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When the witch hunt started in Salem Village in February 1692, the Massachusetts colonists were waiting for Rev. Increase Mather to return home from England with a new governor, Sir William Phips, and joint monarchs William & Mary’s new charter. In the interim, four magistrates held examinations (hearings) to see if any of the accused should be held for trial. The jails in Salem, Boston, Ipswich, and elsewhere were filled with accused witches when Governor Phips arrived in May 1692. In short order, he established the special Court of Oyer and Terminer to handle the witchcraft cases, before heading northward to handle military issues with the Native Americans.

Led by Lieutenant Governor William Stoughton, the Salem court had an imposing job set before them: Discover witches during unruly public meetings filled with afflicted accusers, scared or disbelieving townspeople, and bewildering stories of possession, strange occurrences, unexplained deaths, animal familiars, black Sabbaths, and the like.

Following the Rules?

In December 1641, the Massachusetts Bay Colony published the Body of Liberties. These 100 rules, which were based on both English law and Biblical law, were intended to be the foundation of the colony’s court system.

Under rule 94, Capital Laws, number 2 it says:

“If any man or woman be a witch, that is, hath or consulteth with a familiar spirit, they shall be put to death.”

Deuteronomy 18:10-11 had a much larger definition: “There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.” But the Salem judges specifically were looking for Sarah Good’s yellow bird or Bridget Bishop’s cat.

So, let’s look at some of the other legal points and see how they pertained to the Salem witch trials.

26. Any man that findeth himself unfit to plead his own cause in any Court, shall have the liberty to employ any man against whom the Court doth not except, to help him provided he give him no fee or reward for his pains. This shall not except the party himself from answering such questions in person as the Court shall think meet to demand of him.

On 9 September 1692, sisters Sarah (Towne) Cloyce and Mary (Towne) Estey petitioned the court to allow testimony on their behalf, “seeing we are neither able to plead our own cause, nor is council allowed to those in our condition” (Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, p. 620). These two eloquent women were fit to plead their cases, but clearly were not allowed to in the Salem court. They had no defense attorney and the judges were acting as prosecutors.

45. No man shall be forced by torture to confess any crime against himself nor any other unless it be in some capital case where he is first fully convicted by clear and sufficient evidence to be guilty. After which, if the cause be of that nature, that it is very apparent that there be other conspirators or confederates with him, then he may be tortured, yet not with such tortures as be barbarous and inhumane.

According to accused witch John Proctor, 18-year-old Richard Carrier and his 16-year-old brother Andrew Carrier, “would not confess anything till they tied them neck and heels till the blood was ready to come out of their noses” (Robert Calef, More Wonders of the Invisible World, 1700). The Carrier brothers had not even been indicted, much less been charged guilty before being tortured.

46. For bodily punishments we allow amongst us none that are inhumane, barbarous, or cruel.

It goes without saying that peine forte et dure, or being pressed to death like Giles Corey, is “inhumane, barbarous, or cruel.” Once the rocks were placed on his prone form, even if the 70-year-old Corey changed his mind and started talking, he’d probably die from the internal injuries anyway. It took him hours to die.

47. No man shall be put to death without the testimony of two or three witnesses, or that which is equivalent thereunto.

Since witchcraft meant being in league with the Devil, it’s surprising that the justices did not rely on the opinion of several prominent ministers who were against using spectral evidence—visions seen only by the afflicted accusers—as the main reason to charge a person. Nor did the justices find conflict in accepting the words, visions, and bodily contortions of the afflicted accusers that one could say were possessed by the Devil themselves. The afflicted accusers often supported each other’s testimonies or mimicked each other during the trials. The people in the court house became witnesses of the afflicted accusers.

Confessed witches sometimes claimed to have seen other accused witches at witch meetings. Since the court was using confessors to find more witches, the confessors were spared until a later date (that never came). In most circumstances, confessing to a crime was as good as or better than having two witnesses. Yet none of the confessors were hanged before Governor Phips stopped the trials.

94 Capital 11. If any man rise up by false witness, wittingly and of purpose to take away any man’s life, he shall be put to death.

After the trials were over, we don’t hear much backlash against the accusers or the judges and jury. Some disappear from the records, while others, such as Judge Stoughton, continued to be prominent members of society. However, Judge Samuel Sewall, numerous jurymen, and accuser Ann Putnam Jr. publicly asked for forgiveness for their part in the trials.

reposted from Genealogy Ink

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Professor emeritus of English at State University of New York at Binghamton, Bernard Rosenthal is the author of the classic Salem Story: Reading the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 and general editor of Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, which includes all the extant legal documents newly transcribed, in chronological order, with notes.

WitchesMass Bay: In Salem Story, you essentially peel back the onion, and tell people to read the primary sources. With all the books and movies that have covered the subject, what one thing do people keep repeating about the Salem witch hunt that is inaccurate, untrue, or has no 17th-century corroborating evidence? (Your favorite pet peeve!)

Bernard Rosenthal: Over and over again, scholars and others go back to the idea that the Salem witch hunt was all started by village quarrels. If I were to rewrite Salem Story I would start by showing how that idea has been taken apart. The evidence just doesn’t support it. Fortunately, some recent scholarship has dismantled parts of the village quarrels idea. I proposed to Cambridge University Press a revised edition of Salem Story with a new first chapter that addressed this, but for a lot of reasons it didn’t work out.

WitchesMassBay: What made you decide to tackle the huge editing project that became Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt?

Bernard Rosenthal: Tackling Records, like a lot of other things, just sort of happened. I found some errors in the standard work, poked around, and the next thing you know 20 years went by. I had made a mistake in Salem Story based on an incorrect transcription in the source I was using and gradually, after looking at other manuscripts, I came to the conclusion that a new edition was needed. It proved a lot more complicated than I had anticipated and took a lot more time—20 years I think. I chose a wonderful group to work with me on this—and without them the book would not have been possible for me alone—but working with a group also involved heavy work of administration, group dynamics, as well as pure scholarship.

WitchesMassBay: One of your causes is social injustice and fair trials. Do you find something about the Salem witch hunt that we as a society or our court systems still need to learn?

Bernard Rosenthal: Yes, but I think this answer is going to surprise you. I think what we need to learn from Salem is how a community can do something awful, but be courageous enough to realize and acknowledge it. Our modern criminal justice system is based on an adversarial system, and institutions that have little interest in justice. Our prisons have too many inmates who do not belong there but remain locked up because the state’s legal team was better than the defendant’s legal team. The state has enormous power against which its victims can do little.

I am working now on something called the Headstart case, and am doing what I can to get out the word of the injustice done to two people. One is now out of prison, but with a criminal record. The other remains in prison. Neither committed the crime for which they went to jail, and in fact the “crime” never happened. Just like the witchcraft claims. You can see my Facebook page, Free Joseph Allen, and you can get an excellent account of it all on the web at the National Center for Reason and Justice.

There are other cases on that website of innocent people incarcerated, and not by a long stretch inclusive of them all. The Puritans, for all their faults, really wanted to get it right, and when they saw they had failed they did what they could for the survivors and for families of the victims. I don’t present them as an ideal, and I don’t want a government without due process. But due process needs serious fixing, and a good place to begin is to look at how the Puritans had the courage to stay with the witchcraft matter and to do what they could to remedy the mistakes. You will not find that in our contemporary criminal justice system, at least nothing analogous to what the Puritans did. But it makes us feel superior to say that they were crazy and we are wise.

Note: Joseph Allen was released from prison 23 December 2021.

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Sometimes you’re so sure your ancestor is buried in a certain cemetery, but you can’t find any proof. Unfortunately, someone went too far.

Besides the obvious lines to keep the lettering straight, you can tell by the B, the Y, and the shape of the numbers that someone added inscriptions on these stones centuries after the originals were carved. Until 1752, Massachusetts records often used double dating to account for the difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars. While not every gravestone would show double dating, it’s worth mentioning that Thomas was baptized 28 February 1610/11 and died 16 March 1694/5. For married women, gravestones said “wife of” or “daughter of” if the maiden name was used (for example, “Mary Perkins, wife of Thomas Bradbury,” or “Mary Bradbury, daughter of John Perkins”). Plus, Mary’s dates are wrong.

In 2007, Chester and Julia True printed Burials in some cemeteries in the towns of Salisbury, Amesbury, and Merrimac, in Essex county, Massachusetts. The two markers shown above, whose photos were taken at a later date, are not listed in the book. However, in the Old Burying Ground in Salisbury, you will find the couple’s grandson, Thomas Bradbury (1674-1718). And that’s an original gravestone.

Mary on Trial

On 26 May 1692, Ann Putnam Jr. and others were attacked by specters on Lecture Day, including the specter of Mary Bradbury of Salisbury. A month later, Mary was arrested. Despite friends and neighbors from Salisbury and Ipswich attesting to Mary’s good character, on 10 September 1692, Mary and five others were found guilty of witchcraft and sentenced to hang. From the existing records, it appears Mary escaped jail before the hangings occurred 12 days later.

On 14 January 1693, Judge William Stoughton signed death warrants for five condemned witches from the previous Court of Oyer and Terminer, including Mary Bradbury. In his report to Governor William Phips, however, King’s Attorney Anthony Checkley was of the opinion that the earlier cases were much like the cleared cases before the new Supreme Court of Judicature, being based on spectral evidence. On 1 February 1693, Gov. Phips sent a reprieve to the Salem court, which infuriated Judge Stoughton, but saved the lives of Mary Bradbury and seven others who were expected to be hanged that day.

For many 17th-century people, their gravestones do not exist today. But, Mary, we remember you.

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Witch trial display, Essex County Court library
Witch trial display, Essex County Court library (photo credit: THD)

The Supreme Judicial Court celebrated its 325th anniversary in Salem in January 2018. Previously known as the Superior Court of Judicature, this high court took over after the Court of Oyer and Terminer was dismissed by Governor William Phips in the fall of 1692. Appropriately enough, the law library inside the Essex County Superior Court building at 56 Federal Street, Salem, features a small witch trials display case.

The glass-topped pedestal display case contains a copy of the death warrant for Bridget Bishop, the first person hanged for witchcraft; a copy of the examination of Rebecca Nurse, in Rev. Samuel Parris’ handwriting; pins the afflicted accusers claimed were used by the “witches” to injure them in court; and the county seal used on the warrants. While there’s a debate whether the pins were used as 17th century staples to hold court papers together or if they were admitted as evidence, the county seal is genuine. First used in 1687, the seal affixed wax to documents, stamping them with the monogram “Essex.”

Note: To visit the library, you must go through security screening. Visitors are not allowed to bring cell phones and other electronic devices inside the building. Cameras require pre-approval from the security department.

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Recently, Juliet Haines Mofford published a historical novel on Abigail (Dane) Faulkner, accused of witchcraft in 1692 in Andover, Massachusetts. I had some questions for the author of The Devil Made Me Do It: Crime and Punishment in Early New England and other non-fiction books.

Abigail Accused by Juliet MoffordWitchesMassBay: How did you become interested in the Salem witch trials, and specifically in the witch hunts in Andover, Massachusetts?

Juliet Mofford: I first got hooked on the Salem witch trials when we moved to Andover and I learned that more citizens from here were imprisoned for witchcraft than from any other town in New England. I soon found little in print about Andover’s 1692 experience even though this town had the most persons who confessed to committing the capital crime of witchcraft and the most children arrested.

An assignment to write a local history required research into primary documents at the Andover and North Andover historical societies. In 1992, I presented “The Andover Witch Hunt” at the Tercentenary Conference in Salem. As a lifelong writer and a professional museum educator, I developed and directed such programs as Cry Witch!—The Andovers Remember 1692, a community play I scripted and produced under Massachusetts Cultural Council grants; The Suspicious Season, about the accused women of Reading; and an interactive play entitled The Judgment of Martha Carrier. Later, as Director of Education and Research at Andover Historical Society, I had access to early town, land, and court records. I have lectured and taught classes on the Salem witch trials at Phillips Academy, for Elderhostel, and at Middlesex Community College.

WitchesMassBay: Why did you decide to write a book about Abigail (Dane) Faulkner?

Juliet Mofford: Since every person accused of being a witch in 1692 was different, each witchcraft case is unique. The daughter of Andover’s senior minister Francis Dane who opposed the trials, she was convicted of witchcraft and narrowly escaped the gallows. I wanted to get to know Abigail better so I might understand, for example, why her sister and her own daughters testified against her in court.

I was especially drawn to Abigail because she was a survivor and, obviously, a strong and articulate woman. The petition she wrote Governor William Phips from Salem prison won her early release on bond while another written in 1703 resulted in a Reversal of Attainders that revoked the court ruling and restored legal rights to those convicted.

WitchesMassBay: How does writing historical fiction help tell Abigail Faulkner’s story in ways beyond the basic historical record?

Juliet Mofford: Many myths and misconceptions about Puritans have been perpetuated by Victorian authors like Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and passed down to us. And many historical errors are found among the countless books about Salem witchcraft, including Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible. Historical documents, and court records in particular, demonstrate that Puritans were not “goody-goodys,” all dressed in black who seldom dared laugh.

I wished to present an actual family whose members were impacted by the horrifying events of 1692, and base the book upon the original documents. I wanted to recreate the realities of their daily life and personal experiences such as courtship, marriage, childbirth, the sin of fornication, poverty, and—in Andover’s case—terrifying attacks by Native Americans and their French allies upon this frontier community.

WitchesMassBay: It’s been more than 300 years since the Salem Witch Trials. Why do you think it’s still relevant today?

Juliet Mofford: Abigail’s personal life has contemporary relevance because PTSD or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is in today’s news. This Colonial goodwife sustained her husband through the “fitts” he suffered as a result of sporadic Indian attacks.

Abigail Accused: A Story of the Salem Witch Hunt is the historical revelation of how one particular wife and mother, alongside her minister father, fought bigotry and religious fanaticism and helped bring an end to the deadly witch hunt. Petitions by both father and daughter represent landmark documents of free speech that serve to remind us of the ongoing struggle for human rights. Lessons hopefully learned from the Salem witch trials remain relevant today because, unfortunately, prejudice, intolerance, and xenophobia have raised their ugly heads throughout history and continue to happen.

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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.

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Sidney Perley at Proctor’s Ledge

The year 2017 marked the 325th anniversary of the Salem witch trials in which 19 people were found guilty of witchcraft and were hanged between June and September 1692. 

Lessons and legacies of 1692 symposium

On June 10, the anniversary of the hanging of Bridget Bishop, hundreds gathered at Salem State University for a special symposium, Salem’s Trials: Lessons and Legacies of 1692, sponsored by Salem State University’s history department, the Voices Against Injustice, and the Essex National Heritage Area. C-SPAN recorded four of the six sessions.

Proctor’s Ledge dedicated

In January 2016, the Gallows Hill Project team announced it had confirmed historian Sidney Perley’s theory that Proctor’s Ledge was the site of the hangings, not the summit of Gallows Hill or anywhere else. Using Perley’s research, a 1692 eyewitness account of the hangings, ground-penetrating radar, high-tech aerial photography, and maps, the team reached its conclusion. Fortunately, in 1936 the city had purchased the land between Pope and Proctor streets and in 2017, a memorial was created. The official unveiling of the memorial was held on July 19, with numerous descendants of the victims attending.

Reproduction of the meetinghouse at Rebecca Nurse homestead

Having her day

Governor Charlie Baker declared July 19 Rebecca Nurse Day in Massachusetts. At the Rebecca Nurse homestead in Danvers, archivist Richard Trask spoke on behalf of the five women executed 325 years before, including 71-year-old Nurse. Afterwards, a wreath was ceremoniously placed at the Nurse memorial inside the family cemetery.

Talks and walks

At History Camp: Boston 2017, presentations included Marilynne K. Roach on How Governor Phips Stopped the Salem Witch Trials (sort of); Jeanne Pickering on From Witchcraft to Slavery: The History of the Hoar/Slew Family; and Lori Stokes on Puritans. Margo Burns, project manager for the Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, traveled throughout New Hampshire and parts of Massachusetts with her talk on The Capital Crime of Witchcraft: What the Sources Tell Us. At the North Andover Historical Society, Richard Hite gave a talk on witch trial-related burials at the Old Burial Ground and Char Lyons gave a tour of the cemetery. Kelly Daniell spoke at the Peabody Historical Society on the Life and Death of John Proctor. Emerson Baker gave a Salem Witch Trials Walking Tour. And Intramersive debuted its game theater experience, Daemonologie, in Salem.

World bewitch’d exhibit

On October 31, Cornell University opened its The World Bewitch’d: Visions of Witchcraft from the Cornell Collections exhibit. With 3,000+ items, Cornell owns the largest collection of books, manuscripts, and ephemera in North America about witchcraft, spanning from the 15th to 20th centuries. The exhibit, open through August 31, 2018, focuses on the spread of witchcraft beliefs in Europe, which ultimately caused the deaths of tens of thousands of people.

PEM library access

In December, the Peabody Essex Museum announced most of the Phillips Library collection will be moved to its new collections center in Rowley. People have been protesting the news, especially since much of the archives and materials form the backbone of Salem’s historical past, from documents of the Salem witch trials and seafaring ventures to local organizations’ records. The museum said it could not procure a Salem building fit for a climate-controlled space for storage and research facilities.

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Wrong! Edward & Sarah Bishop house site

One of my reasons for creating the Witches of Massachusetts Bay website is to right the wrongs. Even though it’s been 325 years since the witch trials, the topic is still popular and relevant in our society. That’s why new discoveries and better interpretations are made. Yet we keep hearing, reading, and seeing the same historical inaccuracies repeated. Why? Our brains are more apt to believe something wrong but oft-repeated than to replace it with new (and correct) information.

Today, I wanted to know if a structure exists where Edward and Sarah Bishop once held raucous, late-night shuffleboard parties at their unlicensed tavern on the outskirts of Salem Village. Naturally, I turned to Google maps and typed in 238 Conant Street, Danvers. Ironically, a lawyer has an office at that location.

Then I saw in the Google box that the address was labeled a landmark for Bridget Bishop. (Of course, I had to send Google a correction.)

On April 19, 1692, Bridget Bishop was confronted by Mercy Lewis, Ann Putnam Jr., and others who charged her with “sundry acts of witchcraft” (RSWH, doc. 63, pp. 183-184). Judge Jonathan Hathorne did not believe Bishop’s claim that she didn’t know these girls. But it’s true. Bridget Bishop lived in Salem Town and probably had no reason to visit Salem Village.

“I doe tell the truth I never hurt these persons in [my] life I never saw them before”

In 1981, The American Genealogist (TAG) published David L. Greene’s article showing how the court and historians confused two women named Goody Bishop (“Salem Witches I: Bridget Bishop,” vol. 157, p. 130). It was three-times-married Bridget (Playfer) (Wasselbe) (Oliver) Bishop (c.1640-1692) who wore the flashy red bodice, lived in Salem Town, and was the first person hanged in 1692. Bridget’s home was at the corner of what’s now Washington and Church streets, with her orchard located at 43 Church Street in Salem, currently occupied by Turner’s Seafood at Lyceum Hall.*

Like Bridget, Sarah (Wildes) Bishop was married to a man named Edward Bishop (1648-1711). These two disturbed their neighbors with their drunken parties in Salem Village, now Danvers, near the Beverly line. Sarah and her husband Edward were accused of witchcraft, but they escaped from jail. By 1703, they had moved to Rehoboth where they opened an inn.

So 238 Conant Street in Danvers? Site of Sarah’s house, not Bridget’s.

* updated 8 July 2018

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An international art, architectural, and cultural museum, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem started as the East India Marine Society in 1799. Through mergers of several societies, the museum grew from seafaring treasures to include local history, nature, and science collections. Most of these materials were donated by local families, businesses, and organizations from Salem and Essex county.

Complaint against George Burroughs, 30 April 1692, in the Phillips Library collections

The Peabody Essex became stewards of what’s known as the Phillips Library. The collections contain 520+ originalhttps://www.pem.org/visit/library/catalog Salem witch trial documents; Puritan religious tracts and Bibles; local genealogies; the Winthrop papers; scrapbooks and manuscripts; Frank Cousins’ negatives and photographs of Salem and Essex county sites; “Essex county history reports, circulars, advertisements, and other publications of Essex County societies, businesses, municipalities, and other institutions”; full newspaper runs; 600+ volumes of works by authors of Essex county; “as well as the publications (books and periodicals) of local presses and publishers.”

A decade ago, Plummer Hall, which housed the Phillips Library, was renovated to include “the addition of climate-controlled archives, galleries, reading rooms, and a new compact storage space for the library’s extensive collection.” Curiously, in 2011, the Phillips Library closed again for major renovations and its collections were moved to a temporary facility in Peabody, with limited hours for visitors. In September 2017, that temporary facility was closed and “all access to the collection of books and manuscripts is suspended through Spring 2018.”

Donna Seger, history professor at Salem State University, wrote a must-read post called “Losing Our History” on her blog, Streets of Salem, about this closure.

On December 6, 2017, the Peabody Essex needed permission from the Historical Commission for outside renovations to Plummer Hall. Thanks to concerned citizens on social media, people attended the Historical Commission meeting to find out the Peabody Essex’s intent, which changed the tenor of the meeting from architectural changes to PEM’s plans for its historic library collections. It turns out that, unbeknownst to the people who use the collections, the Phillips Library is turning into office space and the bulk of its collections will be in Rowley, Massachusetts.

The Peabody Essex had acquired “a 112,000-square-foot building located 40 minutes from the museum that is currently being retrofitted to serve as PEM’s new Collections Center. It will provide fully climate-controlled storage for all of the museum’s collections, the highest level of security protection, space for a new Conservation Lab, Photography Studio, scholarly research, and special small-scale programs related to the collections,” according to information on its website. Touted in a press release, “Research and access to the collection is a key priority for the museum.” Taking the collections away from the city does not sound like improved access.

Read the Salem News story, “Bulk of Phillips Library collection won’t return to Salem.”

Professor Seger calls the Peabody Essex “Shameless Stewards” for taking the Salem collections outside the city, especially without letting the public know beforehand.

Read the Peabody Essex Museum’s “Statement regarding PEM’s Phillips Library” (12/8/2017).

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Welcome to my latest endeavor. I figured since I spend so much time reading books about the 1692 witch hunts that maybe I needed to share some of my research.

This is just the beginning.