A whirlwind of a week! Or should I say a rollercoaster, from my personal perspective. Against the backdrop of finishing the semester, grading and graduation was Salem’s special mayoral election, as our previous Mayor ascended (?) to the office of Lieutenant Governor in last fall’s election. The first new Mayor in 17 years: an exciting and momentous occasion, especially given all that’s happened over those years, particularly the intensification of both development and Haunted Happenings. I was with the candidate who expressed some concerns about both trends, and he lost to the candidate who served as our former mayor’s right-hand man, so I assume that both trends will continue unabated. A disappointing outcome for me, but not nearly as disappointing as the turnout: a miserable 28% of the electorate. Both candidates were out there, there was was spirited debate, and signs everywhere, but as they say, signs don’t vote, and neither did the vast majority of Salem people. So I had a day to process that disheartening development, and then the clouds cleared when my co-editor and I received word that Temple University Press was extending a contract to us for our proposed book on Salem history tentatively titled Salem’s Centuries: New Perspectives on the History of an Old American City, 1626-2026! This is a project we put together for Salem’s coming 400th anniversary in 2026, and I couldn’t be more pleased and excited that it will materialize.
As soon as you know you’re going to get a book published, you think about the cover! Or at least I do. One of the major reasons I started blogging is my interest in historical imagery: I’m always matching words and pictures in my head. I’ve always liked past and present blended photographs, so I made one for our big announcement, but my co-editor and colleague Brad Austin chose a crop of Salem artist George Ropes’ Salem Common on Training Day (Peabody Essex Museum) for our proposal image. I love this painting too, but I think it’s been used too much over the last decade so I’d like to find something else for our cover: I have a digital file of all my favorite Salem images and I’m sure I’ll be creating various compilations, collages and compositions over the next year or so, particularly when I’m struggling to write! I also welcome all suggestions. Whatever we choose will need to feature Salem people, as our book is first and foremost a social history of Salem: early Salem settlers and those who lived on the land before it became Salem, traders, farmers, and the accused and the enslaved, soldiers from Salem who served in the Revolutionary, Civil, and World Wars, entrepreneurs and privateers, Salem expats in the East, Salem families, Salem African-Americans, Irish-Americans, Polish-Americans, Italian-Americans, French Canadian-Americans and Hispanic-Americans, Salem antiquarians and reformers, Salem students, Salem men and Salem women, as individuals and as members of the community, the parish, and the neighborhood. Another photograph which we featured in our proposal was of the dedication ceremony for the “Mourning Victory” statue erected in Lafayette Square in 1947 to honor the men and women of St. Joseph’s Parish who served in both World War I and World War II. Contrast this with a more recent photograph of the crowd at the dedication (I think that’s the wrong word)/ revealing of the Bewitched statue in June of 2005: what a difference! Unity and division, service and entertainment, but both Salem.
The dedication of “Mourning Victory” in September 1947; the unveiling of the Bewitched statue in Town House Square, photograph from the June 16, 2005 edition of the Lynn Daily Item.
I plan to write the concluding chapter of Salem’s Centuries on the evolution of the square in which Samantha stands, formally known as Town House Square as this is where Salem’s first meeting house was built as well as the site of other notable buildings, from the seventeenth century to the present. I’m also writing several other chapters, as well as the introduction with my colleague and co-editor Brad Austin, but the remaining chapters will be written by our colleagues at Salem State (and also several of our grad students who have gone on to Ph.D. programs) according to their fields and expertise. We have an amazing department: we’ve been together for a while and we have a very united front when it comes to teaching and our role in the university, but we also have very different research fields so this project represents a unique opportunity to work together. This makes me very happy, and you should be happy too, dear readers, especially those of you who have been following along for a while, because the strident, snippy and snarky writer of recent years, clearly and consistently frustrated by the state of historical affairs in Salem, will retreat! The reason that I have been so frustrated with Salem’s arbitrary heritage initiatives is their inability to engage: both the past in meaningful ways, and the public in representative ways. Select committees of “stakeholders” (one of our former Mayor’s favorite words, along with “hip”) responded to the Peabody Essex Museum’s removal of Salem primary historical resource and repository, the Phillips Library, oversaw a plan (with some very expensive consultants) to move Salem’s Colonial Revival Pioneer Village, beloved by many people in our city) to Salem Willows, plotted out Salem’s “new” Heritage Trail, and are currently planning Salem’s 400th anniversary celebrations. I have learned that there’s no way to penetrate the structure of these select stakeholder committees, so I’m delighted that I will be engaged in a more constructive activity from now on. I do wonder if this restricted access to civic heritage, along with its commodification, has had some impact on declining civic engagement in Salem? I think that question is beyond the bounds of our book, but it’s something to consider.
I tried! It’s great that we have Remond Park, but there’s no association of place and the sign is incorrect: a “large population of African Americans” did not live in the vicinity; I can’t find one African-American resident of this neighborhood. I presented my evidence to the powers that be years ago: no response– the inclusive moment had passed. There ARE two Salem neighborhoods which were quite cohesive in terms of African-American communities at different times in the nineteenth century: neither are recognized by the City, and one is in imminent danger of being overshadowed and overwhelmed by a proposed over-sized development. We will have several chapters on Salem’s African-American history in the Salem’s Centuries and some smaller pieces too: we’ve got an interesting format which will feature longer academic chapters and shorter topical “interludes” which we hope will attract a range of readers.
A very typical 1770s shipping report in the Essex Gazette; of course the destinations listed point to the intersection of the fish and slave trades in the Atlantic system; Advertisements from the Salem Gazette, and a “Bilbao Mirror” from Bonhams Skinner. I should say that the only references that I found for “Bilbao caps” in the pre-revolutionary newspapers were in runaway slave advertisements.
Two recent titles, including a stirring study of the namesake of Galveston, Texas, Bernardo de Gálvez; Diego de Gardoqui, Ca 1785. Courtesy Family Cano Gardoqui.
Top: Nowland Van Powell’s depiction of Captain Haraden’s engagement with the Achilles, which had stolen his prize, the Golden Eagle, off Bilbao, Eldred’s Auctions.
So, much of this seems fine, certainly the themes are great (more on them below), and the criteria professional. I’m having some difficulty envisioning the logistics of the vetting process, but will leave that to the experts. What does concern me, however, is the disassociation of “site” and “building” as referenced in #3 on. As you see in my graphic above, the Salem Witch Museum, the most profitable of the for-profits, is referred to as the former East Church, which is presumably how it made the cut. Why the East Church is deemed “historic” is beyond me, aside from its imposing Gothic Revival style: certainly it is no more historic than the nearby houses of ultra-philanthropist George Peabody and Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, or the birthplace of the illustrious Benson brothers across the Common. When I asked why and how the Salem Witch Dungeon Museum, also located in a former church (built by the Christian Scientists and not the East Church parishioners), was included on the trail, I got this response from the Executive Director of Destination Salem: The Witch Dungeon Museum and Lynde Street are the site of early fortifications. English settlers knew that their presence in Salem immersed them in a web of global conflicts. Fearing reprisals from the indigenous people they were displacing and attacks from other colonial powers, the colony of Massachusetts erected a fort near this spot in 1629. Samuel Sharpe came from London with cannons to assume command of the militia. The first fort was probably made of tall wooden palisades, with extensions jutting out to prevent flanking. In the following decades, further fortifications were built along the Salem coast and a palisade was built along the western end of town. The early, feared attacks never happened. The East Church built a chapel on Lynde Street in 1897 and The Witch Dungeon Museum opened in the building in 1979. Visitors can watch a live-action reenactment of a witch trial and tour a recreation of the grim prison where the accused were kept. So basically: because a long-gone fort was once on the site of the Salem Witch Dungeon Museum, it qualifies for the trail? I don’t think I need to spend too long discussing the implications of this “standard.” In a city as old as Salem, every structure downtown was built on the site of something else: there are layers and layers and layers. The Witch Dungeon Museum’s storefront sister “museum” on venerable Essex Street, the Salem Witch History Museum, could claim that it sits on the site of Salem’s first printing house or any number of historic structures and thus qualify for the new Heritage Trail. Perhaps the cumulative criteria above could mitigate against this, but it does not appear to have done so with the Salem Witch Dungeon Museum: I think we need to be honest about where we are leading people—and why.
Mannequin City: mid-20th century interpretive “technology” reigns in Salem’s for-profit witch “museums” which have no incentive to innovate, as the City delivers visitors right to their doors; Witch Dungeon Museum hanging mannequins.
Salem tourism brochures from the 1950s through the 1980s: not until the last decade was the Heritage Trail restricted to downtown and the “story” increasingly restricted to witches. Love the sentiment of “traveling through history in Salem.”
Higginson Square, 1893, Nelson Dionne History Collection, Salem State Archives and Special Collections. A big flatiron to highlight Asheville’s Flatiron building. It begs the question: no Parker Brothers site for Salem’s new Heritage Trail?
Anchor from the Queen Anne’s Revenge, whose wreck was discovered in 1996. The Queen Anne’s Revenge 
A REAL Anchor.
