Tag: Phillips Library

By Posted on Posted in Research Tagged with ,

stacks, not PEM’s though

In 1799, Salem ship captains created a research library that—over 200 years and numerous mergers later—became the world-renowned Phillips Library of the Peabody Essex Museum. For many years, the collection had its home in the stately Plummer Hall on Essex Street in downtown Salem, in the architecturally rich, cultured atmosphere of the Saltonstall reading room, surrounded with bookshelves and ship models.

Over the last 20 years, the reading room closed for long stretches of time for building restoration and renovations, including climate control, modern archival storage, and digital cataloging of the collections. After numerous promises to return the Phillips Library Collections to its longtime home in the 1850s building, PEM abruptly announced in December 2017 that the 400,000 books and 5,500 linear feet of manuscripts were moving permanently to a recently purchased and retrofitted warehouse in Rowley.

In late June 2018, the PEM Collection Center opened at 306 Newburyport Turnpike in Rowley. Much of the warehouse’s 120,000 square feet is storage for 1.8 million museum pieces that are not on exhibit at the museum. Still under construction are the conservation lab, digitization space, a photography studio, and curatorial and research areas.

Hundreds of 12-foot-tall shelves in Room 156 hold the treasures from the Phillips Library, including a rare book section, with room to grow. The stacks are not open for researchers to browse through the book spines (something I truly enjoy doing because I often have aha! research moments that way). However, for the first time in years, the collection is accessible.

Like many special libraries and archives, PEM’s research library has rules to abide by. There are storage lockers for your bags, coats, and pens. Inside, though, you’re welcome to use your laptop computer, the guest Wi-Fi account, and your phone for taking pictures of documents. While the space lacks the beauty of the reading room in Salem, it’s functional and modern despite a shortage of electrical outlets.

What’s available

Let’s start with the mergers first. You’ll find collections from the East India Marine Society (founded 1799); the Essex Historical Society (1821) and Essex County Natural History Society (1833), which formed the revered Essex Institute in 1848; the Peabody Academy of Science (1868), which changed its name to the Peabody Museum of Salem in 1915; materials on art, culture, and exhibitions of the Peabody Essex Museum (1992); and collections from smaller institutions.

Much of the collections were donated by individuals, families, societies, businesses, and institutions with connections to Salem and surrounding towns, particularly Essex county. Since PEM was created by the 1992 merger of the Essex Institute and the Peabody Museum of Salem, subjects cover a broad swath of knowledge, from literary, historical, genealogical, and cultural interests to artistic, architectural, maritime, and scientific pursuits.

Among the books, manuscripts, diaries, photographs, account books, maps, ship logbooks, and printed ephemera, you find original Salem witch trial documents, Winthrop family papers, Nathaniel Hawthorne first editions, Essex county histories, business papers by Philip English and the Touzel family, vital records from Massachusetts towns, Puritan sermons, and shipping reports.

Visiting the collections onsite and online

Salem’s PEM research library at Rowley is free and open to the public. Check hours before you go. (And make sure your GPS sends you to Rowley. The entrance is about half a mile from the Agawam Diner.)

https://www.pem.org/visit/library-02/visiting-the-reading-room

PhilCat searchable catalog

http://pem-voyager.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/vwebv/searchBasic

Manuscript finding aids

https://pem.as.atlas-sys.com/

Digital collections

https://www.pem.org/visit/library-02/online-collections

Salem witch trial records

https://pem.quartexcollections.com/collections/salem-witch-trials-collection/salem-witch-trials-documents

See also:

Collection center for artifacts from Peabody Essex unveiled (Salem News)

Mission impossible: The great collection move of 2018 (PEM)

Peabody Essex Museum’s Phillips Library collections: a timeline from 1799 to 2018

By Posted on Posted in Education, Exhibit, History Tagged with , , , , , , ,

1684 John Ward house (PEM)

For the 300th anniversary of the Salem witch trials, the Peabody Essex Museum created the Days of Judgement: Salem in 1692 exhibit and video. On display were original trial documents along with artifacts belonging to some people involved in the trials. Items included Judge Jonathan Corwin’s chest, Mary (Hollingsworth) English’s embroidered sampler, old George Jacobs’ canes, and John Proctor’s sundial.

Besides the exhibit, the Peabody Essex offered The Everyday & the Extraordinary: Salem in 1692 tours to school groups. Originally located across the street from the “old witch gaol,” the 1684 John Ward house helped students imagine what 17th-century life was like, from its simple furnishings to outmoded kitchen implements. The old home set the stage for talking about the social, economic, religious, and political conditions that led to the witch hunt.

Next, the students congregated in the one-room meetinghouse, which was similar to the 17th-century courthouse with bench seating, where they learned about court procedures. Afterward, the students reenacted the parts of accuser and accused using testimonies from the witch trials.

Recommended for middle and high school students, the program also provided teachers with a 50-page curriculum packet and reading list. Developed and tested by educators, the lesson plans introduced the basic story of the witch hunt and covered four themes: jurisprudence/law; folk belief and magic; group dynamics and prejudice; and material culture.

What the Witch Hunts Teach Us

Between the museum visits and the classroom lessons, students discovered why studying the Salem witch hunt is still relevant today. Some of the ideas include:

  • The importance of primary sources and how secondary accounts and later interpretations can change how we view history
  • The difference between bias and objectivity, and how loaded words can influence the audience
  • How group dynamics and mob mentality can influence outcomes
  • How to weigh evidence based upon what you know, and what’s admissible evidence within the historical context
  • How laws, scientific knowledge, and belief systems change over time
  • How traditions and practices are different among groups of people and through time
  • How ethnocentric groups discriminate, stereotype, and scapegoat others; and how we can combat intolerance and prejudice by recognizing it
  • How the roles of women have changed over 300 years; and why gender, ethnicity, religious beliefs, race, culture, etc., influence us today
  • How to have courage and believe in yourself, like the innocent victims who would not falsely confess to witchcraft and were hanged

In 1998, the Peabody Essex Museum opened The Real Witchcraft Papers “permanent exhibit” at the Phillips Library across the street from the main museum. Before 2011, when the Phillips Library collection was moved to a “temporary” collection center during renovations to the building, the so-called permanent exhibit was dismantled and taken off display.

Today, the Peabody Essex no longer maintains a permanent witch-hunt exhibit nor offers witch-hunt-themed school programs, despite the huge value of using these artifacts and original documents as teaching tools. Over the last 10+ years, the Peabody Essex Museum changed its mission by focusing on art and culture, while relegating “history” to the tourist attractions. Unfortunately, those businesses don’t have the historical settings, artifacts, original documents, educational resources, and prestige to put together an influential exhibit and educational program like PEM did with The Everyday & the Extraordinary: Salem in 1692.

Note: Since this post was written, PEM’s Phillips Library moved to Rowley, Massachusetts. The Peabody Essex Museum also presented two Salem witch trials exhibits, with plans for more. Check the PEM site for upcoming events and exhibits.

To see photos of some of PEM’s Salem witch trials artifacts, check out The Salem Witchcraft Trials, a booklet by Katherine Richardson (1983).

By Posted on Posted in News Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

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.

By Posted on Posted in News, Research Tagged with ,

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).