Salem, Massachusetts

“ Salem, Mass., city, settled 1626, chief county-seat of Essex County, on the Boston and Maine Railroad, Eastern Division, 17 miles by rail northeast of Boston. Its harbor, an arm of Massachusetts Bay, is well-sheltered and commodious, but of insufficient depth for the largest vessels. The city is a popular resort for people interested in early American settlements, possessing many historic localities and buildings. ”

“ NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
The old town of Salem, in Massachusetts, was once a famous seaport, and ships sailed out of its harbor to the ends of the world. In the East Indies so many merchant vessels bore the word Salem on the stern that people there supposed that to be the name of some powerful country, and “Mass.,” which was sometimes added, to be the name of a village in Salem. As Boston and New York grew more important, they drew away trade from the smaller towns, and Salem became less busy. ”

“ The designation of the City of Salem, Massachusetts, as the Birthplace of the National Guard of the United States will contribute positively to tourism and economic development in the city, create jobs, and instill pride in both the local and State communities. ”

“ Born in Salem, Massachusetts, one of the oldest, sleepiest and most conservative of American cities, educated 7in her schools and in one of the staid old colleges, for which New England was justly famous, how could I have imbibed anything but ancient, sleepy and conservative theories of political economy, and fine, staid and somewhat musty notions of the end and purpose of man? ”

“ There are in the city an almshouse, the Bertram Home for Aged Men, Home for Aged Women, City Orphan Asylum, and Salem Hospital, besides two other hospitals. Formerly noted for its commercial importance, Salem is at present primarily an industrial city, the various industries having in the census year 1900 an invested capital of $7,450,935, and an output valued at $12,257,449. Boots and shoes, cotton goods, leather, machinery, and lumber products constitute the leading manufactures. ”

“ Salem really dates from 1626, when Roger Conant and a little band of English farmers and fishermen, in discouraged mood, left the bleak shore of Cape Ann and came to this region, then called by the Indians Naumkeag, a large tract of land, heavily wooded to the westward, and at the east running in irregular, picturesque manner out into Massachusetts Bay. ”

“ My passengers gave me a taste of their quality, as I have said, before we had got a mile below Governor's Island. The ladies were named Sarah and Jane; and, between them and Wallace Mortimer, what an insight did I obtain into the private affairs of sundry personages of Salem, in Massachusetts, together with certain glimpses in at Boston folk; all, however, referring to qualities and facts that might be classed among the real or supposed. ”

“ The history of New England, and especially of Massachusetts, is full of the horrors that have turned life into gloom, joy into despair, naturalness into disease, honesty and truth into hideous lies and hypocrisies. The ducking-stool and whipping post, as well as numerous other devices of torture, were the favorite English methods for American purification.
Boston, the city of culture, has gone down in the annals of Puritanism as the "Bloody Town." It rivaled Salem, even, in her cruel persecution of unauthorized religious opinions. ”

“ PART FIRST. SALEM VILLAGE. IT is necessary, before entering upon the subject of the witchcraft delusion, to give a particular and extended account of the immediate locality where it occurred, and of the community occupying it. This is demanded by justice to the parties concerned, and indispensable to a correct understanding of the transaction. No one, in truth, can rightly appreciate the character of the rural population of the towns first settled in Massachusetts, without tracing it to its origin, and taking into view the policy that regulated the colonization of the country at the start. ”

“ American Literature; The Trial of Gideon; Prince Saroni’s Wife; Love is a Spirit. Ap. Fu. He. Hou. Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Ms., 1804-1864. A celebrated romancer, born at Salem, Massachusetts. From 1838 to 1841 he held a position in the Boston custom-house, was next a member of the Brook Farm Association, and after 1843 a resident at Concord, Massachusetts, from time to time until his death, though within that period he was surveyor of the port of Salem, 1846-50, and from [Pg 177] 1853 to 1857 consul at Liverpool. ”

“ Williams at Salem. Williams repaired first to Salem, the north pole of Puritanism, where the pioneer church of Massachusetts had a more Separatist tone than any other. In the phrase of the time, no other churches in the world were so "pure" as the New England churches, and Salem was accounted the "purest" church in New England. Its surviving minister, Skelton, and its principal layman, Endecott, both tended to extreme Congregationalism; but the General Court of the colony protested against the selection of Williams to be one of the ministers of the Salem church. ”

“ At Salem he was again under the surveillance of the rulers and elders of the Bay, and they were swift to make him sensible of it. He had written in Plymouth, for the Plymouth Governor and Council a treatise on the Massachusetts Patent, in which he had maintained his doctrine that the King could not give the settlers a right to take away from the natives their land without paying them for it. He was not a lawyer but an ethical teacher, and it was doubtless as such that he maintained this opinion. In our day its ethical correctness is not disputed. It has always been good Rhode Island doctrine. ”

“ It was the mother-colony on Massachusetts Bay, the first house being built in 1626, and old John Endicott having got a grant from Plymouth for the colony, he came out and founded the town two years afterwards, calling it Salem, "from the peace which they had and hoped in it." But despite this peacefulness, the people soon developed warlike tendencies. ”

“ The second Salem company brought with them a considerable number of cattle, horses, sheep, and goats; which after a little period, became so numerous as to supply all the wants of the inhabitants. Powers of government were granted to these colonists by Charles I., which constituted them a corporation, by the name of The Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay, in New England, with power to elect annually a governor, deputy governor, and eighteen assistants ”

“ He had married a lady of respectable connections in New York, and had held with considerable reputation for several years a military employment in the colonies. He was at this time appointed governor and commander in chief of the province of Massachusetts Bay; directed to repair immediately there, and on his arrival to remove the seat of government from Boston, and to convene the General Assembly to meet at Salem, a smaller town, situated about twenty miles from the capital. ”

“ When Salem was settled the Massachusetts Bay Company furnished clothes to all the men who emigrated and settled that town. Every man had four pairs of shoes, four pairs of stockings, a pair of Norwich garters, four shirts, two suits of doublet [287] and hose of leather lined with oiled skin, a woollen suit lined with leather, four bands, two handkerchiefs, a green cotton waistcoat, a leather belt, a woollen cap, a black hat, two red knit caps, two pairs of gloves, a mandillion or cloak lined with cotton, and an extra pair of breeches. ”

“ Salem, Mass., is a remarkable place. This ‘city of peace’ will be better known hereafter for its commerce than for it’s witch tragedy. It has a population of fourteen thousand and more wealth in proportion to its population than perhaps any town in the world. ”

“ Along one side of the street were the counting-houses of the merchant princes, around which hung the atmosphere and flavor of thrilling maritime romance. Practically the entire male population, young and old, was engaged directly or indirectly in the business of such as go down to the sea in ships. Ship-builders and sailors, craftsmen and navigators—Derby Street hummed with their activities. Before the ports of New York and Boston had acquired touch with Oriental trade, Salem had already dipped deep into the coffers of the East ”

“ Another set of priceless{165}
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associations is added to the old town which now must confess to factories and a foreign population like many another New England seaport. The resident of Salem lives in a modern, progressive, handsome city, made the more attractive by eccentric roofs, “Mackintire” doorways, carved wooden mantels and wainscoting, ever suggestive of the venerable and impressive past, a past that may well serve as a challenge to the children of Viking and Puritan, inviting them to a fine self-control and a broad public spirit. ”

“ It had been thoughtful and tender in Cousin Chilian to spare her the rest.
They went over to Cambridge and he took her through the place that was to be so much grander before she was done with life. And here was the house where he had lived through the week, going home to spend Sundays, for his father was alive then. And he told her stories about old Boston, some quaintly funny, [193] but she was rather proud that Salem had been the first capital of the State.
"I've had such a nice time," she said with her adieu. "Every day has been full of pleasure. ”

“ Sir William Phips, an illiterate but not incapable man, had been appointed Governor of Massachusetts Bay, under the new charter of William and Mary. The charter conferred the power of civil government, and separated the legislative from the judicial authority. Sir William constituted a commission of seven to try the witchcraft cases at Salem. As he had no power to create such a court under the charter, one of the saddest reflections that arise from these bloody proceedings is that twenty persons suffered death for an imaginary crime, inflicted by an illegal tribunal. ”

“ While Portsmouth is on the main line of travel north from Boston, it is still almost as much neglected as Annapolis, and it is a great pity that many of its once splendid mansions are falling into decay. The Governor Langdon house, the Ladd house and others should receive the attention they bestow upon such priceless relics in Salem, where everything of the kind is jealously guarded. But Salem is so distinctly illustrative of early nineteenth century work that I intend to refer to it later, under that head, likewise to Providence and Bristol, in Rhode Island, and Middletown, in Connecticut. ”

“ Its population is four times as great as when it was the foremost foreign seaport of the United States and its activities have veered into manufacturing channels. But as has happened to many other New England cities of the purest American pedigree, a flood of immigration from Europe and Canada has swept into Salem to swarm in its mills and factories. Along the harbor front the fine old square mansions from which the lords of the shipping gazed down at their teeming wharves are tenanted by toilers of many alien nations. ”

“ Next to Plymouth it is the oldest town in New England, having been first settled in 1626. Not till three years after were Boston and Charlestown commenced by the arrival of eleven ships from England. It is a significant fact, as showing the hardships to which the early settlers were exposed, that of the fifteen hundred persons composing this Boston expedition, two hundred died during the first winter. Salem has also the honor of establishing the first New England church organization, in 1629, with the Reverend Francis Higginson as its pastor. ”

“ Old Salem now wears a much livelier expression than when I first beheld her. Strangers rumble down from Boston by hundreds at a time. New faces throng in Essex street. Railroad-hacks and omnibuses rattle over the pavements. There is a perceptible increase of oyster-shops and other establishments for the accommodation of a transitory diurnal multitude. But a more important change awaits the venerable town. An immense accumulation of musty prejudices will be carried off by the free circulation of society. ”

“ It still has wharves, and large, roomy houses where its rich merchants lived, and shows in many streets the signs of its old prosperity; but one living in Salem is constantly reminded how famous the old town once was rather than how busy it now is. ”

“ He told her how, when he had come into control of the great shipping interests of Salem's most distinguished family, he decided Boston was the coming port and that Salem had had her glorious day, so abandoned the old love for a new. ”

“ Salem is chiefly a residential city adjoining Winston, the county-seat, the two municipalities forming practically one industrial community. (See Winston.) Under the revised charter of 1891, the government is vested in a mayor, elected biennially, and a unicameral council. Salem was founded by a body of Moravians in 1766 and was for many years distinctively a church community—the church having complete charge of secular as well as ecclesiastical affairs. Count Zinzendorf drew up the plans on which Salem was laid out. ”

“ The cries of strange birds, the unwonted colour of some of them, all suggested to the imaginative or unaccustomed traveller the idea of war-whoops and painted deadly enemies. But at last they drew near to Salem, which rivalled Boston in size in those days, and boasted the name of one or two streets, although to an English eye they looked rather more like irregularly built houses, clustered round the meeting-house, or rather one of the meeting-houses, for a second was in process of building. ”