Historic Streets of Salem, Massachusetts

Introduction and Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge my good friend Ryan W. Conary, who provided technical assistance and took many of the photos you see on these pages.

One of the main questions people ask when they write for online information: Is Salem a real place? My answer would have to be, I hope so, because I’ve lived in Salem for fifty years, since 1968.

I am connected to Salem through its witchcraft history: my ancestor Mary (Perkins) Bradbury was one of the unfortunate people condemned for witchcraft, but she fortuitously escaped from the Salem prison where she was being held to await execution by hanging. The court record shows that she made her escape—by what means is unknown.

A long look back into my ancestry led me to historical pursuits, and with encouragement from The Salem News, which first published my street stories as letters to the editor, I became a local historian. With my background as a tour guide in a historical setting, I have presented each street in this collection as a historical tour.

The maps and atlases (courtesy of the Southern Essex Registry of Deeds) and photographs were contributed and arranged by historian and photographer Ryan W. Conary, who donated his time and talent to help engineer this work and make it a reality.

I hope you enjoy reading and experiencing these street tours as much as I did writing them.

—Jeanne Stella

Salem, Essex County, Massachusetts

I.

OVERVIEW AND HISTORICAL NARRATIVE

THE FIRST YEARS

If you were a Puritan in seventeenth-century England, chances are you’d be looking for a new place to live. A group of English citizens, known as Puritans, wanted to purify the church of its rituals, to return to a simple style of worship. These people left England and came to America for freedom to set up a church that reflected their principles.

The year 1626 saw a small group of English fishermen at Naumkeag, the fishing place, named after the Naumkeag Indians who had planted here. The place would, in three years’ time, be known as Salem—from shalom, the Hebrew word for peace. The group had tried a settlement at Cape Ann (Gloucester), but problems there had caused them to abandon that location in favor of one better suited to their purpose.

Roger Conant, leader of this group, originally came from East Budleigh in the southwest part of England. A salter by trade, Conant temporarily served as governor. While there is no complete agreement among historians regarding the names of those who accompanied Conant, most lists include John Balch, John Woodbury, Richard and John Norman, William Allen, Peter Palfray and Walter Knight. These men and their families were called the Old Planters, but it was fishing, not farming, that became the mainstay of the colony and the industry that built the town.

At first, there were no streets—all travel was by water. The arrival of Governor John Endicott in 1628 brought progress: streets were laid out, and the town was divided into house lots. The first street laid out by the new governor was Washington Street. Running between the North River and the South River as it did, it gave a commanding view of both and offered protection to the colonists. They could now see who was coming to dinner.

Paths were made along the waterfront. These first paths were called highways, and streets with names were later laid out over them. Paths along the waterways were crooked because they followed the outline of the river. Front Street, then known as Wharf Street, was an original river path.

According to Salem historian Sidney Perley, Essex Street was one of Salem’s first streets. Historian James Duncan Phillips believes it was once an Indian trail.

THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION

Only sixty-six years after Salem’s founding, an unusual and unfortunate chain of events in Salem’s history began to unfold. In the winter of 1691–92 in Salem Village (what is now Danvers, Massachusetts) a group of girls gathered to hear strange tales told by Tituba, a West Indian slave of Reverend Samuel Parris, minister of the village church. The girls kept these meetings secret. They knew their religious teaching would forbid them to listen to Tituba’s occult stories.

Two of the girls began to have fits, contorting themselves into positions that would, under any normal circumstances, be impossible to affect. They also made animal noises and displayed other bizarre forms of behavior. Before long, all of the girls were having fits.

Diagnosed by the village doctor as bewitched, they were asked who bewitched them. After persistent questioning, the girls named three women, including Tituba. The girls claimed to have spectral sight—they could see the ghostly shapes of those they had accused, tormenting and afflicting them.

It was believed that a witch could make a pact with the devil, giving him permission to appear in the witch’s shape, to cause harm to others. The witch would then seal the pact by signing the devil’s book:

Many at that time seemed to believe, that the witches actually signed a material book, presented to them by the devil, and were baptized by him, in which ceremony the devil used these words: Thou art mine, and I have a full power over thee! Afterwards communicating in an hellish bread and wine, administered unto them by the devil. This was denominated a witch sacrament. To which communions, the witches were supposed to meet upon the banks of the Merrimack River, riding there upon poles through the air.

—The History of Rowley, Thomas Gage, p. 178

(Boston: Ferdinand Andrews, 1840)

Thompkins Harrison Matteson, Trial of George Jacobs, August 5, 1692, 1855. Oil on canvas. 39 x 53 inches (99.06 x 134.62 cm). Peabody Essex Museum, Gift of R.W. Ropes, 1859. 1246. Photo by Mark Sexton and Jeffry R. Dykes, courtesy of Peabody Essex Museum.

The first to be accused of practicing witchcraft were women, but as the situation escalated, men figured in the number. Witches were found in surrounding towns. At the trials held in Salem, both men and women were convicted on the basis of spectral evidence. In all, more than two hundred people were accused, nineteen people were hanged and one was pressed to death for refusing to enter a plea.

SALEM’S DOWNTOWN

Salem’s downtown, like the downtown of any city, is primarily a place of commerce and business. Salem’s commercial district, a bit different from those in other New England cities and towns, reflects its witch history as well as its modern witch community.

At 310 Essex Street is the Jonathan Corwin House, usually called the Witch House. Jonathan Corwin was a magistrate at the witch trials. His house, owned by the city, is the only remaining building with direct ties to the Salem Witch Trials.

Salem also has four witch museums and seven or eight witch shops. Laurie Cabot, the official witch of Salem, came into the picture in 1970, casting a visible presence in the city. Salem’s peculiar witch history has given its residents a lasting identity. We will always be the Witch City.

In the eighteenth century, Salem became a major world seaport. Merchant shippers and sea captains made fortunes in the pepper trade. Each year, thousands of visitors come to the National Park Service Visitor Center at 2 New Liberty Street in downtown Salem to begin a journey into Salem’s seafaring past.

There is the Peabody Essex Museum, a world-class museum that used to focus on Essex County history but now features art and culture from around the world. In its collections is an entire house—Yin Yu Tang—an eighteenth-century, sixteen-bedroom house that was brought here from a village in China as part of a cultural exchange program. Visitors can tour the house and learn about how a middle-class Chinese family lived in the eighteenth century. The house has all of its original furnishings brought here as well and displayed as they would have been in use by the family.

Frank Cousins, Essex Street from Price Block East, Cousins Collection, box 7, folder 1, negative 1a. Courtesy of Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum.

With all of the interesting history in Salem to learn and explore, you will certainly at some point want to stop and refresh yourself with a delicious dinner. You’ll be happy, I’m sure, to discover that there are 153 restaurants in Salem. Regardless of the number of eateries, though, you may not find a seat at Haunted Happenings, Salem’s famous Halloween celebration that each year draws thousands upon thousands of revelers from the four corners of the earth. It starts each year at the beginning of October and lasts the entire month. It is like a Mardi Gras celebration—you don’t want to miss it!

THE MARITIME DISTRICT

In my beat-up old copy of the Salem Visitor’s Guide from 1902, there is a description on page 9 that takes the reader to a magical part of old Salem town. All the little streets between Essex and Derby Street that make up the Maritime District still retain much of the old-time seafaring flavor, and it’s easy to turn back the clock, to step back to a day when Salem mariners sailed to the West Indies or to the farthest ports in the world.

Jonathan Peele Saunders, Plan of the Town of Salem in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Map detail. 1820. Courtesy of the Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center.

THE FRIENDSHIP

The Friendship of Salem is a replica of a 1797 East Indiaman that in its day had quite a career as a letter of marque. The ship is usually docked at the Salem Maritime National Historic Site, where it serves as a museum ship. It is also capable of voyages, sailing on special occasions during the year.

THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

The House of the Seven Gables is one of Salem’s richest treasures, prized most of all for its connection to the great American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, who used to visit the house frequently to see his second cousin Susan Ingersoll. Some people believe that Hawthorne drew inspiration from the house for his novel by the same name.

The historic house was purchased in 1908 by philanthropist Caroline Emmerton, who rescued it, had it restored to its seventeenth-century appearance and raised money for the connected settlement association. Thousands of visitors come here yearly to tour this fascinating historic house museum.

THE SALEM COMMON

In the 1600s, the Salem Common had a much different appearance from the one we know today. The land was uneven, with small hills and ponds connected by a stream. In the early years of the town, it was one of the fields set aside for common use, the pasturing of goats and cows.

The town-appointed cowherd collected the animals in the morning, driving them to the field and bringing them back at day’s end to a pen, where they were claimed by their owners.

George Ropes. The Ship Friendship Homeward Bound, 1805. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Peabody Essex Museum.

Envelope from July 8, 1983, the first day of issue for the Nathaniel Hawthorne commemorative stamp. A ceremony celebrating the issuing of the stamp was held at the House of the Seven Gables. Postcard from the author’s collection.

George Ropes Jr., Salem Common on Training Day, 1808. Oil on canvas, 32 x 52 3/4 inches (88.9 x 133.985 cm). Museum purchase, 1919. 107924. Photo by Mark Sexton, courtesy of Peabody Essex Museum.

In 1685, the town assigned the Common as a place where people might shoot at a mark. Then, in 1714 it was designated a training field for military drills by the Salem Militia. (The early