian Deed,” and “Gallows Hill’s Long Dark Shadow” is a first-hand account of the revelation of Proctor’s Ledge, a space below Gallows Hill, as the execution site of the victims of 1692, set in historiographical and contemporary contexts. My brief history of Hugh Peter, Salem’s fourth pastor and a regicide of King Charles I, enabled me to indulge in my own scholarly expertise for a bit, and Marilyn Howard’s depiction of John Higginson and his world is a rewrite of one of the best (no, the best) masters’ theses that I have read at Salem State. A magisterial chapter on “Salem and Slavery,” including both indigenous and African-American enslavement in Salem, by my award-winning colleague Bethany Jay, completes this century. Salem’s Centuries contains five pieces on African-American history, all set in larger contexts.

The Second Century: 

You would think that an eastern American city as venerable and consequential as Salem would have a published history of its myriad roles during the American Revolution, but no. Hans Schwartz, also a graduate student at Salem State who went on to get his Ph.D. at Clark University, has contributed a succinct yet comprehensive history of these roles in Chapter Four, with an emphasis on the social and economic changes brought about by the Revolution. Another one of our graduate students, Maria Pride, contributes some of her dissertation research on privateering in an interlude on Salem’s “hero among heroes,” Jonathan Haraden, with a little public history push by me. A strong theme of the book is Salem’s continuous “outward entrepreneurialism,” which Dane Morrison’s and Kimberly Alexander’s chapter on the rather tragic expatriate residency of the Kinsman family represents well. “Sabe and Rose” summarizes the collaborative research of Professor Jay and Salem Maritime National Historic Park Education Specialist Maryann Zujewski into the lives of the two people enslaved by Salem’s wealthy Derby family. The much-told story of Mary Spencer, “the Gibralter Woman” who (ironically) made and sold her famous hard candy with slave-made sugar while simultaneoulsy maintaining (and passing down) a fierce Abolitionist stance, gets the Austin treatment while I am able to indulge in a longer history of the man who inspired me to dig in, and dig in deeper, to Salem’s history: patriarch, entrepreneur and abolitonist John Remond.

The Third Century:

The Third Century opens with two studies of Salem and the Civil War by former Salem State graduate students Robert McMicken and Brian Valimont. McMicken contributes a general overview (like the Revolution, there isn’t one!) and Valimont a more focused piece on Captain Luis Emilio of the Massachusetts 54th. Here we have another Salem hero with no statue while a fictional witch reigns in Salem’s most historic square (at least Haraden has a plaque, even though it’s in the Korean barbecue restaurant which stands where his home once did). Our colleague Elizabeth Duclos-Orsello contributes a valuable overview of Salem’s Catholic parishes (Irish, French, Italian and Polish) with her chapter on “Immigrant Catholicisms” and we have another example of Salem’s many connections to Asia in Chapter Nine, “A Salem Scholar Abroad: the Worldview of Walter G. Whitman” by our department’s South Asian historian, Michele Louro, and the Dean of the Salem State Library, Elizabeth McKeigue. This chapter is based on Whitman’s writings and lantern slides of his time in Asia in the SSU Library’s Special Collections, and could definitely be the basis of a larger project. There are two focused studies on Salem Willows in this Century: mine on the evolution of Salem’s famed “Black Picnic” from the eighteenth century to the present, and Brad’s portrayal of the Willows as the “playground” of the North Shore. My chapter on four notable Salem representatives of the Colonial Revival movement definitely transitions well in the twentieth century, while my examination of the 1879 “School Suffrage” election is pretty focused on that one year.

The Fourth Century: 

We were slightly deferential to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as Salem historiography has been so focused on the witch trials and maritime history and felt that this last century has been a bit ignored. From a department perspective, we also have several acclaimed twentieth-century historians and wanted to showcase their work. Brad and I worked together on all the editing and introductions in Salem’s Centuries, but the one chapter we co-wrote is an overview Salem’s urban development over the twentieth century, beginning with the aftermath of the Great Salem Fire of 1914. This chapter enabled me to finally figure out Salem’s experience of urban renewal in the 1960s and 1970s! Avi Chomsky, an eminent Latin Americanist who also studies labor history and Hispanic communities here in the US, contributed two pieces to this century, one on the 1933 strike at Salem’s largest employer, the Naumkeag Steam Cotton Company, and another on Salem’s changing demographics in the later twentieth and twenty-first century. Brad worked with SSU archivist Susan Edwards on a chapter on Salem during World War II and with Professor Duclos-Orsello on the Salem State community during the lively 1960s: both pieces are based on SSU archival holdings, which we also wanted to showcase. Readers of this blog have read my rather struggling posts about Salem’s public history in its present “tourism era,” but our book contains two much more illuminating studies by public history professionals Margo Shea and Andrew Darien. Drew Darien, our former chair and now Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at SSU, presents an analysis of oral histories taken during and after a conference held on the occasion of the 325th anniversary of the Witch Trials back in 2017, which Professor Shea and her former graduate student Theresa Giard explore the lure and meaning of one of Salem’s most popular present attractions, ghost tours. Finally, we have an epilogue (by me, exploring or maybe the better word is summarizing 400 years of Salem history through the perspective of one place, Town House Square) and a coda, by our colleague in the English department, J.D. Scrimgeour, Salem’s very first Poet Laureate.

Salem’s Centuries. New Perspectives on the History of an Old American City. Temple University Press, 2026.

19 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Salem

November 24, 2025

Facts, Feelings, and Erasure

By daseger

I really didn’t want to publish any more about the Salem City Seal saga here, but the closing meeting of the Task Force which has recommended its replacement was concerning in so many ways that I simply had to write about it (it was keeping me up at night). For those that haven’t followed this issue and are (really) interested, previous posts are here and here and here. I am going to write about the discourse and deliberations in this last meeting, but I’m not going to use names. I don’t see any need to get personal beyond public statements, but you can watch all of the recorded zoom meetings (which get very personal), including the November 1oth one, here. A very brief summary before I get into it. In the spring of 2024, several Salem residents, most of whom seem to be members of the North Shore Asian American and Pacific Islanders Coalition, expressed their opposition to the Salem City Seal, which features a depiction of a native of the Aceh province of Sumatra, a pepper plant, and an arriving ship, all of which represent the lucrative and impactful pepper trade which dominated Salem’s economy and society (and culture) in the first half of the nineteenth century and left a lasting imprint. The seal was adopted in 1839, and its central image was redesigned by Salem artist Ross Turner in the 1880s to represent a more general Asian figure, with the ship and pepper plant remaining. Those opposed to the seal perceived its central depiction as an offensive cartoonish character, and called for its replacement. The City’s Race Equity Commission voted to do just that, without consulting the residents of Salem in any way, but the Mayor and City Council recommended the appointment of a deliberative body to conduct historial research, gauge public opinion, and make a recommentation. And so the City Seal Task Force first met in March of this year, ostensibly for a period of 18 months, with members appointed from the Race Equity Commission and the Salem Cultural Council, two “credentialed” historians, and other mayoral appointees. By October they had concluded their business with a recommendation to replace the seal and since then they’ve been dealing with the cumbersome business of assembling their final report. The meeting on November 10th was the last meeting of the Task Force, and on the agenda was the approval of this report, which was created by the submission of individual sections by task force members and a editorial process to create a “unified” voice.

Paintings of the original seal and Ross Turner replacement, and the current seal. The former are in the public drive of the Task Force, where you can find presentations and other materials. I had never seen the original seal before.

The dynamic in this meeting was led largely by four people, the two designated historians and the editors of the draft final report.For reasons that were unclear to me, the charge to those writing sections of this report was to keep it short, very short: a page or two. This mandate was explained in the meeting by the two editors, who are the Chair and Vice Chair of the Task Force: attention spans. Anyone reading this report would have a short attention span. Since this report will be sent to the City Council for final approval I thought this was a little insulting to its members, and pretty condescending to the Salem public at large. Anyway, that was the charge and everyone obeyed, but the two historians had asked that citations be included in the report and excluded from the draconian word limitations since documentation is a requisite part of any historical analysis. Apparently that request was agreed upon, but the draft report has no citations: as the editors explained, they had included a bibliography which, in their view, was a sufficient replacement for footnotes. Now I am sure everyone reading this can understand the difference between footnotes and a bibliography. As I am typing this, I am taking a break (although I don’t really need one, as they are very good!) from a stack of rough drafts my students have submitted in our capstone seminar course, and I can assure you that these history students are documenting their assertions. What you have in the report are assertions without documentation, which to me looks like a device to render them mere opinion. Since there is a very stark contrast between the non-historical sections, in which the seal is presented in the company of strident images of nineteenth-century Orientalism and twentieth-century popular culture, and the historical sections which lay out the vastness of of the pepper trade and its impact in a more documentary manner, it’s almost impossible to discern between feelings and fact when you read this report unless you are independently knowledgeable about any of the information presented “in evidence.”

I’m going to let James Lindgren move my “story” along while demonstrating the use of a footnote, but I should say that the historians on the Task Force were trying to source and document primary sources as well as interpretive texts.

There was a lot of back and forth on this issue, and the citations are somehow going to be made public, but I don’t think they are going back in the text, because that would make it far too long for all those readers with short attention spans. But a larger issue loomed over all of this discussion, introduced at the beginning and never resolved. One of the historians asserted that his entire section had been rewritten by the editors, with the exception of one dangling (citation-less) quote!  Neither of the editors appeared to assume responsibility for this, and so the charge kept coming back, politely but assertively, with the final observation that the rewrite was so awkward that it must have been the work of ChatGPT. Immediately after this serious concern was raised, another task force member commented that the historians in the group were trying to dominate not only the discussion, but the report, with their voices—-immediately after her colleague declared that he had lost his! This exchange made everything so crystal clear to me: I had never seen erasure so up close and personal before. Generally historical erasure is about omission, or so I thought, but this seems much more pro-active. As soon as voices from Aceh, the people actually represented on the seal, spoke in its favor, they were diminished and dismissed. Salem’s long-running pepper trade was reduced to the Battle of Quallah-Battoo (Kuala Batu), a retaliatory attack by the US Navy on the Malays who had seized the ship Friendship and killed three of of her crew in 1831, an obvious overreaction which was questioned and even condemned up and down the eastern seaboard. A half-century of maritime history, with major reverbations on both sides of the world, reduced to one action, and attempts to introduce historical context rewritten, literally. Indeed, it seemed to me that the majority of the City Seal Task Force was intent on erasing not only Salem’s history, but the discipline of history itself.

200th Anniversary of PEM’s East India Hall this very year! At the dedication dinner in October of 1825, President John Quincy Adams gave a toast to Salem’s trade with the East Indies: No commercial nation has been great without it, may the experience of ages induce us to cherish this rich source of national wealth.

 

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

October 20, 2025

Limning the Local

By daseger

I’ve engaged in lots of different history here: a lot of public, some world, American and European, but above all, local. I’m always looking for new ways to delve into and present local history. I follow the sources, I chase down new perspectives and approaches whenever I catch a trail, and because I’m operating in a digital world, I always look for striking visuals. All of these avenues have somehow brought me to a somewhat obscure graphic artist who centered much of his life on living in, working in, and  illuminating the backwoods Maine lumber town of Weld, Maine, a man named Seaverns W. Hilton who often signed his work S.W. Hilton. Hilton was born in Rhode Island and worked as a graphic artist (he is generally referred to as a poster artist) in New York City, but by the 1930s and his 30s he was in Weld, a Franklin County town whose population had shrunk precipitously as it lost its lumber trail. He diversified his artistic training into wood carving as a means of reviving and perhaps becoming part of his chosen community, but continued to illustrate on paper as well—mostly local history texts, and this is how I found him. I became a bit preoccupied by Benedict Arnold’s disastrous Quebec Expedition of 1775 after attending some commemorative events in Newburyport a few weeks ago, and found a little treatise with that perfect mod/mid-century aesthetic by none other than S.W. Hilton. And then I caught his trail.

It’s just great! I mean, this was quite the adventure (disaster) and you need the pictures. I tried reading some academic texts, but I think I learned more from Mr. Hilton. He illustrated books about the neighboring towns of Livermore and Rumford, as well as the famous Mount Zircon Moon Tide Spring in the latter. The Bethel Historical Society has an online exhibition on this venerable mineral spring, comparable to Poland Spring, featuring Hilton’s illustrations fromThe Mount Zircon Moon Tide Spring: An Illustrated History by Randall H. Bennett. These inland Maine cities and towns have interesting histories, as highlighted by Hilton and the authors for whom he illustrated, but they are not as well known as the Downeast ports on the coast with their more dramatic maritime narratives, so I appreciate Hilton’s creative spin. The title page of Josiah Volunteered, featuring the Civil War diary of a Maine soldier, also illustrates the Hilton treatment: it was published in the year he died, 1977. Looking at Hilton in a somewhat wider frame, he seems to have had success working in advertising in New York City (his copy work is  scarce but has fetched high prices in recent auctions), and became increasingly entangled in Maine from the later 1930s, primarily through the woodworking shop he founded, Woodworkers of Weld, which produced toys and figurines into the 1950s. Some of his creations garnered a national spotlight when an adjoining restaurant adorned with them, The Farmer’s Wife, was featured in Life magazine in 1937, and postcards followed. In this and all of his work, there’s an obvious whimsy in his depictions of past and present, and I think that’s what I appreciate the most, especially now.

Opening Day of the Mount Zircon Spring, from The Mount Zircon Moon Tide Spring: An Illustrated History by Randall H. Bennett.

Hilton posters for the Northern Pacific from the 1920s: Swann Auction Galleries and David Pollack Vintage Posters.

A wonderful 3 part series about Weld and Hilton starts here: https://luannyetter.wordpress.com/2021/04/09/the-shop-land-part-i/

1 Comment   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Culture, Design

June 30, 2025

“A Country by Itself”

By daseger

A mayoral task force commission has been meeting for the past few months, called to contextualize charges that Salem’s City Seal is demeaning to Asian Americans and explicity rascist. The image in question depicts an apparent native of Sumatra’s westernmost province of Aceh in the foreground, with a pepper plant alongside and (an apparent) Salem ship in the background: a rare 19th century acknowledgement that a western society’s (Salem) prosperity was tied to its trade with the East. I posted about this issue back in the fall of last year, when my stance was generally supportive of the 1839 seal but open to a community dialogue. I’m doing so again because I’ve watched (there is no other way to “participate” besides a form you can send in) four of the Task Force’s meetings and after looking at images of the Sumatran figure presented alongside Sambo images as “proof” of racism and hearing an assertion that the seal is the equivalent of the Confederate flag I am convinced that this is not a serious inquiry. The Task Force has scheduled a listening session for July 14 and one member who is a Salem native and expert in Indonesia’s history and culture has yet to make an appearance so perhaps things will get a bit more substantive but I don’t have high hopes at this point. That a tradition of such longstanding should be given such short shrift is unfortunate—actually more than unfortunate, unsettling.

Salem’s City Seal was adopted as the insignia of the City in March 1839, and it was a rather “flexible” image for the next fifty years or so: the central figure even changed from a man to a woman!  In 1888, artist Ross Turner was commissed to paint the orginal seal (bottom left) and it was pretty much standardized after that. For the 1926 Tercentenary of the founding of Salem, the City produced Seal medals (bottom right). There has been no attempt by the Task Force as of yet to place this image—or its evolution—in any historical context; the assumption seems to be that the existence of an 1839 rendering of an Acehnese Native is without question objectionable and the best way to modify the Seal is simply to remove said Native and have a lovely Sumatran scene sans person. The City motto, “Divitis Indiae usque ad ultimum sinum” – “To the farthest port of the rich East” – never changed and doesn’t appear to bother the Task Commission. It has inspired a number of artistic creations: the piece below is quilted fabric but I’ve seen the same in tile and as a painting and print.

I really don’t want to watch these meetings anymore.; I come away from them feeling quite sad. I know why Salem people are troubled by the prospect of an altered seal because I’ve heard from some: for some civic service or upon retirement fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters received a seal from the Mayor of the moment as a photograph was taken and a memory made. It’s not so personal for me, but I do have a somewhat-related memory from around the time I first moved to Salem. I was still in graduate school, working on my dissertation, and I used the purchase of my first house and the move as a rationale to procrastinate as much as possible from working on it: I had four new (old) fireplaces and suddenly it was really important to deck them out with andirons and everything—even though it was June! So I drove around the North Shore, poking around every antique shop that I came upon. In Essex (most definitely the antique capital of the North Shore) I got into a really nice discussion with a man who told me (I’m paraphrasing from memory here) that in its heyday Salem was so prosperous and Salem ships so numerous that all of its trading partners in the East Indies thought it was “a country unto itself.” To them, Salem was the United States or the United States was Salem. I was looking at maps in his shop (because of course I had to have antique maps all over my new walls) and he said something like—and there’s a map somewhere, with Salem depicted as the United States. Well, for the next decade or so, I was looking for that map. I thought it would look something like this:

Well maybe a less strident SALEM but you get the point. Of course I never found this map, because it never existed! Once I started reading about Salem history (which was pretty much when I started this blog) I soon realized that my antique dealer had it wrong or I had it wrong: but the perception behind the nonexistent map was very, very real. It is expressed generally in all the maritime histories of the nineteenth century, as well as texts that probe the cultural history of America’s encounters with the East. Samuel Eliot Morison gives the most detailed description in his Maritime History of Massachusetts: While Boston ships followed Magellan westward around the Horn, Salem sent her vessels eastward to the Dutch East Indies, Manila, both coasts of Africa and the smaller islands of the Pacific, and so thoroughly did they pre-empt this trade that as late as 1833 Po Adam, the wealthiest merchant of Quallah Battoo ‘‘believed Salem to be a country by itself, and one of the richest and most important sections of the globe.” I’m not sure Po Adam was the wealthiest merchant of Quallah Battoo (Kuala Batu), the major pepper port in Aceh, but he was a well-known friend of the American traders who disembarked there, warning Captain Charles Endicott of the impending attack on his ship Friendship in 1831 which resulted in the retaliatory attack by the U.S. Naval Frigate Potomac in the following year. In his account, Endicott called him “my old and tried friend” and captains for the ships owned in part or whole by Salem’s largest pepper trader, Joseph Peabody, expressed the same sentiments. Trade is always about human relationships, for better or for worse, and I think that’s why Joseph Peabody’s son George, the Salem alderman who is universally credited with the conception and depiction of the Salem Seal in 1839, placed a person in the center of it. And when that figure is stripped from Salem’s seal, inevitably it seems at this point, all we will have left is a commodity (like a Witch here in the Witch City).

Drawing of Po Adam from James Duncan Phillips, Pepper and Pirates, 1949; George Peabody by John Singer Sargent, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 

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

February 24, 2025

Leslie’s Retreat 250

By daseger

More local Revolutionary history! I know I have not been straying far from this focus lately, but this past weekend (well, really February 26) marked the 250th anniversary of Leslie’s Retreat here in Salem with several colorful events which definitely deserve a post. And fair warning, there will be more 1775 over the next few months: I’m giving a talk on Salem’s “pre-Revolutionary Revolution” for Historic New England in April and then there will be the big commemoration of Bunker Hill and then……….we’ll see. I promise to sneak some other topics in here, but for Massachusetts in the American Revolution, it’s really all about 1775, so there’s a lot going on. Saturday’s commemoration kicked off with a presentation at St. Peter’s Church which echoed the sequence of events in 1775 when the Sabbath was disturbed by the arrival of British soldiers in Salem in search of contraband cannon. I arrived a bit late for this event, as it was advertised as featuring “stakeholders” and I knew that meant politicians: that is the term that our previous mayor and present Lieutenant Governor, Kim Driscoll, used all the time during her tenure to distinguish VIPs from mere residents. It’s still used all the time in Salem, and I always bristle when I hear it, so my little rebellion was to stomp over to St. Peter’s late. By the time I arrived, there was a full church listening intently to the last of the stakeholders, our present Mayor Dominick Pangallo. Then we heard from Lt. Colonel Leslie himself, sang a hymn and listened to a timely sermon, and watched as the news of the marching soldiers (some of whom were apparently right next door) interrupted the everyday life a few colonial Salemites. And then we were off to the North Bridge!

The “congregation” walked over to the site, now pretty unrecognizable or unimaginable if you know the historic terrain, where the parley which brought about, and constituted, Leslie’s Retreat, happened nearly 250 years ago. The major difference between this special commemoration and those of previous years was the presence of many more reenacting regiments, so the crowd and the soldiers were separated on two lanes of the bridge, with traffic blocked off (which was quite something, as route 114 is a major artery). In past years civilians and soldiers were mixed in together, and there was less of each. I couldn’t really see or hear the negotiations between Lt. Col. Leslie and the Salem men, but everything that transpired seemed to happen much quicker than was the case in 1775. Leslie retreated very quickly, followed by a few regiments of Colonials which had formed on the other side of the river. All I could really capture was the marching, to and from. A lot of players—I’m sure this took a lot of coordination. After witnessing this, I cannot imagine the complexities of the “curation” of the Battle of Bunker Hill in June.

There were trolley tours and a great exhibit at the Salem Armory Visitor’s Center, but I was focused on a fashionable event in the afternoon: “Fashion in the Season of Revolution: a Panel Discussion and Reenactor Promenade” at the Peabody Essex Museum. This was so interesting: I’m still kind of thinking about it. There were scholarly talks about Abigail Adams’ quilted petticoat and Eldridge Gerry’s sister’s wedding ensemble and the revolutionary preference for homespun as it related to shoes, and then there were questions for an ensemble of reenactors in the audience and on stage. Their answers were really thoughtful and fascinating, including those of a 14-year-old girl who had come up to Salem with her regiment for the day (I’m only 14 so I can’t carry a musket but I have a bugle. Who knew that musicians‘ uniforms had variant stripes?) I have to tell you that most academic historians have a bit of a snobby attitude towards reenectors: I would include myself in this company until the last few years. It’s the dominance of archival research in our profession, and an assumed exclusive association with military history, I think. Speaking for myself, I had always associated reenacting and “pageantry” with the Victorian romanticization of the pre-modern past, something I’ve always had to counter throughout my teaching career. But my perspective on this has changed over the years, especially as I’ve met local history enthusiasts in this region. I still really can’t handle a Renaissance Fair, but it’s clear to me that for many reenactors, who engage in the pursuit for decades, both their “kit” and their engagement in commemoration are ways to study and venerate the past at the same time. I clearly am craving a material connection to the past as well, as all I really want to do on most days is drive around and look at seventeenth-century houses: and I envy their comaraderie!

After all that, it was off to the Revolution Ball next door at Hamilton Hall. It took me a while to get dressed, as I had my own little reenactor “Caraco” jacket which laces up the front and a really nice dark red silk “petticoat” (skirt) which also took me a while to figure out. The ball was really magical: the Hall looked gorgeous, I hope you can get some sense of it in the photographs below. It was period dress/black tie, and it seemed liked it was about half and half. Dancing with a caller, cocktails, I even ate, which I never do at parties for some reason. There were quite a few people there that had participated in the events of the day, and who were part of other commemoration activities, so there quite a bit of festive camaraderie, so much so that I can justify using that word twice in one post.

N.B. Saturday was a fun celebration, but I woke up on Sunday to a flag hanging upside down at Yosemite National Park (where a former student works, still, I think), a distress signal from its rangers/stewards. So I have to add my hope that the revolutionary commemorations of 2025, 2026, and beyond can communicate to the American public the extreme sacrifices that the Revolutionary generation made for real freedom, not just lower consumer prices. Moreover, this long commemoration is itself threatened by this administration’s attack on federal employees in general and those of the National Park Service in particular: Salem Maritime National Historic Site historian Emily Murphy curated and presented the exhibit on Leslie’s Retreat which will be on view all spring, and obviously Minute Man National Historic Park will be center stage for the commemorations of Lexington and Concord in April. A comprehensive list of the Revolution 250 inititatives and events planned by Massachusetts National Historic sites and parks is here: please support their efforts and their personnel.

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

February 17, 2025

Leslie’s Retreat: How an Incident became an Event

By daseger

Next weekend here in Salem a whirlwind of events will commemorate the 250th anniversary of Leslie’s Retreat, including reenactments of the Redcoats’ march towards the North Bridge and the negotiations/resistance that followed, a variety of tours, an exhibit, a concert, a play at Old Town Hall, a presentation on revolutionary and reenactment clothing at the Peabody Essex Museum, and a ball at Hamilton Hall! A group of stalwart history enthusiasts and educators organized a Retreat reenactment nearly a decade ago and the event has been growing in popularity every since, but this year is BIG because of the 250th anniversary, and the city has jumped on the bandwagon. I’m grateful to those “First Reenactors” as February 26th (or thereabouts) has become a conspicuous non-witchy event on the Salem calendar, so I feel like commemorating them, but their efforts are part of a long tradition: Salem has long celebrated its brief, shining moment of Revolutionary resistance. I’ve posted quite about what the event called “Leslie’s Retreat” was so this year I thought I’d write in response to a slightly different prompt: how did this “incident at the North Bridge in Salem” became the event we call “Leslie’s Retreat?” I’m also interested in how it became known as “the first armed resistance to British troops” when it clearly wasn’t, but I suspect the answer to that question is because they just kept saying it was so I don’t want to waste too much time on that.

Wonderful etching of Salem’s North Bridge in the 1880s by George Merwanjee White, Phillips Library (the shores looks so close!); various mid-century pictorial maps with the “first” claim.

So before I go into all the factors which made Leslie’s Retreat LESLIE’S RETREAT, here’s a very brief summary of what happened on February 26, 1775. VERY BRIEF. You can search for my other Leslie’s Retreat posts or, if you want all the details and the most probing analysis, go to J.L. Bell’s amazing blog Boston 1775, which imho and that of many others is the absolutely best source for pre-revolutionary Boston and its environs. Bell is giving a talk for the Marblehead Museum on February 27 which I am very much looking forward to as I have managed to miss all his other presentations on Leslie’s Retreat. Until I am enlightened further by him, here is my summary:

“Leslie’s Retreat” represents the unsuccessful attempt of the 64th Regiment of Foot under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Leslie to commandeer cannon in Salem. Said cannon were likely 17 twelve-pounders secured by Colonel David Mason, who had commissioned blacksmith Robert Forster to mount them to carriages. Royal Governor Thomas Gage, who had essentially been kicked out of Salem the previous August as the town was serving as the provincial capital (but who clearly still had his contacts) caught wind of this clandestine cannon and ordered Lt. Col. Leslie and his troops to sail from Fort William in Boston Harbor to Marblehead, and from there march to Salem and “take possession of the rebel cannon in the name of His Majesty.” The operation was planned for a sleepy Sabbath Sunday, but as soon as the Regulars landed in Marblehead word got out, and the alarm was sounded not only in Salem but in other Essex County towns. Leslie marched to what was then called the North Field Bridge, which was a drawbridge firmly fixed in the up position which prevented him from crossing the North River to Forster’s forge and foundry. A crowd formed and negotiations began between a frustrated Leslie, several Salem residents and militiamen, and a local pastor, Thomas Barnard. With darkness (and militiamen throughout Essex County) advancing, a compromise was reached: the bridge was lowered and Leslie and his men were able to cross and inspect, but the cannon were long gone. So they retreated back to Marblehead and Boston. 

[Interuption/disruption: in longer narratives of Leslie’s Retreat, a woman named Sarah Tarrant is generally referenced, as she taunted Leslie and his soldiers from her open window. That’s fine, I’m sure Sarah was very brave, but Colonel Mason’s wife Hannah and her two daughters made 5000 FLANNEL CARTRIDGES for the cannon in the preceding month. So I think Hannah Symmes Mason and her daughters Hannah and Susan deserve some glory too.]

John Muller’s authoritative Treatise on Artillery, which Mason no doubt possessed, contains detailed instructions for making cannon cartridges as well as all types of carriages. 

So here are the major factors and forces which transformed Leslie’s Retreat from mere incident to major event: it was a chronological process, of course!

1820s Patriotism. Here in the Boston area, there was clearly some intensifying patriotism focused on the Revolution in the 1820s, the result of a combination of forces, including the upcoming fiftieth aniversary, the visit of General Lafayette, and above all, the movement to commemorate the Battle of Bunker Hill. I was not surprised to see the first public reference to “Col. Leslie’s Retreat” in this decade, though I bet it was a term in use before then. It seems that the loyal citizens of North Salem took matters into their own hands in 1823, and I really would like to see this elaborate staff with an eagle and a bust of George Washington. The Bunker Hill Monument Association was established that same summer, and Lafayette laid the cornerstone for the monument in 1825. It was not completed until 1843, but at the Whig Bunker Hill Convention of 1840, a grand historical parade around the monument-in-progress featured 1200 marchers from Salem bearing a Leslie’s Retreat banner asserting we were the first to defeat our oppression in 1775—we shall be the last to yield to them in 1840.

The Essex Institute. Founded in 1848 and serving as Salem’s de facto historical society until its assimilation into the Peabody Essex Museum in 1992, the Essex Institute commissioned TWO items which are essential to the history, interpretation, and identification of Leslie’s Retreat, Samuel Morse Endicott’s Account of Leslie’s Retreat at the North Bridge in Salem on Sunday Feby’y 26, 1775 (1856) and Lewis Jesse Bridgman’s watercolor of Repulse of Leslie at the  North Bridge (1901). Endicott’s Account became an instant classic and as it was issued in a very nice edition after its first publication in the Collections of the Essex Institute it became even more valuable with age: a brief survey of book auction catalogs from the early twentieth century indicates it was in every gentleman’s library. And as I have written here many times before: it’s difficult to “imprint” anything or anybody in people’s minds without an image, so the Bridgman painting has been equally valuable. It was reproduced everywhere, including as a hugh wall mural donated to Salem High School by the Daughters of the American Revolution, North Bridge Branch, in 1910.

The Civil War. There are numerous “memory” connections between the Revolution and the Civil War, but I think the most important one in Salem’s history is Governor Andrew’s identification of the North Bridge as one of the key places in Massachusetts to fire off a salute in celebration of the ratification of the thirteenth amendment. The bridge had received a new “Liberty Pole” in 1862, so its identification with liberty was pretty established by that time. There’s no question that the North Bridge was a much more hallowed place than it is now: overpasses just don’t conjure up heritage like bridges.

The Big Anniversaries. The years 1875-1876 were similiar to 1975-1976 and 2025-2026, with the convergence of the 100th, 200th and 250th anniversaries of Leslie’s Retreat and the beginning of the American Revolution. “Triumphal arches” were erected on the North Bridge in 1876 and again in 1926, for Salem’s Tercentenary. There were just so many occasions to mark and remember Leslie’s Retreat, and when there wasn’t an occasion, one was made up! The Leslie’s Retreat monument, now under the bridge rather than on it, was erected in 1887, and a quarter of a century later the “Pageant of Salem” dramatized the narrative (as if it wasn’t dramatic enough). I must say, the 1975 reenactment looks like it was really fun.

The 1926 Salem Tercentenary Leslie’s Retreat Float was sponsored by the DAR, North River Branch. Salem State University Archives and Special Collections; Col. Leslie by Racket Shreve in Salem’s wonderful Bicentennial Illustrated Guide Book.

These big anniversaries were important, but they were only highlights in a long history of commemoration: from at least the 1850s, there was some kind of speech or moment recognizing Leslie’s Retreat every year, all through the 1860s, 1870s, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s and 1920s. After that, it’s a bit more occasional, but you can still find references. The longest period where there are the fewest mentions in the press was from the Bicentennial to 2017, when the “First Reenactors” reengaged with the event and its impact. I wonder (not really) how Salem changed during these thirty years? We are certainly not in the period where, as one of the commenters on a previous post asserted, “every 8th grader in Salem had to write a paper on Leslie’s Retreat” for better or for worse. But thanks to those First Reenactors of 2017 (or 2016??? I can’t seem to remember) we are in a much better place for commemorating 1775 than we would be without their efforts, so hat’s off and huzzah to them!

Charlie Newhall, Jonathan Streff & Jeffrey Barz Snell and a BIG crowd in 2017.

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

January 13, 2025

A Bewitching Bicentennial Book

By daseger

Salem has been a tourist city for more than a century, so there has been a succession of guide books spotlighting the city’s landmarks and attractions from their particular chronological perspectives. I think I’ve referenced every guide book here, with the exception of the one I am featuring today: The Illustrated Salem Guide Book. Beyond Witch City, published for the Bicentennial in 1976. If you read all the Salem guides in chronological order, two themes are readily apparent: the increasing commodification of history and creeping witches crowding everything else out. The bicentennial book is an exception to both of these trends: it’s a breath of fresh air, guiding its readers to a more cohesive Salem 1976 rather than just downtown “attractions,” and its “Beyond Witch City” subtitle is accurate. It has wonderful illustrations and writing: the efforts of my neighbor Racket Shreve, a well-known maritime artist, and Robert Murray, respectively. It’s just a very special little book: I really love it. It actually makes me nostalgic for a city I never lived in!

One of the key differences between The Illustrated Salem Guide Book and its predecessors and successors is that it was published by the Salem Bicentennial Commission rather than a tourist agency. So the focus is much more on hospitality and non-profit attractions than salesmanship. As you can see above, it proudly bore the (competition-winning) Bicentennial logo as well as a Samuel McIntire swag on its back cover. Inside, we read that “This Guide Book is intended both as a portrait of Salem—an evocation of Salem, old and new, as well as a practical directory for How, What, Where and When.” The combination of aims makes for a thoughtful and accessible book; in its own words, “practical and irreverent.” This book was only one of Salem’s Bicentennial projects: the Commission also organized Visitor Hospitality Centers (in all of Salem’s churches—staffed by volunteers), the development of Fort Lee & Fort Pickering as natural preserves (1976 must have been the last time anyone paid attention to these sites), work on a Salem bikeway, the reconstruction of Samuel McIntire’s Washington Arch (recently restored), “Operation Sail” focused on the waterfront, and several Salem Symposiums “examining Salem’s Past, Present and Future.” This was a very ambitious and engaging agenda. It’s the evocative mission that I’m the most interested in, and while that quality is probably best illustrated by Racket’s illustrations, Robert Murray’s writing is also essential towards realizing this aim: On Oliver Street, an old clockface, empty of hands, hangs on the coach house behind No. 31, its gold numerals luminous at Noon. Attached to the rear of No. 5, two identical carvied friezes, attached side by side upon a stable wall: a touch of Federal surrealism. Beneath the friezes, a sign: Beware of Dog. Murray is particularly good on the history of Salem’s churches: I learned quite a bit. Racket provides some great illustrations of these buildings, and then they both take us all around Salem–not just to the “pretty” spots.

There’s a lot of Salem pride in this book. I was really happy to see a sentiment that I discovered when I was writing about urban renewal for our forthcoming book: an assertion that Salem had “triumphed” over urban renewal, and transformed all those Federal dollars into an initiative that actually focused on renewal rather than destruction. Murray emphasizes  the “imaginative” choice by the Salem Redevelopment Authority to substitute historic renovation for demolition. Salem has won national recognition for its adaptation of its old glories for its modern needs. This is true, and not appreciated sufficiently. Present-day witch-pitching people spin the story that witchcraft tourism “saved” Salem, but I don’t know, 1976 Salem looks pretty dynamic: all of the Essex Institute houses are open, as is its Phillips Library, there’s an ongoing archaelogical dig at the Narbonne House, “a group of rusty oil tanks huddle together aware that they are disliked and soon to be removed” for Pickering Wharf, Pioneer Village is deemed “an excellent place to begin a study of the evolution of the American home.” There were lots of restaurants: Red’s Sandwich Shop, the Lyceum, the Beef & Oyster House, In a Pig’s Eye, Strombergs, the Gutenberg Press Restaurant & Pub, and more—and if you had a party of six you could have dinner at the Daniel’s House: just phone Mrs. Gill and byob.

This little book succeeds in capturing Salem’s past and present from a 1976 perspective: it is not characterized by sickening sentimentality or boosterism. Salem emerges as a city shaped by its past and being shaped by its present. I wish its author and illustrator would create a Salem guide book now (for the 400th anniversary!), because I think it would be very interesting.

What was lost and what remains—the cement slide at Forest River Park! Below, the guide’s map and Racket’s Hamilton Hall Antique Show (a benefit for the then-Peabody Museum of Salem) covers.

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

September 16, 2024

The Salem City Seal

By daseger

Last week, the Salem City Seal was an agenda item for a meeting of our City Council: apparently there are concerns about its representation and plans for its replacement. I don’t know much more than that, as I wasn’t able to attend the Council meeting or any of the previous subcommittee meetings that have brought us to this point. The Council sent the matter to another subcommittee, I believe, so hopefully a public process of deliberation will ensue. I do think it is appropriate and even useful for a community to reconsider past representations on seals, statues, and other expressions of collective heritage or identity, as long as those conversations are public, so I’m hoping to contextualize this discussion a bit. I’m also kind of curious about the history and reception of our city seal myself, as it always struck me as rather unusual. So I spent a few hours this past weekend digging into some primary and secondary sources—certainly not long enough! What follows is certainly an impressionistic history and a work in progress, but first, here IT is:

So as you can see, there are some variations of this image. The first seal is the official one, which I have taken from the city’s website, and it is accompanied by this description:

The City Seal was adopted as the insignia of the City in March 1839, three years after Salem was incorporated as a City and 213 years after its founding. The Seal depicts a ship under full sail approaching a coastal land in the East Indies. A native inhabitant in traditional garb stands in the middle, surrounded by plants of the region. A dove sits atop the scene, with an olive branch in its mouth. The City motto, “Divitis Indiae usque ad ultimum sinum” – “To the farthest port of the rich East” – is below. The Seal is ringed by the incorporation dates of both the Town of Salem, 1626, and the City of Salem, 1836.

The second seal is also from City Hall: I think it’s the watercolor image produced by Salem artist Ross Turner but the city’s art inventory is not very descriptive. An article in the Beverly Citizen from the spring of 1888 informs us that “Mr. Ross Turner, the artist, has made an interesting and handsome study of the city seal of Salem, designed half a century ago by Colonel George Peobody, who is still living. Mr. Turner adheres to the original design, which has suffered a great deal at the hands of engravers and others.” The third and fourth images are from a pediment carved for the President of State Street Bank which came up at auction a few years ago and the last is from a really fun book, Town and City Seals of Massachusetts by Allan Forbes and Ralph Eastman, which was published in 1950. If you browse through this last book, it’s immediately apparent how unusual the Salem seal is: it’s the only one recognizing a foreign identity and region as integral to the history of the city/town. Every other seal has a recognizable landmark or person or industry from that place—there are quite a few ships but Salem’s is the only one on the other side of the globe! I think it’s one of the oldest seals in the book, too: Massachusetts called for every town and city to come up with a seal only in 1899, when Salem’s was recognized as “ancient.”

The designer of the original seal in the 1830s was George Peabody, son of the wealthiest pepper trader in Salem, Joseph Peabody, and a city alderman. There were deliberations before its acceptance and commission, LOTS of deliberations due to “diversity of opinion”: you can read all about them in the March 1866 volume of the Historical Collections of the Essex Institute. There seems to have been universal agreement that the seal was to represent two things: Salem’s unrivalled prosperity and Salem as City of Peace. Given Peabody’s background, it’s understandable that he chose to depict the personage of a distinctly East Indian man from the Aceh province of Sumatra rather than a more generic “Eastern” figure: this region was the source of the pepper which had enabled Salem’s commercial ascendancy. Joseph Peabody alone is credited with 61 voyages (6.3% ot the total trade)  to Sumatra alone from 1802-1844, and 100 voyages (or 10%) with his son-in-law John Lowell Gardner): this was the family business. The pepper trade was also Salem’s major business between 1799 and 1846, with 179 ships engaged on multiple voyages. The 1866 account of the Salem seal’s approval concluded that “it was her shipping, fitly typified by this design, carrying the fame of her merchants as well as the flag of the country into unknown  areas, that made her name in the first half of this century, a synonym for commercial honor, enterprise and success, throughout the other hemisphere as well as this.”  The second theme of the seal, peace, symbolized by the dove bearing an olive branch, is a bit more of a tough sell in this specific historical context, given the fact that the 1830s was the decade which saw two U.S. military interventions in Sumatra in retaliation for native attacks on American shipping. The connection between peace and commercial prosperity was often emphasized in early nineteenth century newspaper accounts as it was very clear to everyone that Salem’s era of prosperity began after the American Revolution. The pepper trade had been a dangerous one from its beginnings at the turn of the century, but the 1831 attack on the Salem ship Friendship certainly brought things to a head with the first Sumatram intervention, often referred to as the “Battle of Qualah Battoo” (now Kuala Batee) in the following year. The broadside below (from the Phillips Library’s digitized collection) is representative of the “war fever” of the era, but it was printed in Portland, Maine rather than Salem. The Salem accounts are a little less “patriotic” and a lot more detailed: they note the precise number and names of those who were killed or wounded (five and six rather than “all”), everything that was taken, and call for restitution.

George Peabody’s seal was designed a mere four or five years after this engagement, and both his family and his city wanted to continue this valuable trade. When I look at this solitary Sumatran, I tend to identify him with Peabody family friend Po Adam, a local dignitary who warned the Americans about the coming attack on the Friendship and helped them recover their ship. This was a sacrifice on his part: he wrote to Joseph Peabody afterwards that his acts had earned him the “hatred and vengeance of my misguided countrymen” and that “the last of my property was set on fire and destroyed, and now, for having been the steadfast friend of the Americans, I am not only destitute, but an object of derision.” This identification is only conjecture on my part, but the original figure on the Salem seal was certainly more respectful recreation than stereotypical figure. The connection between Sumatra and Salem endured through the nineteenth century into the twentieth, even into the twenty-first. It was referenced in regard to the new (well not really) heritage trail or “yellow line” just a few years ago, and much more significantly after the terrible 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean, when relief efforts on the North Shore were organized in deference to the “old ties” between Massachusetts and Sumatra. Almost 20 years later, it seems like these ties are broken, or about to be.

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