Salem: The perils of denial in an age of preservation

Kindness Rocks Project, Artist Row, Salem

The Salem of today is a vibrant city—upbeat, artsy, multicultural, progressive. That vibrancy comes from people who are willing to make their world a little better. Take, for example, Caroline Emmerton (1866-1942) who not only preserved the House of the Seven Gables and other historic Salem buildings, she used the income generated by the museum to support a settlement society that provided immigrants with medical care, education, job skills, and recreational opportunities.

But she was not alone. All around the city, from its maritime heyday to its manufacturing boom and the lulls in between, Salemites worked together to create a better society. The Marine Society at Salem (1766) offered relief to disabled and aged members and their families. The Salem Athenaeum (1810) provided books and conversation to its members years before Captain John Bertram’s family donated its mansion for the Salem Public Library (1889). The Salem Lyceum Society (1830) provided educational lectures and entertainment, including the first public telephone transmission between Alexander Graham Bell in Salem and Thomas Watson in Boston (1877). The Essex Institute (1848) encouraged the study of local history, genealogy, and art, while the Peabody Academy of Science (1867) explored the maritime history of New England, Pacific and Japanese ethnology, and the natural history of Essex county.

Yet one thing they didn’t do? Preserve the remnants of the Salem witch trials.

When people visit Salem today, they expect to see evidence of the 1692 witch trials. But where is the court house? The documents? The tangible objects that remind us of the victims, the accusers, the judges?*

Before there was such a thing as the tourist industry, people came to Salem to see “the witches.” In 1766, future U.S. president John Adams (1735-1826) visited “Witchcraft Hill” and mentioned in his journal the locust trees planted in memory of the witch-hunt victims. In 1831, Charles W. Upham started lecturing on the trials years before he published his Salem Witchcraft book (1867).

Click to enlarge article from The Pharmaceutical Era, 1898

Druggist George P. Farrington (1808-1885), who operated his pharmacy in Judge Jonathan Corwin’s old house (known as the Witch House), gave tours and charged admission. Abner C. Goodell (1831-1914), who collected works on witchcraft from all over the world, lectured and gave private tours of his home, which previously was the old Salem county jail before the new one was built around the corner in 1813. (The 1684 structure was rebuilt in 1763, with the frame and original timbers.) In 1935, his son Alfred P. Goodell (1877-1954) opened the Old Witch Jail and Dungeon after discovering an original 1692 bill for “keeping witches” in his home. Shortly after his death, the city of Salem tore down the historic building.

Why?

Salem is praised for its architecture, even for its doorways. Yet the city only has a few First Period houses (1626-1725) remaining, unlike Ipswich which boasts 59. Probably no one missed Bridget Bishop’s home and orchard, or remembrances of her sharp tongue, but why demolish Philip English’s mansion? Was it an effort to erase history?

Even today, people question why we’re so interested in the past, in understanding the events of 1692, when they wish to forget.

The Salem witch-hunt has much to teach us as individuals and as a society.

Sign at 10 Federal Street

It has nothing to do with Halloween and the macabre. Some of the accused may have dabbled in fortunetelling, folk-healing, and the like, but they were not witches who made pacts with the devil, performed Satanic rites, or shapeshifted to harm their neighbors. They were ordinary people with flaws, just like you and me.

* The Salem court house was torn down in 1760. The existing witch trial documents are scattered through various libraries and archives. The Peabody Essex Museum owns numerous objects of witch-hunt victims, most of which are not on display.