Author: Daniel A. Gagnon

Gen. Israel Putnam House

On By Daniel A. GagnonIn Danvers History, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Putnam House
(The Putnam House on Maple St. in Danvers, 2020. Author’s photo)

The c.1648 Putnam House, known for its connections to both the 1692 Salem Village Witch-Hunt and the American Revolution, is one of the most significant historic structures in Danvers. It is best known as the childhood home of Major General Israel Putnam, the American commander at the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Born January 7, 1718 into a farming family, Israel Putnam was the 11th of 12 children. His father, Joseph Putnam, was an opponent of the 1692 Witch-Hunt, despite many members of the Putnam Family being among the leading accusers. Israel Putnam only received a minimal education, attending the local grammar school during the winters when the farming season was over. He married Hannah Pope in 1739, and continued living on his family farm for several years before he moved to present-day Brooklyn, CT.

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(DAR plaque on the Putnam House. Author’s photo)

Birth_Room,_Gen._Israel_Putnam POSTCARD
(Postcard showing the room in which Israel Putnam was born)

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(View from Route 1. Author’s photo)

Beginning in 1755, Putnam fought in the French and Indian War with the Connecticut militia. He entered as a private and rapidly rose through the ranks due to his bravery, and he served in the unit that was the precursor to the U.S. Army Rangers. Putnam fought in upper New York at Fort Ticonderoga, supervised the building of the major fort at Crown Point, NY, was captured and almost burned alive by French-allied Native Americans, commanded 1,000 colonial militiamen during the invasion of Spanish Cuba, and at the French and Indian War’s end he was a colonel who had been wounded 15 times.

Putnam returned to his farm in Connecticut where he lived and worked until April 19, 1775 when British soldiers advanced on Lexington and Concord and the American Revolution began. He was ploughing his farm when he heard about the battles, so he left his plough in the field immediately and departed to ask the governor for orders to go to Boston, and then departed for Massachusetts. The image of Putnam leaving his plough to join the fight is carved on one side of the Connecticut capitol building.

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(Putnam in his Continental Army uniform, printed in Hasbrouck, Israel Putnam)

When Putnam arrived, Boston was surrounded by Massachusetts militiamen, some of whom had confronted the British on the day of Lexington and Concord, like those from Danvers, as well as those from farther away towns who marched on the capital once they heard the news of the battles. The militiamen surrounded the British-occupied city which at that point was effectively an island, with only a sliver of land connecting it to the mainland.

Putnam, now a brigadier general in the Connecticut militia, set up headquarters in Cambridge while he oversaw the construction of defenses on that side of the Charles River. During this time, he received a message from British commander Gen. Thomas Gage in Boston – a friend from the French and Indian War – who offered him the position of major general in the British Army if he joined the Crown’s side against the American patriots. Putnam refused.

On the morning of June 17, 1775 British sailors on Royal Navy ships in the harbor awoke to see that during the previous night the Americans had moved onto the Charlestown peninsula and constructed fortifications there. The cannons aboard the British ships began firing on the Americans, starting the Battle of Bunker Hill, and soon after landing craft dropped off British soldiers to attack the Americans. Major General Joseph Warren was ill, and the commander of the Mass. militia refused command, so Putnam appears to have served as the American commanding officer of the battle. It was as the British soldiers approached the poorly-supplied militiamen on the hill that he reportedly ordered them to conserve ammunition until the British were close: “Don’t fire until you can see the whites of their eyes!”


(Bunker Hill. Library of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/pga.11535/)

At the Battle of Bunker Hill, Putnam fought among the troops, giving orders from the midst of battle. He carried a pistol that had been used by a British officer at Lexington – it was the gun that reportedly fired to signal for the British soldiers to open fire on the Americans on that fateful morning and therefore potentially the gun that fired the first shot of the Revolution.

The British soldiers attacked twice and were repelled. After receiving reinforcements they attacked a third time and pushed back the Americans, who were by then almost out of ammunition, ending the battle. Though, the Americans had inflicted heavy casualties onto the attacking British. When George Washington took command of the American forces the following month, Putnam was named a major general in the Continental Army, a position earned by his leadership at Bunker Hill and reputation from prior wars.

After Bunker Hill, Putnam fought at the Battle of Long Island – where he saved Washington’s army from destruction by covering the commander’s retreat – and at other battles in New York and Connecticut. At this time, his staff included his aide-de-camp Aaron Burr, future US vice president – and killer of Alexander Hamilton.

During the war, a captured British officer challenged Putnam to a duel. He accepted, and was given the choice of weapons. The next morning, the British officer saw Putnam sitting in a chair next to a barrel, the kind that was typically used to store gunpowder. Putnam invited him to sit in a chair on the other side of the barrel. Putnam inserted a fuse into the top of the barrel and lit it with his pipe, telling the British officer that they both had an equal chance of surviving. The fuse burned down to the end and the British officer jumped away in the nick of time – or so he thought, but it never exploded. It was actually a barrel of onions, and the British officer had mistakenly assumed it was gunpowder. Putnam considered that he won the duel.

Image result for general putnam gunpowder barrel
(Image of the onion barrel duel, printed in Hasbrouck, Israel Putnam)

Putnam’s military career ended in 1779 when he suffered a stroke. He returned to Danvers for the last time in 1786 to visit with his family and friends, and died on May 19, 1790. His legacy is seen in the various monuments and places named for him, including: Putnam Memorial State Park in Redding, CT that features an equestrian statue of him, his preserved Putnam Farm in Brooklyn, CT, a statue of him at the Connecticut State Capitol, the counties that bear his name in nine different states, several towns named for him, and the Putnam House in Danvers, as well as a motel named after him in the film My Cousin Vinny (1992) and a character in several versions of the videogame Assassin’s Creed.


(Image of Putnam in the Connecticut militia uniform he wore at Bunker Hill, from Assassin’s Creed)

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Sources:

Frothingham, Richard. History of the Siege of Boston, and of the Battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill. 6th ed. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1903.

Hasbrouck, Louise Seymour. Israel Putnam (“Old Put”): A Story for Young People. New York: C. Appleton, 1916. http://archive.org/details/israelputnamoldp00zimm.

Hubbard, Robert Ernst. Major General Israel Putnam: Hero of the American Revolution. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2017.

Humphreys, David. An Essay on the Life of the Honorable Major General Israel Putnam: Addressed to the State Society of the Cincinnati in Connecticut. Hartford: Hudson and Goodwin, 1788. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008586085.

Massachusetts Historical Commission. “General Israel Putnam House.” MACRIS. Accessed January 12, 2020. http://mhc-macris.net/Details.aspx?MhcId=DAN.51.

Tapley, Harriet S. Chronicles of Danvers (Old Salem Village), Massachusetts, 1632-1923. Danvers, Mass.: The Danvers Historical Society, 1923.

175 Years of the Maple Street Church

On By Daniel A. GagnonIn Danvers History, UncategorizedLeave a comment

(In the Herald-Citizen, 12/27/19)

Maple Street Church(Author’s photo, December 2019)

The Maple Street Church, originally known as the Third Orthodox Congregational Church of Danvers, was formed in 1844 and one year later a building was constructed on the site of its present church building on Maple Street. As the town grew, the church split off from the First Church of Danvers, and took the name Third Church because there was already a Second Congregational Church in the southern part of town that is now Peabody. This year marks the 175th anniversary of the Maple Street Church, an institution that has played a prominent role in the community for generations.

Danvers Plains, the area that includes Danvers Square, was quickly becoming the commercial center of town with the coming of the railroads, replacing the area surrounding the corner of Hobart and Centre Street that had served as the center of the community since it was Salem Village. This new church became a centerpiece of the new downtown, and the building hosted town meetings until town hall was built in 1855. During one of the town meetings held in the church in 1847, the people of Danvers voted on a resolution condemning the United States’ entry into the Mexican-American War, which was widely opposed in New England.

1887 Map, Danvers Square
(Danvers Square in 1887, Maple Street Church is at the top labelled as “orthodox church.” Sanborn Fire Insurance Map.)

In 1836 American settlers in Texas declared independence from Mexico, partly so that the settlers could own slaves – which was illegal in Mexico – and Texas was later annexed by the U.S. as a slave state. In 1846 President James K. Polk sent U.S. troops over the Mexican border to provoke an attack, which he then used as a cause for the Mexican-American War. Abolitionist New England viewed the conflict as a ploy to add territory to the southern US and thereby expand slavery.

Rev. Richard Tolman delivered a sermon to the Maple Street Church on July 4, 1847 denouncing the “miseries and crimes of the Mexican War,” and connected it to the expansion of slavery as he decried “the dreadful waste of treasure and blood… for the purpose of extending and perpetuating that system of oppression.” Many members of the church, including Deacon Samuel Fowler whose brick house still stands at the Port Corner, were known for their strong abolitionist beliefs.

Original Maple St Church
(The first church building, 1845-1850. Drawing by David S. Shattuck. Courtesy of the Danvers Archival Center, and printed in Martin, A Hearty Band of Firefighters.)

Though it quickly became the center of the Danvers community, the church suffered a terrible setback only five years after construction. At nine o’clock on the evening of July 10, 1850 two arsonists set fire to the building. The inferno was enormous, and threatened the whole neighborhood. The “General Putnam” engine company of volunteer firefighters from Danversport responded, its horse-drawn carriage galloping up High Street. When the firefighters arrived, men from the neighborhood joined them in combatting the flames. But, the church was lost.

During the fire, one man who volunteered to help the firefighters, William Duffy, had worked so hard that he won the respect of the fire company and returned to the engine house with them, where he was immediately voted in as a member of the volunteer company. Soon after, Duffy was arrested for being the accomplice of the man who set the fire that night.

Duffy was sentenced to life in the Charlestown State Prison, while the arsonist who turned state’s evidence apparently served no time. Well into his prison term, members of the church and the Danversport fire company captain lobbied to have him released early, finding it unjust that the man who had actually set the fire walked free while the accomplice was imprisoned. Duffy was released, and several years later enlisted to fight in the Civil War. He died fighting for the Union.

Despite the tragedy of the church burning down only years after it was established, a new church building was soon built and the congregation continued to grow quickly. When first established in 1844 the church counted only 42 people but by 1869 there were 200 members and by 1899 there were 751 members, with yet more attending services. That same year three of its members became some of the first western missionaries to visit China, which only recently began allowing western missions. The leaders of the church continued to be important in the wider community, and after pastor Rev. James Fletcher resigned from the Maple Street Church in 1864 he became the principal of Holten High School, the public high school in Danvers, from 1866-1871.

Maple St Church - Moynahan 1899
(The second church building, 1851-1944. Picture circa 1899, originally printed in Moynahan, Danvers, Massachusetts)

Fire struck the church again in the congregation’s hundredth anniversary year. Around 10pm on the night of May 20, 1944 one of the firefighters at the old central fire station looked out the window and saw flames reflected in a window across the intersection. A fire that began in a shed behind the church had quickly spread to the church building. The fire departments of seven towns fought the flames, fearing that they could easily spread to the neighboring gas station, the Maple Street Elementary School, and the railroad warehouse.

Maple St Church Burning
(The second church building burning in 1944. Courtesy of the Danvers Archival Center, and printed in Martin, A Hearty Band of Firefighters.)

Despite the multitude of firefighters and equipment, the fire raged through the grand wooden structure, and one hour after the fire was discovered the steeple collapsed into the church. In a sign of ecumenical and community-wide support for the church, at one point during the height of the inferno Fire Chief Joseph E. Kelley, Catholic priest Fr. Michael F. Collins, Superintendent of the Electric Light Dept. Leo Nimblett, Maple Street Church Deacon Carlton M. Stearns, and teenager Leland E. Martin Jr. (who later became a Danvers Fire Chief) ran into the basement of the burning church to rescue the congregation’s silver communion set. The church was rebuilt in 1948, the structure that stands today, and the rescued communion set is still used.

Maple St Church Ruins
(The burned out church building, as seen on the Sunday following the fire in 1944. Courtesy of the Danvers Archival Center, and printed in Martin, A Hearty Band of Firefighters.)

Maple St Church Clock and Rubble (1)
(The clock from the church’s steeple lying on a pile of debris in the nave of the church. Courtesy of the Danvers Archival Center, and printed in Martin, A Hearty Band of Firefighters.)

At its 175th anniversary, the Maple Street Church’s congregation numbers approximately 375 people and the church’s services are broadcast on Danvers Community Access Television (DCAT). In addition to mission trips, the church sponsors Boy Scout Troop 16, is active in the Danvers Interfaith Partnership, and organizes numerous charitable endeavors.
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Sources:

Archer, Charles F. W. “Danvers.” In Standard History of Essex County, Massachusetts. Boston: C. F. Jewett and Company, 1878.

Hanson, J. W. History of the Town of Danvers from Its First Settlement to the Year 1848. Danvers: J.W. Hanson, 1848.

Hines, Ezra D., and W. J. C. Kenney. “Danvers Fires and Fire Companies.” The Historical Collections of the Danvers Historical Society 5 (1917): 84–85.

“Late Sentence for Incendiarism.” Gallipolis Journal. November 7, 1850. Library of Congress. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85038121/1850-11-07/ed-1/seq-3/.

Maple Street Church. “The InSpire.” Danvers: Maple Street Church, December 2019. https://www.maplestreetchurch.org/the-inspire.

Martin Jr., Leland E. A Hearty Band of Firefighters: The Illustrated History of the Danvers Fire Department. Edited by Richard P. Zollo. Danvers: The Danvers Historical Society, 1997.

“Old Danvers Church Destroyed by Fire With $100,000 Loss.” Daily Boston Globe, May 21, 1944.

Proceedings at the Celebration of the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the First Parish at Salem Village Now Danvers. Boston: Congregational Publishing Society, 1874.

Putnam, A.P. “Danvers People and Their Homes.” Historical Collections of the Danvers Historical Society 5 (1917): 74–83.

Sanborn Map Company. “Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Danvers, Essex County, Massachusetts.” Danvers, Mass., November 1887. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn03714_001/.

“Summary.” The Advent Herald. November 2, 1850. Adventist Digital Library.

Tapley, Charles Sutherland. “The One Hundredth Anniversary of the Maple Street Church.” The Historical Collections of the Danvers Historical Society 33 (1945): 16–21.

Tapley, Harriet S. Chronicles of Danvers (Old Salem Village), Massachusetts, 1632-1923. Danvers, Mass.: The Danvers Historical Society, 1923.

Tolman, Richard. Evil Tendencies of the Present Crisis: A Discourse, Delivered July 4, 1847. Danvers: The Danvers Courier, 1847. https://archive.org/details/eviltendenciesof00tolm/page/n4.

Journal Article Published – “Skeletons in the Closet: How the Actions of the Salem Witch Trials Victims’ Families in 1692 Affected Later Memorialization.”

On By Daniel A. GagnonIn 1692 Witch Trials, Danvers History, Uncategorized2 Comments

My article, “Skeletons in the Closet,” appeared in this fall’s issue of the New England Journal of History:

Skeletons in the Closet – Gagnon

Gagnon, Daniel A. “Skeletons in the Closet: How the Actions of the Salem Witch Trials Victims’ Families in 1692 Affected Later Memorialization.” The New England Journal of History 75/76, no. 2/1 (Spring/Fall 2019): 32–73.

 

The Salem Village Parsonage

On By Daniel A. GagnonIn 1692 Witch Trials, Danvers History, Uncategorized4 Comments

(In the Herald-Citizen, 11/15/2019)

Parsonage Foundation - Dan Gagnon
(The parsonage foundation. Author’s photo).

During the winter of 1691-1692, the house grew cold as the stockpile of wood dwindled and snow piled up outside. The Salem Village minister, Rev. Samuel Parris was not being paid as promised. Worse, his claim of ownership to the parsonage, the house in which he and his family lived while he was minister of the church in Salem Village (present-day Danvers), was disputed. The minister and his family were very anxious about their future.

The stuffy air inside the house was punctuated by a shriek, then two, before the scraping of furniture on the wooden floor was heard as Betty Parris, the minister’s daughter, crawled under tables and chairs, still screaming. Soon, Rev. Parris’ niece Abigail Williams joined in too. Something frightening was happening in Salem Village.

Parris - Mass Historical
(The only known image of Rev. Samuel Parris, Massachusetts Historical Society: http://www.masshist.org/database/3732).

The Salem Village parsonage was ground zero for the 1692 Salem Village Witch-Hunt, during which almost 200 innocent people were accused of witchcraft – the impossible crime of signing a contract with the Devil in return for supernatural powers. Nineteen were hanged, one was pressed to death, and at least five died in jail. The chaos began with the two girls in the minister’s household having so-called “fits,” during which they screamed, contorted, and claimed that they were being attacked by specters – ghostly images of the alleged witches. Not long after these fits began in the parsonage, young women, middle-aged women, and adult men across Salem Village began acting similarly, and Parris’ Caribbean slave Tituba was the first accused of witchcraft.

Several years prior to the witch-hunt, Rev. Parris was hired as the minister in Salem Village, in the hope that he could calm a community that had fought contentiously with its previous ministers – disputes that grew serious enough to involve the courts, the Massachusetts legislature, and surrounding churches.

Though, calm was elusive. Several Villagers showed their disapproval of the new minister by withholding their taxes, which were used to pay his salary. For his part, Parris undermined the calm by apparently attempting to change the terms of his contract only months after being hired. As was typical, he was given the use of the 1681 parsonage building while he served as minister, though it remained owned by the community.

But, Parris wanted ownership of the house. A merchant in Boston and landholder in Barbados prior to coming to Salem Village, he sought the economic security that came with land ownership. His supporters organized either a secret town meeting, or at least a very poorly-attended one, that voted to give Parris ownership of the parsonage house. When this deception was revealed in the months before the witch-hunt, it caused anger across Salem Village.

During the witch-hunt, Parris testified against several of the innocent accused including Rebecca Nurse, whose family farm remains on Pine St. in Danvers. After the witch-hunt, Nurse’s family fought to remove Parris as the Village minister due to his role in the witch-hunt. The family wrote of Parris in a later court document, “Mr. Parris, by these practices and principles, has been the beginner and procurer of the sorest afflictions, not of this village only, but to this whole country, that ever did befall them.” Parris was forced out in 1697 finally ending his controversial tenure as minister. Prior to his departure, his wife Elizabeth passed away and was buried in what is now the Wadsworth Cemetery on Summer St.

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(Photograph of Elizabeth Parris’ headstone, 2019. Author’s photo).

Subsequent Village ministers lived in the parsonage for almost a century. When Rev. Peter Clark was the minister during the mid-1700s, his young neighbor Samuel Holten lived with the minister and his family in the parsonage so that he could be tutored by Clark. Holten went on to become a judge, member of the Continental Congress, and signer of the Articles of Confederation. He served temporarily as President of Congress under the Articles and later became a member of the U.S. Congress after the Constitution was ratified.

The original 1681 parsonage was torn down in 1784, with a newer section of the house moved to a different location. Rev. Benjamin Wadsworth replaced it with a grand new Georgian house for the ministry, what is today 73 Centre St. Meanwhile, the original parsonage site was abandoned, the cellar holes were filled in, and it was used as a field for grazing horses. Over time, the exact location of the site was lost to history.

Cousins 1891 Parsonage JPEG - Digital Commonwealth
(A photograph from 1891 of what was believed to be the area of the 1681 parsonage site. Frank Cousins, Danvers Site of Reverend Samuel Parris House, 1891, Frank Cousins Collection of Glass Plate Negatives. Courtesy of Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA).

Cousins - Wadsworth House 73 Centre
(The new 1784 Parsonage, 73 Centre St., Danvers as seen c. 1891. Frank Cousins, Danvers, Centre Street, Wadsworth house, c.1891, Frank Cousins Collection of Glass Plate Negatives, 606. Courtesy of Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA).

It was not until the early 1970s that then-Curator of the Danvers Historical Society Richard B. Trask, along with members of the Society, the town Historical Commission, and other interested locals began a search for the parsonage site. After using the 17th century Salem Village Record Book, along with 18th century maps, the probable site was located in the yard of Alfred Hutchinson, a local teacher. Partnering with archaeologist Roland Wells Robbins, whose prior work included Thomas Jefferson’s birthplace, Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond, and the Saugus Iron Works, the site was investigated and stone foundations were found.

Hutchinson permitted the excavation of this section of his yard, and about a dozen volunteers worked tirelessly on the site. As the stone foundation was uncovered, more than 30,000 artifacts were discovered, including 17th and 18th century coins, cutlery, pipe bowls from the 1660s, a metal plate bearing the initials of Samuel and Elizabeth Parris, and many wine bottle fragments, some of which had Parris’ initials on them.

The more that was found, the greater the interest and the need for volunteers. The original volunteers were joined in Hutchinson’s backyard by hundreds of locals who helped sift, dig, and sort found items.  This excavation became a community effort that yielded significant finds from one of the most important sites in colonial American history.

Today, the site is town-owned and open to the public via a cart path next to 67 Centre St. Possibly the most photographed site in Danvers, the parsonage cellars are featured in many history books, and frequently appear on television programs about the witch-hunt.

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(Sign at 67 Centre St.)

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(Path from the parsonage site to the street).

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Parsonage Foundation - Dan Gagnon

 

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Sources

Boyer, Paul, and Stephen Nissenbaum, eds. Salem Village Witchcraft: A Documentary Record of Local Conflict in Colonial New England. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1993.

First Church of Danvers Congregational. Church Record Book Belonging to Salem Village, 1689-1845.

Gragg, Larry. A Quest for Security: The Life of Samuel Parris, 1653-1720. New York: Greenwood Press, 1990.

McKern, Sharon S. “They’re Digging up Witch Lore in Salem.” Science Digest, May 1971.

Salem Village. “A Book of Record of the Severall Publique Transactions of the Inhabitants of Salem Village Vulgarly Called The Farmes.” Edited by Harriet S. Tapley. Historical Collections of the Danvers Historical Society 13 (1925): 91–122; 14 (1926): 65-99; 16 (1928): 60-80.

Trask, Richard B. “History of the Salem Village Church Record Book.” Danvers Archival Center at the Peabody Institute Library, September 15, 2015. https://www.danverslibrary.org/archive/village-church-record-book/.

Trask, Richard B. “Raising the Devil.” Yankee Magazine, May 1972.

The “Folly” in Folly Hill

On By Daniel A. GagnonIn Danvers History, UncategorizedLeave a comment

(In the Danvers Herald, 10/4/19)

Browne Hall
(Image of Browne Hall reprinted in Harriet S. Tapley, Chronicles of Danvers (Old Salem Village), Massachusetts, 1632-1923 (Danvers, Mass.: The Danvers Historical Society, 1923).

In 1740 a large mansion was built atop Leach’s Hill, a home whose construction was deemed a folly and altered the name of the hill itself. Today featuring the large water tanks towering above Route 128, the hill lost its former glory due to one of the worst natural disasters in New England history.

In those days, from the summit of the hill one could see Mt. Monadnock in New Hampshire, the Blue Hills in Milton, and the hills of Chelmsford. Today the Boston skyline remains visible on the southern horizon, as is the ocean to the east, and the old Danvers State Hospital perched atop Hathorne Hill to the west. Folly Hill is visible from all across the north shore, and attracted local explorers and wanderers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, who as a young man in the early 1800s explored the hilltop and ruins of “Browne’s Folly.”

Folly Hill looking south
(Looking south from Folly Hill, September 2019. Danversport Yacht Club and Sandy Beach in the foreground, and the Boston skyline in the background. Author’s photo.)

William Browne, a wealthy Salem merchant, representative in the Massachusetts legislature, and member of the Governor’s Council, purchased the hill for the location of a fine country estate. In 1740 he built “Browne Hall,” an 80-foot long mansion that consisted of two wings connected by a central entrance hall. The house was extravagantly furnished and built in a neoclassical style, with columns around the main doors and the floors painted to look like a mosaic.

One visitor noted that the entrance hall had an oval gallery with a fine railing above the ballroom, and a large dome for the roof. The mansion had four main entrances – one facing north, east, south, and west – and if all of the doors were propped open, one could stand in the center under the dome and see outside from all four directions. An opulent palace for a wealthy man, this house on the summit of the hill was visible for miles – but its precarious location atop the hill was its downfall.

At 4:30am on November 18, 1755, people across Massachusetts and the Atlantic coast suddenly awoke. The ground rumbled for four and a half minutes, walls shook, and chimneys crumbled as a powerful earthquake struck the area. The quake’s epicenter was off Cape Ann, but its effects were felt as far away as Nova Scotia and South Carolina. Clocks stopped in Boston and more than 1,500 chimneys crumbled, while in New Haven the ground rose and fell like waves on the ocean. Out on the actual sea, sailors 200 miles from the coast felt the rumbling and feared that their ship had run aground. The earthquake was the strongest ever felt in Massachusetts – likely between a 6.0 and 6.3 if measured on the modern Richter scale – and may have caused a tsunami as far away as the Caribbean.

Once the tremors ceased, the inside of Browne Hall was littered with broken glass and it was feared that part of the structure was compromised. Browne no longer considered the home safe to live in due to the damage, which was exacerbated by the house’s location on the peak of the hill. Abandoning this prominent yet precarious location, Browne moved part of the mansion to the corner of Liberty and Conant Streets in Danvers. William Browne passed away eight years after the earthquake and was buried in Salem’s Charter St. Cemetery, leaving the remnants of his once-glorious estate in Danvers to the next generation.

The remaining part of the house, now at its much lower location, was inherited by Browne’s nephew and heir. But, his nephew was a Loyalist during the Revolution and so all of his property was confiscated, including the remnants of Browne Hall. Browne’s nephew returned to England during the Revolution and later became the Royal Governor of Bermuda. The part of the house at the end of Liberty Street was left abandoned, with all of the home’s furnishings still within.

This unkempt building became known as a haunted house, and local children dared one another to enter. Nathaniel Hawthorne recounts the story of several boys hesitantly exploring the deserted mansion, believed to be the home of some evil spirit. On one adventure, they opened a door only to have specters of the home’s former owners lurch out of the closet at them as they turned tail and fled. These images were later discovered to be merely Browne family portraits tumbling off a shelf, rather than ghosts of the home’s former inhabitants.

Browne Hall Portraits
(Two of the Browne family portraits that were kept in Brown Hall. Reprinted in Ezra D. Hines, “Brown Hill and Some History Connected With It,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 32 (1896): 201–36).

The remnants of Browne Hall were later sold off in sections. The central hall became part of the Danvers Hotel, which was located where the savings bank building is now at one corner of Danvers Square.  It was later relocated yet again across the Square, but it burned in a large fire that destroyed the whole area in 1845.

After the house was removed, the hill – by now renamed “Folly Hill” due to Browne’s folly of building such a large house at the pinnacle of the hill – remained empty during the following decades. Hawthorne enjoyed taking walks to the open land around Salem, and frequently took a route that led him across the Salem-Beverly Bridge, down Bridge Street and Elliott Street past the hill, and then down Liberty Street back to Salem. He wrote about the green cart path that led to the top of Folly Hill, the overgrown cellar hole of the house, and the marvelous view of the surrounding towns from the summit.

Hawthorne, in a letter to his cousin, described the remains of Browne Hall as a connection to a prior glorious age before the Revolution and the uncertainty that followed. He wrote, “The ancient site of this proud mansion may still be traced upon the summit of the Hill… there I have sometimes sat and tried to rebuild, in my imagination, the stately house, or to fancy what splendid show it must have been even so far off as in the streets of Salem, when the old proprietor illuminated his many windows to celebrate the King’s birthday.”

Hawthorne Letter 1 - EIHC 32 - 0246

Hawthorne letter 2 - EIHC 32 - 0247
(Image of part of Hawthorne’s letter describing Folly Hill, reprinted in Ezra D. Hines, “Brown Hill and Some History Connected With It,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 32 (1896): 201–36).

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Sources

Ebel, John E. “Massachusetts Historical Society: The Cape Ann Earthquake of November 1755.” Massachusetts Historial Society, November 2005. http://www.masshist.org/object-of-the-month/objects/the-cape-ann-earthquake-of-november-1755-2005-11-01.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Browne’s Folly.” In The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, 12:131–35. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1878. https://books.google.com/books?id=Dx5EAAAAYAAJ&dq=hawthorne+Browne%27s+folly&source=gbs_navlinks_s.

Hines, Ezra D. “Brown Hill and Some History Connected With It.” Essex Institute Historical Collections 32 (1896): 201–36.

Tapley, Harriet S. Chronicles of Danvers (Old Salem Village), Massachusetts, 1632-1923. Danvers, Mass.: The Danvers Historical Society, 1923.

Danvers Ice Industry

On By Daniel A. GagnonIn Danvers History, Uncategorized3 Comments

On hot summer days, we take for granted the treat of having a crisp cold drink with ice cubes in it, not to mention the ability to refrigerate and freeze food. In the 19th and early 20th centuries the advent of the ice industry made this refrigeration possible and radically changed the lifestyles of everyday people. Danvers was the site of a booming local ice industry during these years, and a group of Danvers entrepreneurs capitalized on this new industry by establishing an international ice trade.

The Mill Pond, known for centuries as Putnam’s Pond, was the center of the local ice trade. The pond was originally a meadow that was flooded when Beaver Brook was dammed. The dam today is under Sylvan Street at one end of the pond, and for over 250 years the Putnam Family operated a sawmill powered by the flowing water. Although not the original intention, the pond became a perfect location to harvest ice.

Ice House and Saw Mill.jpg
(Putnam saw mill in the foreground, with the ice houses in the background. Road at bottom right is Sylvan St. Courtesy of the Danvers Archival Center. Republished from Zollo, Trask, and Reedy, As the Century Turned).

The Otis F. Putnam Ice Company took advantage of this opportunity. Boards would be added to the dam to raise the water level in the pond at the start of winter. Over the course of the cold months, the pond would freeze at least 10 inches deep. Then, the snow would be shoveled off, and metal tools were used to cut a grid pattern 3 inches deep into the ice. A horse then pulled a sharp tool down the pre-cut grid lines, separating the squares into blocks of ice.

Ice Harvesting.jpg
(Workers from the Otis F. Putnam Ice Company harvesting ice from the Mill Pond in 1900. Courtesy of the Danvers Archival Center. Republished from Zollo, Trask, and Reedy, As the Century Turned).

These blocks were then floated over to the Sylvan Street dam and through the narrow opening to an ice house that sat where the Walnut Grove Cemetery is now. The blocks were packed in sawdust or hay, which insulated them and prevented melting. About 6,000 tons of ice were harvested each year from the pond, and some years two rounds of ice could be harvested if the weather stayed cold long enough.

Ice House
(Another view of Putnam’s ice house, located at the present-day site of Walnut Grove Cemetery. Courtesy of the Danvers Archival Center. Republished from Zollo, Trask, and Reedy, As the Century Turned).

During the warmer months, the iceman traveled around town in an insulated wagon delivering ice to the kitchens of Danvers to keep food cold in the iceboxes. This Mill Pond ice was used primarily for refrigeration, not as ice cubes in drinks. One reason is that ice was too expensive to use frivolously, but also the quality of the water was in question. Beginning in 1901 the town consulted with the state board of health about pollution in the pond from nearby industries, and the state restricted the consumption of ice to only the top most layers of the pond.

Putnam Ice Wagon.jpg
(The Otis F. Putnam Ice Company delivery wagon at the turn of the century. Courtesy of the Danvers Archival Center. Republished from Zollo, Trask, and Reedy, As the Century Turned).

While the Putnam Ice Company served local customers, another group of Danversites plied their talents at the international ice trade. In 1845 a fire swept through downtown Danvers, which destroyed the house and shop of shoe manufacturer Joshua Silvester. He then went to England to establish a shoe factory, but while there discovered the great demand for ice in the large cities of Britain. When he returned to Danvers in 1846, he suggested to several of his friends that they should enter the ice business. Silvester himself was unable to be a partner after the losses he suffered in the fire, so his friends formed a stock company led by Henry T. Ropes.

The Danvers businessmen bought out a Salem company owned by Charles B. Lander that was doing a brisk trade sending ice from Wenham Lake to icehouses in Liverpool, England. The ice was cut and collected at Wenham Lake, and shipped by rail to Boston where it was packed in sawdust for the voyage to England. One of the builders of the rail spur from Wenham Lake to the railroad mainline along Locust St. in Danvers was Grenville Dodge, the Danvers native who later oversaw the building of the eastern half of the Transcontinental Railroad.

The business was slow to make returns for the Danvers men, but Ropes persevered and became very wealthy once the business took off.  From 1860 to 1880 Wenham Lake produced as much as 30,000 tons of ice annually, but this was not enough to meet demand. As the business expanded in Britain, the Danvers company needed to ship more ice than could be supplied locally so it expanded operations into Norway. Although it may seem hard to believe that shipping ice across the ocean in cargo ships was cost-effective, it was actually far cheaper to send this natural ice halfway around the world than it was to make “artificial ice” with prohibitively expensive machines.

The Danvers company marketed its ice not just to ordinary consumers for refrigeration, but also to the wealthy for use as ice cubes in drinks. The early shipments of ice from New England changed British society. One other early American ice company also imported American bar tenders to show the London elite how to enjoy cocktails with ice in them.

On April 2, 1892, a Liverpool newspaper ran an article with the headline “Ice is King” which described the Danvers company’s enormous success over the previous decades. The article also noted that the company had presented a gift of ice to Queen Victoria and the Royal Family, who were quite pleased with this new luxury.

Both locally and internationally the ice industry continued until the age of electrical refrigeration. The ice houses along the Mill Pond in Danvers burned down in 1935, thereby ending the local harvesting of ice. But, the ice at the Mill Pond continued to be used by children who skated on it for decades, until it no longer froze through solidly enough to be safe.

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Sources:

Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Annual Report of the State Board of Health of Massachusetts. Vol. 41. Boston: Wright and Potter Printing Co., 1910.

“Natural Ice.” Cold Storage and Ice Trade Journal, March 1906.

Putnam, A.P. “Wenham Lake and the Ice Trade.” Ice and Regrigeration, July 1892.

———. “Wenham Lake and the Ice Trade.” Ice and Regrigeration, August 1892.

———. “Wenham Lake and the Ice Trade.” Ice and Regrigeration, September 1892.

Tapley, Harriet S. Chronicles of Danvers (Old Salem Village), Massachusetts, 1632-1923. Danvers, Mass.: The Danvers Historical Society, 1923.

Zollo, Richard P., Richard B. Trask, and Joan M. Reedy. As the Century Turned: Photographic Glimpses of Danvers, Massachusetts. Danvers, Mass.: Danvers Historical Society, 1989.

John Greenleaf Whittier and Oak Knoll

On By Daniel A. GagnonIn Danvers History, Uncategorized2 Comments

(In the Danvers Herald July 5, 2019)

Oak Knoll - Danvers Archives
(Oak Knoll. Courtesy of the Danvers Archival Center)

In April 1876, world-renowned poet John Greenleaf Whittier moved to a mansion house on Summer St. in Danvers. Born in Haverhill in 1807, Whittier was one of the “fireside poets,” the first group of American poets that were famous at home and around the world. The group included Whittier, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., and James Russell Lowell. In general these writers explored traditional New England countryside themes, and through their writing sought to bring about social change against injustices of their time, and in particular supported the abolition of slavery.


(The “Fireside Poets.” Source: https://archive.org/stream/historyprogresso09sand/historyprogresso09sand#page/n489/mode/1up)

Whittier attended the 1833 convention that founded the American Anti-Slavery Society, of whose importance he later wrote: “I set a higher value on my name as appended to the Anti-Slavery Declaration of 1833 than on the title-page of any book.” Prominent in abolitionist and literary circles, he first had his poems published in a Newburyport newspaper whose editor was William Lloyd Garrison. In later years, Garrison went on to become one of the best-known abolitionists as founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society and editor of The Liberator, a leading anti-slavery newspaper that also advocated for women’s rights. The two became life-long friends, though they had disagreements about the best tactics for the abolitionist movement.


(The first page of a letter Whittier wrote while at Oak Knoll to William Lloyd Garrison. Digital Commonwealth: https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:dv142x13s)

Built in 1842, the house in Danvers to which Whittier moved in 1876 was a stunning Greek Revival-style country mansion. Whittier named it “Oak Knoll” because in front of the house there was a small rise with a grand oak tree upon it. The estate had manicured hedges, rolling lawns, rose gardens, and wild countryside surrounding it. The poet so loved the beautiful nature around his residence that when invited to go on carriage rides to other estates he was known to reply, “We will see nothing more beautiful than what we have at home.” After moving to Danvers, Whittier was offered as a gift the lavish Kernwood estate (now the country club) along the Danvers River in Salem. He refused, preferring the beautiful natural surroundings of Oak Knoll.


(Map of Oak Knoll. Historic American Building Survey, 1936, Library of Congress. Note Summer Street along the bottom edge.)

Whittier wrote more than 100 poems while living in Danvers, including the collections The Vision of Echard, and Other Poems (1878) and his last book of poems, At Sundown (1890). There are many of Whittier’s manuscripts and early-edition published works in the Danvers Archival Center. In his study, Whittier wrote at a desk from the Haverhill schoolhouse that he attended as a child, which was later donated to the Danvers Historical Society.

One of the best-known poems Whittier wrote at Oak Knoll was “The Witch of Wenham.” The poem’s theme is the witch-hunt of 1692, which began in what is now Danvers and spread throughout the surrounding towns. The poem reveals Whittier’s historical knowledge, and ends with a description of the area near Oak Knoll,

And when once more by Beaver Dam
The meadow-lark outsang,
And once again on all the hills
The early violets sprang,

And all the windy pasture slopes
Lay green within the arms
Of creeks that bore the salted sea
To pleasant inland farms,

The smith filed off the chains he forged,
The jail-bolts backward fell;
And youth and hoary age came forth
Like souls escaped from hell.

While living in Danvers, a steady parade of famous figures came to visit the elder poet and one historian describes these visitors “as pilgrims to a shrine.” The Emperor of Brazil Dom Pedro II visited Whittier at Oak Knoll. The Emperor was a man of letters who sponsored education in recently-independent Brazil, and worked to abolish slavery in that land. Another visitor was Dorothea Dix, an activist working for prison reform, and especially to end the practice of incarcerating mentally insane individuals in prisons because there were no other facilities for them. Her work led to the establishment of special hospitals across the country to treat those with mental illness. At her death, Dix was buried with a copy of Whittier’s poem “At Last” in her hands.


(His Imperial Majesty The Emperor Dom Pedro II of Brazil. Shown here in 1872. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pedro_Am%C3%A9rico_-_D._Pedro_II_na_abertura_da_Assembl%C3%A9ia_Geral.jpg)

One of Whittier’s visitors who played an unusual role in American history was Samuel J. Tilden, a long-time friend and abolitionist. Whittier was at Oak Knoll in 1876 when newspapers announced that Tilden may or may not have been elected President of the United States. Tilden received the most votes, but due to disputed recounts it was not clear whether he or Rutherford B. Hayes won the required electoral votes. A constitutional crisis ensued, President Grant sent federal troops to secure Washington, DC in case of civil unrest, and in the end a special commission declared Hayes the winner. When Tilden died in 1886, Whittier wrote a poem of remembrance published in a Boston newspaper.

Whittier was particularly respected in his later years as the last of the greatest generation of American poets. On Whittier’s 80th birthday Massachusetts Governor Oliver Ames attended a large party with 600 invited guests to honor the luminary. A few years before, in 1885, Whittier was asked to write the inscription on the memorial to Rebecca Nurse, hanged for witchcraft in 1692. He was described at the memorial’s dedication as “one of the most eminent and beloved poets of the present age.” Whittier died in 1892 while visiting a friend in New Hampshire.

Whittier Grave 2

Whittier Grave 1
(Whittier’s grave, Union Cemetery, Amesbury, Mass.)

When a biographer asked Whittier later in his life whether he considered Oak Knoll or a house he owned in Amesbury as his true home, the poet said of Oak Knoll, “Say, it is my home. I retain my legal residence in Amesbury, and I go there to vote, but my home is at ‘Oak Knoll.’”

Oak Knoll was torn down by a developer in 1958. The area of the former estate is now split between the Greenleaf Drive neighborhood and the beautiful marshland of the Greenleaf Open Space Area, preserved as natural land, much the same as it was in Whittier’s day.

Oak Knoll Google Map
(The area of the former Oak Knoll today. Google Maps)

 

—————————————————————————————————————————————–Sources:

Academy of American Poets. “A Brief Guide to the Fireside Poets | Academy of American Poets.” Text. Accessed June 13, 2019. https://poets.org/text/brief-guide-fireside-poets.

———. “Snow-Bound [The Sun That Brief December Day] by John Greenleaf Whittier – Poems  Academy of American Poets.” Accessed June 13, 2019. https://poets.org/poem/snow-bound-sun-brief-december-day.

Danvers Archival Center. “Fiscal Year 2014 Annual Report,” August 9, 2014. https://www.danverslibrary.org/archive/2014-annual-report/.

Poetry Foundation. “John Greenleaf Whittier.” Poetry Foundation, June 13, 2019. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/john-greenleaf-whittier.

Sanderson, Edgar, John Porter Lamberton, and Charles Morris. The History and Progress of the World. Philadelphia, T. Nolan, 1913. http://archive.org/details/historyprogresso09sand.

Tapley, Charles S. Country Estates of Old Danvers. Danvers, Mass., n.d.

Tapley, Harriet S. Chronicles of Danvers (Old Salem Village), Massachusetts, 1632-1923. Danvers, Mass.: The Danvers Historical Society, 1923.

Upham, William P. “Account of the Rebecca Nurse Monument.” In Essex Institute Historical Collections, 23:151–60, 201–28. Salem, Mass.: The Essex Institute, 1886.

Woodman, Abby J. Reminiscences of John Greenleaf Whittier’s Life at Oak Knoll, Danvers, Mass. Salem, Mass.: The Essex Institute, 1908. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007677070.

 

 

‘Witches’ and Revolutionaries at the Rebecca Nurse Homestead

On By Daniel A. GagnonIn 1692 Witch Trials, Danvers History, Uncategorized16 Comments

For more information on Rebecca Nurse, see the new biography: A Salem Witch: The Trial, Execution, and Exoneration of Rebecca Nurse by Daniel A. Gagnon. More info here.

(In the Danvers Herald May 21, 2019)

Rebecca Nurse House - Dan Gagnon
(The Rebecca Nurse House, Author’s Photo)

Tucked away behind the trees along Pine Street is the Rebecca Nurse Homestead, which was involved in many currents of American history and contains two of the oldest buildings in Danvers. Isolated from the surrounding neighborhoods, this island of colonial life is visited by several thousand visitors each year from all corners of the world.

Although most closely associated with the 1692 witch trials during which Rebecca Nurse was falsely accused of witchcraft and hanged, the 300-acre farm was first settled in 1636. Townsend Bishop, a respected magistrate and wealthy merchant, received the first grant to the farm but did not live there long. In 1645 he was accused of not bringing his child forth to be baptized into the Puritan church.

Bishop was accused of being a Baptist, a new sect that believed that only consenting adults should be baptized, not infants. This new religious group was much-loathed by the Puritans – the only religious group allowed to practice in Massachusetts at that time – and Bishop was run out of town for his heretical beliefs. Today some of Bishop’s fine household goods are at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Subsequent residents of the Homestead were the Endicott Family, whose ancestral mansion abutted the farm and stood where the CVS on Endicott Street is today. These farmers were the family of Massachusetts’ first resident governor, John Endicott, whose house on Endicott Street served as the governor’s office until a law was passed that required the governor to live in Boston. The Endicott House was set to be torn down in the 1980s, and was moved to the Nurse Homestead to save it from demolition.

In 1678, Rebecca Nurse and her husband Francis purchased the farm and moved onto the property with several of their grown children. Their children married soon afterwards, and the Nurse family hosted a double wedding in October, 1678 when two of their daughters married local men on the same day. In the following years, the Nurses deeded parcels of the farm to their children, dividing it between four households. The house of their daughter and son-in-law, Rebecca and Thomas Preston, still stands on Ash Street.

Nurse Homestead farm map
(The outline of the original 300-acre Nurse Farm overlaid on a contemporary map. The Nurse House is the red marker, the Nurse cemetery is the yellow, and the current or former sites of her children’s homes are the blue. For full map of the Sites in the Life of Rebecca Nurse, see: https://spectersofsalemvillage.com/map-life-of-rebecca-nurse/)

Fourteen years after moving to Salem Village (the area that is now Danvers), Rebecca Nurse was accused of witchcraft. Her chief accusers were Mrs. Ann Putnam and her daughter Ann Putnam Jr. who lived just south of Hathorne Hill. Nurse allegedly sent her “specter” – a ghostly form of herself – to attack Ann Jr. and several other people in the Village.

While living at the Homestead, Francis Nurse organized a legal defense of his accused wife and collected signatures from neighbors attesting to Rebecca’s innocence. This evidence was presented to the court at her trial in June, 1692, and it persuaded the jury to find her not guilty – the only person to receive such a verdict during the witch-hunt.

But, immediately after the foreman announced this verdict, the accusers in the courtroom began yelling, rolling around, and screaming that Nurse was once again hurting them with witchcraft. This outcry, along with pressure from the judges, persuaded the jury to redeliberate. They left the courtroom again, and then returned to ask her more questions. Because she was elderly, ill, and hard of hearing Nurse either did not answer their questions, or did not answer them sufficiently which led the jury to find her guilty.

Her family petitioned the governor for a reprieve to delay her execution until they could appeal the case, which he granted. However, someone identified only as a “Salem gentleman” lobbied the governor to revoke his reprieve, and Nurse was hanged on July 19, 1692. It is believed that she was reburied in the family cemetery on the farm after her execution. In 1885, her descendants built a memorial to her in the cemetery – the first memorial to an accused witch anywhere in the United States.

325 Nurse Monument Wreath
(The Rebecca Nurse Monument at the conclusion of the commemoration of the 325th anniversary of her execution, July 19, 2017. The Danvers Alarm List Company lobbied Gov. Baker to declare that day “Rebecca Nurse Day” in Massachusetts, and hosted a memorial event featuring a lecture and a service at the monument to mark the occasion).

Nurse’s descendants lived on the farm for another century, and her great-grandson, also named Francis, lived on the farm during the mid-1700s. He was a sergeant in the militia, and served on the first board of selectmen of Danvers when it became an independent town. He was living at the Homestead on April 19, 1775, when around 9am he heard the bells of the First Church ringing frantically. He grabbed his gun, and ran for the training field on Centre Street. The British had left Boston, and were advancing on Lexington and Concord.

The Danvers Militia frantically traversed 16 miles of dirt roads and paths to cut off the British retreat to Boston. The Danvers men intercepted the British troops at Menotomy (present-day Arlington, Mass.) in a brutal fight involving hand-to-hand combat at the Jason Russell House. Nurse survived, but seven Danvers men did not. Sergeant Francis Nurse lived five more years, before he was laid to rest in the family cemetery.

The Homestead continued to be a private farm up until 1907 when it was put up for sale, and it was feared that the farm would be entirely divided up and the house demolished. Danvers resident Sarah E. Hunt raised money to purchase and preserve the property as a non-profit museum. It was owned by this local group for two decades, until it was sold to a larger museum organization. This organization put the property up for sale in 1981, and it was again feared that the property would be lost. The Danvers Alarm List Company, the group of Danvers Revolutionary War reenactors, purchased the property so that it could remain a non-profit museum.

Nurse House Map Clemens
(Plan of the Nurse Homestead by William J. Clemens, courtesy of the Rebecca Nurse Homestead Museum. NOTE: Hours listed in the drawing are not current museum hours)

Today the Nurse Homestead shares the history of Danvers with thousands of local, out-of-town, and international visitors each year. It is the only home of a victim of the 1692 Witch-Hunt preserved and open to the public.

Sources:

Danvers, Town of. Report of the Committee Appointed to Revise the Soldiers’ Record. Danvers, Mass.: Town of Danvers, 1895.

Danvers Alarm List Company. “Timeline | The Rebecca Nurse Homestead.” Accessed May 24, 2019. http://www.rebeccanurse.org/timeline/.

Gagnon, Daniel A. “Sites in the Life of Rebecca Nurse.” 2018. https://spectersofsalemvillage.com/map-life-of-rebecca-nurse/.

Hoover, Lois Payne. Towne Family: William Towne and Joanna Blessing, Salem, Massachusetts, 1635. Baltimore, MD: Otter Bay Books, 2010.

Perley, Sidney. “Endecott Land, Salem Village, in 1700.” In Historical Collections of the Danvers Historical Society, 4:99–120. Danvers, Mass.: Danvers Historical Society, 1916.

Rosenthal, Bernard, ed. Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Salem, Town of. Town Records of Salem, Massachusetts. 3 vols. Salem, Mass.: The Essex Institute, 1868. https://ia801600.us.archive.org/30/items/townrecordsofsal00sale/townrecordsofsal00sale.pdf.

Shurtleff, Nathaniel B., ed. Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England. Boston: Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1854. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/inu.30000041586334.

Suffolk County (Mass.). Suffolk Deeds. 14 vols. Boston: Rockwell and Churchill Press, 1880.

Tapley, Harriet S. Chronicles of Danvers (Old Salem Village), Massachusetts, 1632-1923. Danvers, Mass.: The Danvers Historical Society, 1923.

Upham, Charles W. Salem Witchcraft: With an Account of Salem Village and A History of Opinions on Witchcraft and Kindred Subjects. Mineola, New York: Dover, 2000.

Zollo, Richard P. From Muskets to Missiles: Danvers in Five Wars. Danvers, Mass.: R.P. Zollo, 2001.

The Danvers Library and Its Benefactor, George Peabody

On By Daniel A. GagnonIn Danvers History, Uncategorized3 Comments

(In the Danvers Herald, April 18, 2019)

Danvers Library 2019 - Dan Gagnon
(Peabody Institute Library, Danvers, 2019. Author’s photo)

Danvers’ Peabody Institute Library, one of several “Peabody Institutes” across the United States, is named for noted philanthropist and Danvers native George Peabody. He was born in 1795 in the South Parish of Danvers, which later became the Town of South Danvers and is now the City of Peabody.

File:George Peabody House.JPG
(George Peabody House Museum, Peabody, Mass. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:George_Peabody_House.jpg)

George Peabody grew up poor and received little education (this was before Danvers had a public high school), so he went to work at age 12 as a clerk. He volunteered as a soldier in the War of 1812, and then returned to work in various dry-goods stores. He later impressed a wealthy merchant in New York and became his business partner.

Peabody later moved to London and established his own bank, George Peabody & Co. As a banker, he loaned money to foreign kingdoms and empires, and helped establish the credit of the US Treasury abroad. George Peabody and Co. still exists, though it was renamed a generation later to the probably more familiar “J.P. Morgan & Co.” Peabody never married or had a family, and he chose Morgan’s father as his protégé. Peabody’s bank is the predecessor to the present-day banks J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley.

Away in London in 1852, Peabody regretted that he could not attend the celebrations of Danvers’ 100th anniversary. As an invited guest of honor, he had the privilege of giving a toast at the banquet, which followed a grand parade. Instead, Peabody sent a sealed envelope containing a toast that was dramatically read at the gala: “Education, a debt due from past to future generations.” Putting his money where his mouth was, the envelope also included an announcement that he was donating $20,000 to establish a library for Danvers.

When he finally returned home in 1856, he received a hero’s welcome. Having split only one year prior, both Danvers and South Danvers gave a joint reception for Peabody, who visited his hometown as his first stop back in the US. He arrived at the Maple St. Church in Danvers Square and was greeted by a one-hundred gun volley. From there, a parade travelled across town and through triumphal arches erected for the occasion, as people threw flowers and cannon salutes boomed.

That day he told a group of children from his former neighborhood, “(Your) early opportunities and advantages are not very much greater than were my own, and I have since achieved nothing that is impossible to the most humble boy among you.”

Peabody Mural - Richard V. Ellery
(Mural in the Danvers library depicting George Peabody’s return to Danvers based on drawings from the time. The mural was done by Danvers artist Richard V. Ellery as part of the Works Progress Administration’s art projects during the Great Depression. Author’s photo.)

Although stingy and thrifty in his personal life – a holdover from his impoverished childhood – he is remembered as “the father of modern philanthropy” for donating the majority of his fortune to educational institutions in America and to the Peabody Trust, which continues his mission to provide affordable housing to over 110,000 Londoners. He was admired for his charity in London, where even British nobility attended his American Independence Day party each July 4th.

In addition to the libraries of Danvers, Peabody, and Georgetown, his donations established the Peabody Academy of Sciences (now the Peabody Essex Museum) in Salem. Focused on education, Peabody donated to many universities across the United States. Harvard University, Yale University, and Phillips Academy, Andover have museums named in his honor.

Peabody made subsequent visits home with large receptions each time, and donated more than $100,000 towards the Peabody Institute, Danvers. In 1869 he returned for the dedication of the Institute, built at Peabody Park in Danvers along the banks of the Mill Pond. Guests who attended the events at the Institute  that week included Senator Charles Sumner and Oliver Wendell Holmes.

The original building was a Gothic Revival structure. It caught fire in 1890, though many books and a large portrait of Peabody (that still hangs in the library today) were saved from the flames. The present structure was built in 1892 on the same spot. It featured a large auditorium and stage for events and lectures, in addition to reading rooms. The auditorium was removed in 1981 and more floors for books were built. During this renovation, space for the children’s room and Danvers Archival Center was added below ground.

Peabody Portrait
(Portrait of George Peabody saved from the fire. It still hangs in the library today. Author’s photo)

Library Auditorium
(The interior of the library showing the auditorium, 1978. Photo by Ron Gagnon)

Remnants of Stage
(Remnants of the auditorium stage seen in 2019. Author’s photo.)

The 1869 trip home for the dedication was Peabody’s last. A statue of him was dedicated later that year outside the Royal Exchange in London, and he died soon after. His last words were, “Danvers, Danvers! Don’t forget!,” referring to his wish to be buried in his hometown. A funeral was held for him at Westminster Abbey in the presence of Queen Victoria, who also rode in his funeral cortège. The Queen admired Peabody, and once offered him a title of nobility, which he refused as an American. Peabody was temporarily buried in the Abbey, the first American to ever be buried there.


(Dedication of Peabody statue, Royal Exchange, London. From the Illustrated London News, July 31, 1869)

File:Funeral of George Peabody at Westminster Abbey, 1869 ILN.jpg
(Peabody’s Funeral at Westminster Abbey. From the Illustrated London News, 1869)

But, Peabody wished to be buried in his hometown. In another first for an American, on the Queen’s orders a squadron of Royal Navy warships transported Peabody’s body across the Atlantic. After another funeral attended by the Queen’s son Prince Arthur in Peabody, Mass. (which changed its name in his honor the previous year), Peabody was buried in Harmony Grove Cemetery, Salem.

In 1995 hundreds of people gathered in Westminster Abbey to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Peabody’ birth, which shows the lasting positive effect of his philanthropy. The event included the organist playing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” in the same church in which the British monarchs are crowned.

In March, 2018, Peabody was remembered by Google, which featured an image of him and several educational institutions that he endowed – including the Danvers library – above the search bar on Google.com.

Google honors George Peabody, considered 'the father
(George Peabody and the Danvers Library on the Google homepage, March, 2018)

In the words of a London pamphlet describing Peabody soon after his death: “He acquired riches for the sake of doing good.”

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Sources:

Best, Antony. On the Fringes of Diplomacy: Influences on British Foreign Policy, 1800–1945. Routledge, 2016.

Chernow, Ron. The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1990.

Dean and Chapter of Westminster. “George Peabody, Philanthropist.” Westminster Abbey. Accessed April 1, 2019. https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-commemorations/commemorations/george-peabody/.

“Funeral of George Peabody at Westminster Abbey.” New York Times, November 13, 1869. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1869/11/13/80248714.pdf.

George Peabody. Peabody Donation Presented To The Peabody Institute Danvers Massachusetts U.S. By George Peabody Of London 1862. London: J.W.L Maude, 1862. http://archive.org/details/PeabodyDonationPresentedToThePeabodyInstituteDanversMassachusettsByGeorgePeabodyOfLondon1862.

George Peabody, the Philanthropist, and Working Man’s Friend. London: W. Partridge and Co., 1870.

Glauber, Bill. “Service in London Honors Memory of George Peabody Philanthropist Spread Charitable Deeds in Great Britain, America.” The Baltimore Sun. November 17, 1995. https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1995-11-17-1995321035-story.html.

Hanaford, Phebe Ann. The Life of George Peabody: Containing a Record of Those Princely Acts of Benevolence Which Entitle Him to the Esteem and Gratitude of All Friends of Education and the Destitute, Both in America, The Land of His Birth, And in England, The Land of His Death. Boston: B.B. Russell, 1870.

“Peabody Housing Association | About Us | London.” Peabody. Accessed April 6, 2019. https://www.peabody.org.uk/about-us.

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