Tag Archives: public history

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 21, 2024

History is Gray

By daseger

For the past month or so, I’ve been considering the case of the Salem City Seal and various reactions to it. In the past, before last month, I’ve probably thought about the seal for 5 minutes; over the last month, I’ve been thinking about it for many hours—too many, certainly. If you haven’t read my previous posts, here is what happened, succinctly: several members of the Salem community complained that the seal, with its depiction of a Sumatran man, pepper plants, and Salem ship, was stereoptypical and insulting to Asian-Americans. Their condern and complaint was brought to the city’s Race Equity Commission, which had deliberations over the summer and concluded that “damage had been done” and the seal should be redesigned. The Race Equity Commission reported this finding to a subcommittee of the Salem City Council which concurred (I think), but somewhere in the process someone stepped in and suggested a public task force to add some transparency and public comment to what had heretofore been quite a closed process—I think at best 40 people knew that our circa 1839 seal was deemed suspect in a city of over 40,000.  And this is what the City Council finally voted on: the creation of a task force which will sit for 18 months and hear public testimony and garner historical perspectives. So that’s where we are and I think that’s a good place, in theory. In practice, I have my concerns, because I’m just not sure those in positions of authority have the capacity to grasp historical perspectives, frankly. In the Salem of my experience, every single public history issue has been black and white, villains vs. heroes, the powerful and the powerless, with an overcast of green, for money. Nothing is nuanced, multi-causal, two-dimensional, or gray, and that’s a problem, because most of history is gray. Salem has been without a professional historical society for a long time, and it shows.

 

Salem Stereotypes: Seal and Patch

My first concern about how this whole process will play out relates to stereotypes. The original accusation against the seal was that it represents a generic “oriental” stereotype. I can understand that, at face value. But before I gave the seal much thought, I always thought it was really cool for its cosmopolitan character, depicting a ship over there rather than in Salem Harbor. So I sent a note to our city councillors asking them to consider the very global nature of this very early civic symbol. About half wrote back, all but one branding the seal’s figure a stereotype. This got my dander up as it indicated a general closed-mindedness before we had even delved into the matter, and of course I couldn’t help but think about the certain stereotype which is everywhere in the Witch City. Wasn’t this a hypocritical position on the part of our Councilors, given that there is a crone-like character with a pointy hat riding on a broomstick on all of our police cars? And you know, people died who were not witches. (Edit: a city councillor informed that the City Council does not approve “mascots,” only the seal, so the omnipresent witch is not under their jurisdiction—I have to say that it’s not particularly uplifting to know that the Salem schools would choose the witch as their “mascot”).  No matter—there’s really no questioning this particular stereotype, and no constituency for its removal. The historical record regarding the intended depiction of the city seal’s character is pretty clear: he was supposed to be from the specific part of Sumatra (Aceh) which grew the pepper which was so sought after by Salem ship captains and merchants. He did look vaguely Asian to me except for the hat—the hat was a little different and a little distinctive and I thought I had seen it before. And then I remembered: Theodor de Bry, a Dutch engraver and publisher who specialized in depicting and disseminating images of “new” people as Europe intensified its voyages of expansion and conquest in the early modern era. Below is a 1599 engraving by de Bry’s son, and an image from nearly three centuries later of a group of Aceh men during the brutal Aceh War with the Dutch. Same hat, right? But again, it doesn’t matter:even if Salem’s seal features a unique provincial figure and not a general stereotype, if people label it as the latter it becomes one. There’s only so much history can do.

J.T. de Bry, Inhabitants of Sumatra, 1599, Bartele Gallery; Aceh envoys seeking British support against the Dutch in the Aceh War, 1873, Bridgman Images.

 

The “enormous condescension of posterity”.

George Peabody, Salem alderman and son of Joseph Peabody, one of the city’s wealthiest merchants, chaired the committee that designed the seal following the adoption of a new city charter in 1836. As a Sumatra trader himself, Peabody had familiarity with Aceh and its people, but again, I’m not sure this really matters. As expressed by public opinion, it seems to me that those for a complete redesign of the seal and against are rather equally divided, but last week a long column was published in the Salem News which condemned support of the Sumatran image as “toxic nostalgia.” It’s a well-written piece, so it commanded my attention, as did its almost-complete ahistorical argument: it’s an excellent example of labor historian E.P. Thompson’s famous quote, “the enormous condescention of posterity.” According to the author, “regardless of what the seal was meant to celebrate, it must be acknowledged that George Peabody was a product of his times and that the seal he designed reflects a lot of the imagery that came to be associated with western notions of superiority over eastern peoples.” Coincidental with the adoption of the seal in 1839 was the beginning of the shameful Opium Wars instigated by Great Britain upon a weak China, and as “some American merchants (including no doubt some from Salem) did engage in the Opium Trade and benefitted from the British actions in China” we should reject the seal on the basis of this connection? Are we also to reject the East Asian collections of the Peabody Essex Museum, all the Federal Salem houses built with fortunes made by pepper and spices, and the navigational expertise of Nathaniel Bowditch, whose miraculous return from Sumatra in 1803 made The New Practical American Navigator authoritative? Are we to reject anybody who had anything to say in 1839 and just wallow around in the progressive present? If so, it’s going to be a bit difficult to learn from the past. George Peabody’s time seems far less toxic to me than later in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and its extensions unleashed a cascade of anti-Asian vitriol in the United States, and we should all note that one of Salem’s most famous native sons, Joseph Hodge Choate, argued against the Act before the Supreme Court in 1893.

 

 

History is not cherry-picking.

Proponents of the seal tend to talk about “history-erasing” and its critics focus overwhelmingly on the violence which characterized the trade with Sumatra, which led to two US interventions after American ships were attacked by Malay pirates. Indeed, it’s not a pretty picture, but history seldom is. It is certainly not true that it was a one-way trade imposed upon the Acehnese: American ships brought a lot of silver over there. I’ve been reading as much scholarship as possible since this seal business began, and last week Anthony Guidone, an assistant professor at Radford University in Virginia, forwarded me his dissertion, “The Empire’s City: a Global History of Salem, Massachusetts, 1783-1820” (George Mason, 2023). It’s a detailed interdisciplinary study: I hope it gets published soon so everyone can read it. Guidone gives us the complete picture of Salem’s first global age: the black and the white, and lots of gray. Trade with Asia brought great wealth to Salem but also intensified its connections with slavery and the plantation economy in the Caribbean. But at the same time, it also benefitted a much wider slice of Salem’s population than I had realized, including African Americans and women, and facilitated the creation of a diverse community of sailors (he makes great use of the Salem Crew Lists 1799-1879 at the Mystic Seaport Museum, a great resource). In summary, Salem’s trade with Asia impacted “nearly all aspects of life in the town, changing Salem’s economy, politics, race relations, material culture, civic identity, and historical memory.” Whew! Even though the dissertation ends in 1820, Guidone expands it a bit further to discuss Salem’s anniversary moments in the next decades and the adoption of the city seal. He sees the commemorative focus on commerce by newish institutions such as the East India Marine Society and the Essex Historical Society as evidence of the desire to “construct a narrative that posed an alternative to the town’s witch-hunting past” even as (or because of ???) encroaching commercial decline. I agree completely: members of these institutions tended to identify the witch trials as a “stain” rather than an opportunity and waved no witch flags. How backward they were!

I’ve got to admit, Paul Revere’s first Massachusetts seal from 1775 is my favorite, even though its central figure cuts a rather simplistic figure.

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September 23, 2024

Salem Can’t Lose Sumatra

By daseger

I’m still thinking and reading about Salem’s endangered city seal, so this is Part II of last week’s post. I promise there will be no part III (at least for a while) as I think I have resolved my feelings about this little scrap of paper, wood, or metal, which links past and present in very interesting ways. My present stance is: Salem can’t lose Sumatra. Let me first recap the issue and bring us up to date, as I was a bit sketchy in last week’s post about how we got here. Certain members of the Salem community find the figure on the 1839 seal, representing an early 19th century dignitary from the Aceh Province of Sumatra, offensive, and appealed to the city’s Race Equity Commission. This commission approved a recommendation to the City Council to redesign the seal unaminously in August. I don’t think there was any public awareness of this issue at the time (or much now, although there was an article in the Salem News last week). Thankfully, somewhere between the Race Equity Commission and the City Council emerged the idea of a task force, I think from the Mayor’s office, and that is what the City Council will be voting on this week. I am grateful that a public process is being considered, although I have yet to ascertain whether the task force will be a true gauge of public opinion or a rubber stamp.

I believe that this seal is unique in its provincial (vs. generic “oriental”) depiction and its global perspective for reasons I laid out in last week’s post. I subscribe to my former colleagues Dane Morrison’s and Nancy Schultz’s assertion that the aged Salem City Seal can still represent a relatively new cosmopolitanism in American Studies, as outlined in the preface to their authoritative volume on Salem history, Salem: Place, Myth and Memory. 

      “After Salem was incorporated in 1836, 210 years after its founding, the community imagined by city leaders was a much more globally connected entity than conventional histories have depicted. They called for a city motto, Divitis Indiae usque ad ultimum sinum—“To the farthest ports of the rich East”—that served as a reminder of Salem’s intimate connections with the trade of China, India, and Sumatra, the pepper-rich island in the South Pacific. The city council commissioned a design by pepper ship owner George Peabody to represent Salem’s global connections. It portrays an Atjehnese man, surrounded by palm trees and a pepper plant, holding a parasol to shade himself from the hot Sumatran sun, and wearing traditional attire—a flat red turban, red trousers and belt, a yellow kneelength robe, and a blue jacket—common to the Atjeh province of the island. In the background, a Salem vessel, with sails unfurled, navigates the harbor. Filling out the emblem are compass rose motifs and the image of a dove bearing an olive branch. The Salem City Seal may be read as text that illustrates this new direction in American Studies, offering a fresh way to envision cannections, not just between the local and the national, but also among the local, national, and global.”

Dane’s and Nancy’s preface, which is part of their instruction for students and teachers, instructed me to investigate the American meaning of the Salem-Sumatra connection, and boy did I find a lot! (and I’m sure there’s a lot more, but I actually have to work—when I found myself in the digital archives of the State Department at 2:00 in the morning I made myself stop). There are a lot of well-known facts: Sumatran-supplied pepper made Salem the 6th largest city in the US and its import duties 5% of the nation’s gross revenues, for example. There’s also well-known lore: so many Salem ships plied the Sumatran coast that the island’s residents thought SALEM was a country. But there’s much more. In 1905, the Merchant Marine Commission released a report to Congress with a striking summary statement that “only 10% of our vast seaborne commerce is now conducted in American ships” and a comparison from a century earlier, when that percentage was 91%. In the syndicated news stories that followed, published in newspapers across the country, Salem represented the earlier golden age of commerce when her pepper ships ruled the seas and transformed both the city and the nation. All of these stories featured the “romantic” narrative of Salem’s pepperdom, but they were also looking for lessons from the past—and equating Salem’s pepper ships with America’s merchant marine.

Then there are a succession of presidential references to Salem’s pepper trade and traders: daring free agents in a world of expanding European empires. This was the party line of presidents as diverse as James Monroe, Andrew Jackson (of course, he was very proud of his naval intervention in retaliation for a native attack on a Salem ship), Franklin Pierce, Zachary Taylor, William McKinley (a big jump!), Franklin Roosevelt, and most of all, John F. Kennedy. Kennedy clearly loved the Salem-Sumatra story: he referenced it when President Sukarno of Indonesia visited the US in 1961 and whenever he happened to be in a town or city called Salem.

Then-Senator Kennedy identified the image as an “Indian,” indicating that the Seal’s figure did not have an localized identification then as well as now. But the emphasis on “people of courage” still rings true, I think. His different Salem variations are interesting, but they all go back to Salem, Massachusetts, the connecting link between east and all the different wests. It would be so sad to lose this Salem, to a sanitized version of a witch’s hat (!!!!) or even the Custom House. We would be going back, I think, back to the provincial and away from the worldly. I am not of Asian descent, nor am I a politician or a human resources professional or a graphic designer so I have none of those perspectives: this is just one historian’s view: Salem can’t lose Sumatra.

P.S. I’ve had a lot of emails and read comments elsewhere…..yes, I too am struck by our city government’s lack of awareness about the contradiction between the perceived stereotype of the Sumatran city seal and the obvious stereoptype of the Witch, Salem’s other official city seal (or patch?), and plan to write about this in a future post. Every single Witch Trial descendant who I know or have heard from is offended by this image, but their outrage, our outrage, has no representation or redress.

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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.

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May 20, 2024

Streetscape and Memory

By daseger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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March 20, 2024

The Grass is Greener

By daseger

I’m home now from my spring break road trip, so this is part two: the way home. Looking through my photographs, all I could think of was green. You know I’m a die-hard New Englander, but the mid-atlantic and southern states simply have better springs, period. All is green rather than brown. We’ll get that green, but it won’t be for a while. Picking up where I left off with my last post, I drove south from Mount Vernon into Virginia, stopping at Fredericksburg, Richmond, Williamsburg and Yorktown before turning north towards home. I was still following my George Washington route, and Fredericksburg is really GW-central, with his childhood, mother’s and sister’s home located there, as well as his brother’s house, which is now a tavern. Everything was great, Fredericksburg is a really nice town, but the world kind of slowed down for me when I walked through the doors of Kenmore, the house of his sister and her family. It immediately became my favorite house, displacing Gardner-Pingree here in Salem and last year’s spring break highlight, the Read House in New Castle, Delaware. I’m never loyal, there’s always a new favorite house around the corner, but wow, this 177os house is something: it experienced the typical Colonial Revival restoration and then a later one and is primarily known for its elaborately-designed stucco ceilings, crafted by the same anonymous “Stucco Man” (presumably an enslaved or indentured servant) who worked on Mount Vernon.

It’s quite a house, representing a significant investment of money and labor. Betsy Washington Lewis (pictured in this last photo) and her husband Fielding were both patriots and slaveowners, representing and presenting the typical Virginia conundrum. The interpretation at Kenmore emphasizes both aspects of its owners’ lives, including the financial hardships incurred by their contributions to the cause and the life and work of the over 130 enslaved persons who inhabited the Lewis plantation. The Civil War experience of what was once a working plantation but now seems like a stately townhouse in the midst of Fredericksburg, presents another dichotomy: that beautiful dining room pictured above served as a surgery and there are both Union and Confederate cannonballs embedded in its brick exterior.

I spent so much time at Kenmore that I slighted the rest of charming Fredericksburg, which seemed to me like a perfect town for tourists and residents alike—-I didn’t get to the Civil War history or even to the James Monroe Museum, went quickly through Mary Washington’s house (much more humble than that of her daughter’s, the charming garden is above) and then I was off to see my sisters-in-law in Richmond. The following day was the best: Richmond really has it all for the heritage tourist. First off, it is a city that has made a thoughful and engaging (and likely expensive) commitment to public history: only Arthur Ashe remains on Monument Avenue and on the waterfront, adjacent to the new American Civil War Museum, is a poignant statue commemorating emancipation as well as a creative installation on the fall of Richmond in April of 1865 on a bridge/dam walk across the James River. There are well-marked heritage trails within the historic districts of the city, and mansions outside. And the Poe Museum, located in a cluster of buildings which include Richmond’s oldest house! You really can have it all. We went to an amazing performance (??? lecture??? I wouldn’t call it a tour) at St. John’s Episcopal Church, where Patrick Henry gave his give me liberty or give me death speech, and now I am a complete Henry fan.

Richmond! Brown’s Island, Liberty Trail, Agecroft Hall and the Virginia House, Poe Museum.

In my last few days, I drove down to Surry, Virginia to see Bacon’s Castle, a very rare and beautifully restored Jacobean plantation house with outbuildings (including an 1830 slave dwelling) and gardens: this was a nice tidewater comparison to the Sotterly plantation I had seen in Maryland just days before. Then if was across the river (by ferry!) to Williamsburg and Yorktown, to finish the George Washington tour. I had been to both places before, so no surprises, but I was trying to look at all of the places that I visited on this trip (my Jersey stops, Annapolis, Alexandria, as well as Fredericksburg and Richmond) as more of a tourist than an historian, so that I could try to look at Salem the same way and perhaps become a bit more comfortable with its evolution into a year-round tourist destination. Could smooth brick sidewalks, plentiful public bathrooms and parking, a diverse array of shops, and aesthetic and informative signage be in our future? Fixed-in-time Colonial Williamsburg is certainly an unrealistic and unfair comparison, but there were more robust tourist infrastructures nearly everwhere I went.

Bacon’s Castle, the Nelson House at Yorktown and Whythe House in Williamsburg on Palace Green, where General Washington was headquartered before Yorktown. Dream garden—ready to go.

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February 6, 2024

History by Hancock

By daseger

I’m always attracted to mid-century messaging; advertising seems to explode around that time and much of it reflects contemporary society, for better or worse. I came across some “historical” ads by John Hancock Insurance a couple of years ago, and since then have been assembling a small “collection.” These full-page ads ran in national magazines from the 1940s to the early 1960s, and while they start with the traditional founding fathers they also include a range of historical figures representing technology and innovation (first and foremost), sports and entertainment, industry and agriculture, literature, medicine, explorers, presidents. Most of the ads feature real people, but there are also some fictional representatives of certain essential services: roadbuilders, nurses, small shopowners, judges and juries, ministers, teachers, “John Smith,” the minuteman who answered Paul Revere’s call, the oil men who “freed black sunshine from an ancient dungeon,” fallen soldiers and reporters. We can easily ascertain what’s important in terms of values and accomplishments by those featured and their captioned roles, past and present. It’s unfortunate that there are very few women (Clara Barton, Amelia Earhart, an anonymous teacher and nurse), and NO minorities that I could find. Some of the men featured are new-to-me and seem a bit obscure from my perspective. Elizur Wright, Massachusetts insurance commissioner, really? (close to home for the John Hancock, I guess). The captions and stories seem to indicate that all of these people saved democracy in their very different ways: we need them now!

P.S. There are a couple of Salem-related ads: Hawthorne in an early black-and-white variation, Alexander Graham Bell (above) and Nathaniel Bowditch, who is not featured as himself but rather as a salty sea captain who is in debt to him. 

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January 1, 2024

2024: the Anniversary Year

By daseger

Happy New Year! I’m a firm believer in “anniversary history” and I like to start out the new year previewing (or guessing) what commemorations we might see. This past year was a busy one with the 400th anniversary of two major ports in our area, Gloucester and Portsmouth, as well as Rye and Dover, New Hampshire. I was really impressed with Gloucester’s year-long commemoration, especially its 400 Stories project, which will be a lasting legacy. Salem’s 400th is coming up in 2026, and I’ve been working on a book though all of last year and part of 2022 for that big anniversary: I’m handing it off to the publisher this month and eager to work on some other projects. 2024 looks a bit quiet in comparison with some other years but I’m sure there will be several Revolution 250 events. Salem was very much the center of the action in 1774 so I hope our city can rise to the occasion. Here’s where I think/know/hope we will see some reflective/commemorative activity:

Indigenous History: It seems to0 large a concurrence to me to have the 100th anniversary of Indian Citizenship Act occur in 1924 and the 200th anniversary of the establishment of the Bureau of Indian Affairs not to have a major reflective moment, especially given the current and intensifying historiographical interest in Native American history. We certainly need one (or two or three or…….) moments of reflection. Again, NOT an American historian, so a bit shocked that unqualified citizenship was not granted to Native Americans until 1924 (actually, I don’t think I can use the word unqualified) and their voting rights were still challenged after that!

Essay on citizenship by a student at the Leech Lake Indian School, 1917-1920, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Record Group 75. “the ones who steal or TELL LIES are not good citizens.” (capitalization mine)

Winter Olympics (on a much lighter note): the first Winter Olympics was held in 1924 in Chamonix, France, and in the following year the International Olympic Committee voted to make it a regular event every four years. Now of course the summer and winter Olympics are staggered, and as this summer’s games are in Paris I think there will be some kind of recognition of the centennial from a cultural and/or French perspective.

Courtesy Swann Auctions

Impressionism: Speaking of France, the first impressionist exhibition happened in Paris in 1874, and this cultural watershed will be marked with a major exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay that will travel to the US later in the year. 130 works will be featured, including paintings by Monet, Renoir, Degas, Morisot, Pissarro, Sisley and Cézanne and some of their lesser-known contemporaries, as well as an “immersive expedition in virtual reality” entitled “Tonight with the Impressionists.” Looking over all the previews for this commemoration, I realize that I’ve never appreciate how radical the Impressionist movement was—looking forward to this spring.

Claude Monet, Impression, soleil levant (détail), 1872-1873, musée Marmottan Monet, Paris © RMN-Grand Palais

Lafayette’s American Tour: Moving back 50 years to another big French cultural moment, but an even bigger American one: Lafayette’s tour of the United States in 1824. I know that this bicentennial will be big, as there are several initiatives which have been in the planning stages for quite some time. A “Lafayette Trail”, signalled by red, blue and white markers erected in many of the towns and cities he visited—over 40 in New England alone—has been created, and  Lafayette 200 has coordinated hundreds of events to commemorate the General’s tour. You can check out all the events here: the kick-off is in August, the month in which Lafayette arrived. He visited Salem, Beverly and Ipswich on August 31, and it looks like Historic Beverly will be sponsoring an event on that day.
























Salem as center of pre-Revolutionary activity: 1774 was a big year for Salem in terms of Revolutionary activity. Royal Governor Thomas Gage moved the location of the Massachusetts General Court from Boston to Salem, where he hoped it would be “more inclined to comply with the King’s Expectations,” in June but compliance was not forthcoming. Not at all.  The Salem assembly would not comply or even be disbanded after Gage’s order, instead resolving to endorse “a meeting of Committees, from the several Colonies on this Continent … to consult upon the present state of the Colo¬ nies, and the miseries, to which they are, and must be reduced, by the operation of certain Acts of Parliament respecting America ; and to deliberate and determine upon wise and proper measures to be by them recommended to all the Colonies, for the recovery and establishment of their just rights and liberties.” This “meeting of Committees” became known as the Continental Congress. Later in the summer, after Gage prohibited town meetings without his prior approval, Salem held one which drew over 3000 attendees, and in the fall a Salem “tea party” on October 3 was followed by a de facto declaration of independence. After yet another Gage cancellation, of a meeting of the Massachusetts General Court, its members met anyway on October 5 and voted “to resolve themselves into a Provincial Congress” which was not answerable to London.



























				

				

				

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						May 19, 2023					
				

				
Some Salem News and Views

				

					By daseger				

				

					
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.

				

				

				

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						April 25, 2023					
				

				
The Aesthetics of Ancestry

				

					By daseger				

				

					
I’m still simmering with anger and frustration over Salem’s “new” “Heritage” trail, confined to the downtown, anchored by commercial establishments presenting the sad tale of 1692 with pathetic mannequins which inspire laughter rather than learning, marked by a line of yellow paint applied in an egalitarian manner to both new concrete and old brick. All of my original objections are still standing, but they’ve had almost a year to fester. I’ve lost faith in so many people and institutions: city councillors, various public officials, even fellow historians and organizations which I thought were committed to the preservation and presentation of Salem’s rich heritage. I don’t see any understanding of what heritage tourism is in the realm of official or quasi-official Salem, much less any desire to follow its path. Indeed I wonder what heritage means to the people who have put together this heritage trail.






The words in the graphics above illustrate my concerns: a recent review of one of the two commercial institutions featured on the trail, the Salem Witch Museum, and some definitions of heritage by the Center for Heritage & Society at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. I find the review to be very representative of those that the Salem Witch Museum has received, but of course, I am biased. There are certainly much better reviews, and there are also those which are substantive indictments: you can read them for yourself at the Tripadvisor site. But even many of the good reviews point out the dated nature of the presentation, the fact that the attraction is not a “Museum,” and its blatant commercialism. What is fascinating to me is that these reviews go back years (the Salem Witch Museum recently celebrated its 40th anniversary) and they are very repetitive, yet still the people keep coming and the dated dioramas endure: this is the most successful business in Salem, I believe, certainly the most successful attraction. There’s no attempt to update or improve the presentation, and why should there be? The people keep coming. But what does this institution have to do with Salem heritage and why does it have to be on the Salem Heritage Trail? The Witch Trials are certainly part of Salem’s heritage, though not, I would argue, as large a part as the City of Salem presents them to be—but that argument is certainly a lost cause! But is a dated diorama how we want to acknowlege this tragedy? Is there anything public or in any way reflective of the inclusion of the Salem Witch Museum on on the Salem Heritage Trail? The Salem Witch Museum will continue to be successful, no doubt, regardless of its inclusion on the Heritage Trail, so why can’t this one trail represent a more public and thoughtful presentation of Salem’s heritage in the fullest sense of the word? (I will never get an answer to this question)




I am not a tourism naysayer; I simply respect the past and want both Salem’s visitors and residents to experience its heritage in a layered and an engaging way. As I am writing this, I am looking up Chestnut Street as the Salem Trolley is making its way down, and I’m glad to see it. At least the tourists on board are exposed to more of Salem’s material heritage. It remains absolutely mystifying to me why the Salem Heritage Trail would not include the city’s oldest and largest Historic District, home to the Pickering House, the Phillips House, Hamilton Hall, the Salem Athenaeum, the Ropes Mansion, the Quaker Burying Ground, and streets of beautifully-preserved houses. There are no shops or restaurants or witch “attractions” over here: could that be the answer? Unfortunately the selection of paint in general, and that striking shade of yellow paint in particular, made the exclusion of residential historic districts a foregone conclusion: I know that most of my neighbors would welcome more walking tourists, but I doubt that many of them would like to see that yellow line run in front of their houses. The trolley is running past houses associated with a trio of brothers from a famous Salem family, the Bensons, and I’m wondering if the tourists on board are hearing anything about them, because I think their lives and works are representative of several important strands of Salem’s heritage. I’m sure Frank Weston Benson (residing at 14 Chestnut, 1862-1951) is getting a mention, as he was a pretty famous artist in his day, producing accessible paintings in a light-filled American Impressionist style as well as a succession of distinctive etchings primarily focused on wildfowl. His younger brother Henry (1866-1942) lived around the corner on Hamilton Street and served two terms as Salem’s mayor as well as the president of Salem’s largest business, the Naumkeag Steam Cotton Company. But I think it’s the brother between them, John Prentiss Benson (1865-1947), who is more evocative of an enduring Salem heritage, even though he seldom lived here in his adulthood (though he did design the massive and fantastic Colonial Revival mansion at 30 Chestnut Street).










A 1943 self-portrait by John Prentiss Benson and photograph of his younger self in Salem; Captain Samuel Benson of Salem as depicted by his grandson, John Prentiss Benson and Benson’s copy of “Reaper of Salem, S. Benson, Master, painted originally by Antoine Roux. All of the images and much of the text from this point on is taken from a lovely book entitled The Artistic Legacy of John Prentiss Benson, which was edited and published by the husband of Benson’s granddaughter in 2003. It’s really fabulous–with lots of family pictures and anecdotes.


I’ve never really appreciated maritime art, but I saw a painting that I really liked last week and looked at the signature: John P. Benson! I thought he was an architect by profession and an artist by hobby, but I was wrong: he had two careers, first architecture, then painting. This one painting took me down a rabbit hole of John P. Benson paintings, and I found some really lovely Salem ones, inspired by his birthplace and his heritage, primarily his descent from Captain Samuel Benson, of Reaper fame. All three Benson brothers plus their siblings grew up in an Italianate house which once faced the Common, on a site which is now the parking lot of the Hawthorne Hotel. Frank’s predisposition towards an artistic career was evident pretty early, as was John’s, but apparently there could only be one artist in the family so their father steered the latter towards the more practical architecture. He went to Paris for training, and returned to a job at the prestigious New York architectural firm McKim, Mead & White before setting up his own partnership. By all accounts, Benson had a successful architectural practice focused on the greater New York area, while living in Plainfield, New Jersey and later Flushing, New York with his wife Bessie and their four children. He retired from architecture in his later 50s and began painting full-time, primarily in his studio at a house called Willowbank in Kittery, Maine. He was prolific, and even though he had not lived in his native city since his departure for Paris, a notable number of his paintings are of Salem ships and harbor scenes.








Ship Eliza of Salem, Salem Coal Wharf, and Derby Wharf, John Prentiss Benson.


I particularly like a series of paintings which Benson produced as murals for his son Philip’s Cohasset home, entitled Salem Harbor memories. I trust that they still survive and I wish they could be on public view, because they are a perfect illustration of a family’s heritage and the endurance of a city’s heritage: it’s so interesting that these images were in the home of a man (Philip) who was not born in Salem, who never lived in Salem, but still saw Salem as part of his heritage. I’m not a fan of the witch trials vs. maritime history either/or debate as I believe that Salem’s heritage is both plus MUCH more but these maritime views are so poignant, especially in their invocation of memories which we can “enjoy, regret, and learn from” at the same time. Believe me, I know that the Benson brothers cannot compete with the suffering mannequins of the Salem Witch and Witch Dungeon Museums of the Heritage Trail. I think there are some other Chestnut Street stories that might be able to do so, but that’s not my point or my concern. If this trail was called the “Tourism Trail” or the “Witch City Trail,” I would have no concerns. But it isn’t: it’s called the Heritage Trail. So I ask my fellow Salem residents: does it represent your heritage?




A Memory of Salem Harbor, in Cohasset.

				

				

				

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