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SALEM, a city and one of the county-seats (Lawrence is the other) of Essex county, Massachusetts, about 15 m. N.E. of Boston. Pop. (1900), 35,956, of whom 10,902 were foreign-born (including 4003 French Canadians, 3476 Irish, and 1585 English Canadians), 23,038 were of foreign parentage (one or the otherparent foreign-born) and 156 were negroes; (1910), 43,697.Area, 8.2 sq. m. Salem is served by the Boston & Maineand by interurban electric railways westward to Peabody,Danvers and Lawrence, eastward to Beverly, and southwardto Marblehead, Swampscott, Lynn and Boston. It occupiesa peninsula projecting toward the north-east, a small island(Winter Island) connected with the neck of the peninsula (SalemNeck) by a causeway, and some land on the mainland. Salemhas many historical and literary landmarks. There, are threecourt-houses, one of granite (1839-1841) with great monolithicCorinthian pillars, another (1862), adjoining it, of brick, and athird (1908-1909) of granite, for the probate court. The CityHall was built in 1837, and enlarged in 1876. The Custom House(1818-1819) is described in the introduction to Hawthorne'sScarlet Letter, and in it Hawthorne worked as surveyor of the portin 1845-1849. The public library building (1888) was givento the city by the heirs of Captain John Bertram.
The Essex Institute (1848) is housed in a brick building (1851)with freestone trimmings and in old Plummer Hall (1857); itsmuseum contains some old furniture and a collection of portraits; ithas an excellent library and publishes quarterly (1859 sqq.)HistoricalCollections. The Peabody Academy of Science, founded by the gift in1867 of $140,000 from George Peabody and incorporated in 1868, isestablished in the East India Marine Hall (1824), bought for thispurpose from the Salem East India Marine Society. The MarineSociety was organized in 1799, its membership being limited to“persons who have actually navigated the seas beyond the Cape ofGood Hope or Cape Horn, as masters or supercargoes of vesselsbelonging to Salem”; it assists the widows and children of members.Its museum, like the ethnological and natural history collection of theEssex Institute, was bought by the Peabody Academy of Science,whose museum now includes Essex county collections (naturalhistory, mineralogy, botany, prehistoric relics, &c.), type collectionsof minerals and fossils; implements, dress, &c. of primitive peoples,especially rich in objects from Malaysia, Japan and the South Seas;and portraits and relics of famous Salem merchants, with modelsand pictures of Salem merchant vessels. The Salem Athenaeum(1810), the successor of a Social Library (1760) and a PhilosophicalLibrary (1781) is housed in Plummer Hall (1908), a building in thesouthern Colonial style, named in honour of a benefactor of theAthenaeum, Caroline Plummer (d. 1855), who endowed the PlummerProfessorship of Christian Morals at Harvard. Some of the oldhouses were built by ship-owners before the War of Independence,and more were built during the first years of the 19th century whenSalem privateersmen made so many fortunes. Many of the finestold houses are of the gambrel type; and there are many beautifuldoorways, door heads and other details. Nathaniel Hawthorne'sbirthplace was built before 1692; another house—now reconstructedand used as a social settlement—is pointed out as theoriginal “house of seven gables.” The Corwin or “Witch” house,so called from a tradition that Jonathan Corwin, one of the judges inthe witchcraft trials, held preliminary examinations of witches here,is said to have been the property of Roger Williams. The Pickeringhouse, built before 1660, was the homestead ofTimothy Pickeringand of other members of that family. Among the other buildings andinstitutions are Hamilton Hall (1805); the Franklin Building (1861)of the Salem Marine Society; a large armoury; a state normal school(1854); an orphan asylum (1871), under the Sisters of the GreyNuns; the Association for the Relief of Aged and Destitute Women(1860), occupying a fine old brick house formerly the home ofBenjamin W. Crowninshield (1772-1851), a member of the nationalHouse of Regresentatives in 1824-1831 and Secretary of the Navyin 1814; the Bertram Home for Aged Men (1877) in a house built in1806-1807; the Plummer Farm School for Boys (incorporated 1855,opened 1870), another charity of Caroline Plummer, on WinterIsland; the City Almshouse (1816) and the City Insane Asylum(1884) on Salem Neck; a home for girls (1876); the Fraternity(1869), a club-house for boys; the Marine Society Bethel and theSalem Seamen's Bethel; the Seamen's Orphan and Children'sFriend Society (1839); an Associated Charities (1901), and theSalem Hospital (1873).
Among the Church organizations are: the First (Unitarian;originally Trinitarian Congregational), which dates from 1629 andwas the first Congregational church organized in America; theSecond or East Church (Unitarian) organized, in 1718; the NorthChurch (Unitarian), which separated from the First in 1772; theThird or Tabernacle (Congregational), organized in 1735 from theFirst Church; the South (Congregational), which separated fromthe Third in 1774; several Baptist churches; a Quaker society, witha brick meeting-house (1832); St Peter's, the oldest Episcopalianchurch in Salem, with a building of English Gothic erected in 1833,and Grace Church (1858).
Washington Square or the Common (8 acres) is in the centre of thecity. The Willows is a 30-acre park on the Neck shore, and in NorthSalem is Liberty Hill, another park. On a bluff projecting intoSouth river is the old “Burying Point,” set apart in 1637, and theoldest cemetery in the city; its oldest stone is dated 1673; here areburied Governor Simon Bradstreet, Chief-justice Benjamin Lynde(1666-1745) and judge John Hathorne (1641-1717) of the witchcraftcourt. The Broad Street Burial Ground was laid out in 1655.On Salem Neck is Fort Lee and on Winter Island is Fort Pickering(on the site of a fort built in 1643), near which is the Winter IslandLighthouse.
The main trade of Salem is along the coast, principally in thetranshipment of coal; and the historic Crowninshield's or Indiawharf is now a great coal pocket. The harbour is not deep enoughfor ocean-going vessels, and manufacturing is the most importantindustry. In 1905 the total value of the factory products was$12,202,217 (13.9% more than in 1900), and the principal manufactureswere boots and shoes and leather. The largest singleestablishment is the Naumkeag Steam Cotton Company, which has2800 looms and about 1500 mill-hands. Another large factory isthat of the silversmiths, Daniel Low & Co.
History.—Salem was settled in 1626 by Roger Conant (1593-1679)and a company of “planters,” who in 1624 (under theSheffield patent of 1623 for a settlement on the north shore ofMassachusetts Bay) had attempted a plantation at Cape Ann,whither John Lyford and others had previously come fromPlymouth through “dissatisfaction with the extreme separationfrom the English church.” Conant was not a separatist, andthe Salem settlement was a commercial venture, partly agriculturaland partly to provide a wintering place for Banksfishermen so that they might more quickly make their springcatch. Cape Ann was too bleak, but Naumkeag was a “pleasantand fruitful neck of land,” which they named Salem in June 1629,probably in allusion to Psalm lxxvi. 2. In 1628, a patent forthe territory was granted by the New England Council to theDorchester Company, in which the Rev. John White of Dorchester,England, was conspicuous, and which in the same yearsent out a small company under John Endecott as governor.Under the charter for the Colony of Massachusetts Bay (1629),which superseded the Dorchester Company patent, Endecottcontinued as governor until the arrival in 1630 of JohnWinthrop, who soon removed the seat of government fromSalem first to Charlestown and then to Boston. In July orAugust 1629 the first Congregational Church (seeCongregationalism, §American) in America was organized here; its“teacher” in 1631 and 1633 and its pastor in 1634-1635 wasRoger Williams, a close friend of Governor Endecott and alwayspopular in Salem, who in 1635 fled thence to Rhode Island toescape arrest by the officials of Massachusetts Bay. In 1686,fearing that they might be dispossessed by a new charter, thepeople of Salem for £20 secured a deed from the Indians to theland they then held. Although not strictly Puritan the characterof Salem was not essentially different from that of the otherMassachusetts towns. The witchcraft delusion of 1692 centredabout Salem Village, now in the township of Danvers, but thena part of Salem. Ten girls, aged nine to seventeen years, twoof them house servants, met during the winter of 1691-1692in the home of Samuel Parris, pastor of the Salem Village church,and after learning palmistry and various “magic” tricks fromParris's West Indian slave, Tituba, and influenced doubtlessby current talk about witches, accused Tituba and two oldwomen of bewitching them. The excitement spread rapidly,many more were accused, and, within four months, hundredswere arrested, and many were tried before commissioners ofoyer and terminer (appointed on the 27th of May 1692, includingSamuel Sewall,q.v., of Boston, and three inhabitants of Salem,one being Jonathan Corwin); nineteen werehanged,[1] and onewas pressed to death in September for refusing to plead whenhe was accused. All these trials were conducted in accordancewith the English law of the time; there had been an executionfor witchcraft at Charlestown in 1648; there was a case in Bostonin 1655; in 1680 a woman of Newbury was condemned to deathfor witchcraft but was reprieved by Governor Simon Bradstreet;in England and Scotland there were many executions longafter the Salem delusion died out. The reaction came suddenlyin Salem, and in May 1693 Governor William Phips ordered the release from prison of all then held on the charge of witchcraft.
Salem was an important port after 1670, especially in theIndia trade, and Salem privateers did great damage in the SevenYears' War, in the War of Independence (when 158 Salemprivateers took 445 prizes), and in the War of 1812. On thisforeign trade and these rich periods of privateering the prosperityof the place up to the middle of the 19th century was built.The First Provincial Assembly of Massachusetts met in Salemin 1774. On the 20th of February 1775 at the North Bridge(between the present Salem and Danvers) the first armed resistancewas offered to the royal troops, when Colonel Leslie with the64th regiment, sent to find cannon hidden in the Salem “NorthFields,” was held in check by the townspeople. Salem was thebirthplace of Nathaniel Hawthorne, W. H. Prescott, NathanielBowditch, Jones Very and W. W. Story.
Marblehead was separated from Salem township in 1649;Beverly in 1668, a part of Middleton in 1728, and the districtof Danvers in 1752. Salem was chartered as a city in 1836.
See Charles S. Osgood and Henry M. Batchelder,Historical Sketch ofSalem, 1626-1879 (Salem, 1879); Joseph B. Felt,Annals of Salem(ibid., 1827; 2nd ed., 2 vols., 1845-1849); Charles W. Upham,Salem Witchcraft (2 vols., Boston, 1867); H. B. Adams,VillageCommunities of Cape Ann and Salem (Baltimore, 1883); EleanorPutnam (the pen-name of Mrs Arlo Bates),Old Salem (Boston, 1886);C. H. Webber and W. S. Nevins,Old Naumkeag (Salem, 1877); R. D.Paine,Ships and Sailors of Old Salem (New York, 1909), andVisitor’sGuide to Salem (Salem, 1902) published by the Essex Institute.
