Tag: Danvers History

Book Discussion at Danvers Historical Society

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

This Wednesday, December 15, I will be giving a talk at the Danvers Historical Society about my new biography of Salem Village Witch-Hunt victim Rebecca Nurse: A Salem Witch: The Trial, Execution, and Exoneration of Rebecca Nurse. The event is free, and starts at 7pm in Tapley Memorial Hall on Page Street. In addition to Nurse, whose home is a museum today on Pine St. in Danvers, I’ll also discuss some of Danvers’ other links to the 1692 Witch-Hunt. Books will be available for sale and for signing. More details can be found here.

For long-distance followers of the blog, the Danvers Historical Society presentation will be recorded and posted on their website after the event. Additionally, on January 6th I will be giving a Zoom presentation on the book with the Rockport, Mass. public library. Details for that free event can be found here.

For more information on A Salem Witch, reviews, and links to order it, see my author website here.

Rest assured, there will be more Danvers history blog posts in the coming year.

-Dan Gagnon

Salem Village Historical Walking Tour 2022

On By Daniel A. GagnonIn 1692 Witch Trials, Danvers History, UncategorizedLeave a comment

In partnership with Salem Historical Tours and the Danvers Historical Society, on six Saturday mornings this fall I am giving a walking tour of several Salem Village historic sites in Danvers related to the 1692 witch-hunt. A portion of the ticket price goes to support the Danvers Historical Society.

For more info: https://www.salemhistoricaltours.com/salem-village-witch-hunt-walking-tour

Salem is where people visit to learn about the 1692 witchcraft trials, but Danvers, formerly Salem Village, is where it first began on a cold February day.

Two young girls began acting out and the local doctor’s diagnosis was that they must be under the Devil’s hand. The witch-hunt was off and running, turning neighbor against neighbor.

You’ll visit several significant historical sites including the remains of the parsonage where Reverend Samuel Parris’ 9-year-old daughter Betty and 11-year-old niece Abigail had their fits that began the witch-hunt.

This special tour will be held on six Saturdays in September and October. The walking tour will be all outside, and stops along the way will include the Training Field, Parsonage site, Ingersoll’s tavern, the Salem Village Witch Trials Memorial, and the First Church of Danvers (Salem Village Church).

Daniel A. Gagnon, a life-long Danvers resident and author of A Salem Witch, will lead the tour that will give you a greater understanding of one of the more compelling stories of our country’s early history.

Available to book now. Tickets are $25. Details on the meeting location in Danvers and directions will be in the confirmation email.

For more info: https://www.salemhistoricaltours.com/salem-village-witch-hunt-walking-tour

250 Years Ago, Danvers Moves towards Revolution

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

(In the Herald-Citizen 5/1/20)

Page House
The Page House with its rooftop porch where Sarah Page supposedly drank tea. Today it is the office and shop of the Danvers Historical Society. Author’s picture, 2020.

This month begins the 250th anniversary of the start of Danvers’ role in the American Revolution. While the 250th anniversary of the 1776 Declaration of Independence is not until 2026, the people of Danvers played important roles during the years leading up to the Revolution: protesting injustices, briefly (and unhappily) hosting the headquarters of the British Army in North America, declaring themselves independent from the king long before the Declaration of Independence, and answering the call to fight the British when they marched on Lexington – to say nothing of other events that occurred during and after the War for Independence.

May 1770 – 250 years ago this month – was an important turning point for Danvers because the town meeting passed a resolution against the importation of tea and began shaming those who continued to support His Majesty’s Government instead of local elected authority. As Parliament leveled more and more taxes on the colony without the agreement of the Massachusetts legislature, and without any colonial representation in Parliament, the people of Massachusetts protested against this unfair taxation without representation.

During the 1760s, patriotic merchants in Boston signed agreements not to import any taxed goods from Britain. The resulting economic harm forced Parliament to withdraw the taxes on many items – but not the tax on tea. On May 28, 1770 the men of Danvers gathered for a town meeting at the First Church to discuss the issue. Unanimously, they voted to boycott any merchant who imported British goods and agreed “That we will not drink any foreign tea ourselves, and use our best endeavors to prevent our families and those connected with them, from the use thereof” until the tax was repealed.

First Church - North Meetinghouse - DHC v2
The First Church of Danvers as it appeared in 1770, when the town meeting met there to vote on the tea ban. From Danvers Historical Collections, vol. 2

To emphasize their determination, a committee was elected to bring a copy of this town meeting resolution to residents and have every head of household sign it. If someone refused, the town meeting voted that “he shall be looked upon as an enemy to the liberties of the people, and shall have their name registered in the town [record] book.” Additionally, these resolutions were published in the local newspaper, the Essex Gazette, so that all were warned.

Because of this threatened humiliation and damage to one’s reputation, there seems to be only one recorded instance of someone publicly refusing to sign: A man named Isaac Wilson who lived in the southern part of Danvers, now Peabody. Due to his opposition, he was taunted about being a “Tory” (one who remained loyal to the king). Though, as the Revolution approached, a few other families in Danvers aligned themselves with the Tory side and remained loyal to the king, leaving town when the war began.

In addition to this example of outright opposition, some of the households that publicly signed the ban privately violated it. Tea was often bought in bulk, so why shouldn’t tea that a family had purchased before the ban be consumed? The tax had already been paid, so Britain received no further gain whether they drank it or dumped it out. Nineteenth-century historians note several instances of families acting this way, especially instances where wives decided to consume the tea they already had on hand with or without the knowledge of their husbands.

The most famous story of thwarting the tea ban in Danvers – though apparently kept secret at the time to not tarnish the family’s patriot reputation – was Sarah Page’s covert tea party on the roof of the Page House. This legend was enshrined in the poem “The Gambrel Roof” by Beverly writer Lucy Larcom (1824-1893), who knew Sarah Page’s granddaughter. Though potentially based on true events, Larcom’s poem is a romanticized version of the story that was published in 1874 during the lead up to the US Centennial in 1876.

Sarah Page’s husband Capt. Jeremiah Page was a Danvers militia officer and an ardent patriot who later fought in the Revolution. He agreed with the tea ban, and Larcom’s poem supposes that he said “none shall drink tea in my house.” One evening when her husband was out, Sarah Page is said to have invited several women from the neighborhood up to the porch atop the Page House’s gambrel roof, not doing so until sunset so that they would not be noticed. Larcom quotes Page as telling her friends, “Upon a house is not within it,” thereby finding a loophole around her husband’s directive.

The Page House remained in the family for two more generations, and was originally on Elm Street where “Instant Shoe Repair” and “Nine Elm” are today. Sarah Page’s daughter in-law Mary Page died in 1876 and her will put the property into a trust with the stipulation that once there were no longer any Page descendants to live there, the historic house was to be torn down. After Mary Page’s daughter Anne Lemist Page died in 1913, the trustee planned to demolish it according to her wishes.

Losing a house in which two local figures prominent during the Revolution lived would have been a tragedy, and the still relatively new Danvers Historical Society sued to oppose the will. The Essex County Probate Court sided with the Historical Society, and allowed the organization to purchase the house from the estate to preserve it, which it did in August 1914. The Page House was later moved a short distance around the corner to Page Street where it stands as the Society’s office and book shop, still with its gambrel roof and porch atop it.

 

Original location of Page House - DHC v3
Original location of the Page House shown along Elm Street at bottom. It’s second location is labelled along Page Street as “Danvers Historical Society.” From Danvers Historical Collections, vol. 3.

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Sources:

Addison, Daniel Dulany. Lucy Larcom: Life, Letters, and Diary. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1895.

Gill, Eliza M. “Distinguished Guests and Residents of Medford.” The Medford Historical Register 16, no. 1 (January 1913): 1–14.

Larcom, Lucy. The Poetical Works of Lucy Larcom. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1884.

“Newspaper Items Relating to Danvers.” In The Historical Collections of the Danvers Historical Society, 1:61–64. Danvers, Mass.: Danvers Historical Society, 1913.

Nichols, Andrew. “The Original Lot of Col. Jeremiah Page.” In The Historical Collections of the Danvers Historical Society, 3:101–9. Danvers, Mass.: Danvers Historical Society, 1915.

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

Danversport’s Grand Statue

On By Daniel A. GagnonIn Danvers History, Uncategorized1 Comment

(In the Danvers Herald, 2/28/19)

Statue
(Author’s photo, February 2019)

At the fork of Water and South Liberty Streets in Danvers is a large statue of a man mounted upon a horse, one of only 10 equestrian statues in Massachusetts. Often misidentified as a military man, the statue is of eccentric millionaire William Penn Hussey (1846-1910).

The statue depicts Hussey riding on a white horse, which commemorates him leading a procession through the streets of Danvers that included a 1,000 horsemen honor guard in front of a crowd of 75,000 cheering spectators. He rode not as a conquering general but instead as a generous community benefactor chosen as grand marshal of Danvers’ 150th anniversary parade in 1902.

Penn Hussey was born in North Berwick, Maine in 1846 and was a cousin of poet John Greenleaf Whittier, another one-time Danvers resident. Hussey was a teenage prankster, and one Sunday morning on St. Patrick’s Day he painted the local minister’s horse green while the village was attending church.

He ran away from home as a teenager and went west, working odd jobs in the California mines. An Indianapolis newspaper that later profiled his rise from rags-to-riches described him having occupations such as “ranchman, brakeman, cowboy, hobo.” He moved to Danversport in 1874, and worked as a farmhand, an attendant at the state hospital, and then a coal distributor.

While working at Danvers State Hospital, Hussey cared for a patient from Edgartown, Martha’s Vineyard. Later, the patient returned home and Hussey went with him to continue as his caretaker. While there, Hussey fell in love with the patient’s sister, Sarah Munroe. They married and returned to Danversport where he established a coal depot and distribution business.

Penn Hussey pen and ink
(Pen-and-ink drawing of Penn Hussey along with his signature, from his company’s prospectus)

Later, Hussey put his mining experience and knowledge of the coal business into practice and founded a coal mine in Nova Scotia with his new (and wealthy) father-in-law. Hussey took out a loan to invest in the company, and travelled to Europe to convince wealthy financiers to invest in his project. While abroad, he addressed the House of Lords in London on the subject of his mine in Nova Scotia (which was then part of the British Empire). He succeeded in obtaining financial backing for his mine, and became a multimillionaire.

Map Broad Cove
(Map of Hussey’s Broad Cove Mine, from his company’s prospectus)

Hussey and his wife lived in the large brick “Riverbank” estate on Water St. from 1883 until his death in 1910. Despite living in a lavish mansion, he was so proud of the white horse he owned that he once brought it into his stately living room to show guests. He also socialized with the elite of Europe, and his daughter Mary Elaine met her future husband in Paris at a gala given by the President of France for the visiting Shah of Persia.

danversmassachus00moyna_0128
(Riverbank in 1899, printed in Moynahan, Danvers, Massachusetts: A Resume of Her Past History and Future Progress)

IMG_0814
(Riverbank in February, 2019. Author’s photo)

Penn Hussey was known locally for his philanthropy in providing coal to Danvers locals who could not afford to heat their homes, and he refused to collect debts on over 1,000 accounts of people who were unable to pay him back. Despite being a multimillionaire who could afford the finest private schools, he sent his son to Holten High School (the public high school in Danvers, the precursor to Danvers High).

Hussey’s philanthropy in sponsoring Danvers’ 150th celebration in 1902 was described in a Boston Globe article entitled “Spent Money Freely.” The town appropriated only a small sum of money for the events, so Hussey stepped in and bankrolled a large portion of the celebration. He furnished floats for each public school, so that all 1,500 Danvers schoolchildren could ride in the grand parade. He also provided horses and saddles for the parade, in addition to hiring several marching bands. He paid for a banquet at his mansion that fed over 1,000 people “in a royal manner,” as the Danvers Mirror (the precursor to the Danvers Herald) described it.

The 150th parade was six miles long, and took 2 hours to pass by. In addition to the 1,000 horsemen in the parade, there were over 100 floats, marching bands, military detachments, veterans of both the Civil War and the Spanish-American War, and members of local civic groups. Seventy-five thousand people swarmed into Danvers via steam train, streetcars, horse-drawn carriages, and bicycles to see the festivities. One train headed to Danvers that day was so crowded that there were even people on the roof.

Penn Hussey’s death in 1910 was announced with a front page article in the Boston Globe, and later his death was included in the Globe’s January 1, 1911 year-in-review article on the most significant events of 1910. Reportedly, he requested to be mummified and have his body placed standing up in a glass case on the front lawn of his Water St. mansion. Instead, he is buried in Hussey Circle at Harmony Grove Cemetery, Salem.

The_Boston_Globe_Wed__Apr_27__1910_ (1) - Copy
(Boston Globe, April 27, 1910)

IMG_0834

IMG_0833
(Author’s photos, February 2019)

In 1913, Hussey’s son John Frederick Hussey commissioned George Thomas Brewster to sculpt a cast bronze statue of the philanthropist. The statue is of Penn Hussey wearing the uniform of a general in the Continental Army, the outfit he wore in the Danvers 150th parade as a patriotic homage. The statue’s head is turned to the east so that his likeness looks affectionately at his former Riverbank mansion across the street.

In 1925, Helen Keller met with Hussey’s son. He was so impressed with Keller’s plans for a New England Home for the Deaf that he sold the Riverbank estate to her organization for half its market price. He also gave $35,000 in trust to the Home for the Deaf to maintain the statue of Penn Hussey, with the stipulation that if the Home closed the statue and small park would be offered as a gift to the town. If the town were to refuse, the bronze statue would be melted down and the proceeds given to the public schools of North Berwick, Maine, Penn Hussey’s hometown.

Sources:

“Alfred Stead Is Dead.” The Boston Globe. December 16, 1907.

“Ask the Globe.” Boston Evening Globe. May 28, 1970.

“Brewster, George T. (1862-1943).” Connecticut State Library. Accessed February 10, 2019. https://ctstatelibrary.org/brewster-george-t/.

Broad Cove Coal Company. Prospectus of the Broad Cove Coal Company, Limited. Boston, Mass., 1894. https://qspace.library.queensu.ca/jspui/bitstream/handle/1974/11457/prospectusofbroa00broa.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.

“Equestrian Statue in Position.” The Boston Globe. September 18, 1913.

Forman, Ethan. “‘Riverbank’ Makes Waves despite Condo Market Slowdown.” Salem News, July 6, 2011, sec. Business. https://www.salemnews.com/news/business/riverbank-makes-waves-despite-condo-market-slowdown/article_71d17e40-bb1b-53ae-9a02-7e412661e4e8.html.

“Hussey Will Offers $35,000 for Upkeep of Father’s Statue.” The Boston Daily Globe. December 4, 1954.

Inverness Miners’ Museum. “The Broken Ground: A History of a Cape Breton Coal Mining Community.” Virtual Museum of Canada. Accessed February 10, 2019. http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/sgc-cms/histoires_de_chez_nous-community_stories/pm_v2.php?id=record_detail&fl=0&lg=English&ex=00000738&rd=191898.

“Looking Backward: A Review of the Year.” The Boston Sunday Globe. January 1, 1911.

“Millionaire Tramp Dead.” The Boston Daily Globe. April 27, 1910.

Moynahan, Frank E. Danvers, Massachusetts: A Resume of Her Past History and Future Progress. Danvers, Mass.: The Danvers Mirror, 1899. https://archive.org/details/danversmassachus00moyna/page/n3.

New England Homes for the Deaf. “The History of NEHD.” New England Homes For the Deaf, 2016. http://nehd.org/history/.

Newton, David, and Pamela Newton. They Came From Away: Yanks, Brits and Cape Breton. New York: iUnverse, 2010.

“Odd Tricks of Fortune.” Indianapolis Journal. December 9, 1900.

Smithsonian American Art Museum. “William Penn Hussey, (Sculpture).” Smithsonian Art Inventories Catalog, 2016. https://siris-artinventories.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&profile=ariall&source=~!siartinventories&uri=full=3100001~!328225~!0#focus.

Stacy, Bonnie. “Historical Perspective: Mr. Munroe of Edgartown – Tailor, Millionaire.” Martha’s Vineyard Times. January 30, 2013. https://www.mvtimes.com/2013/01/30/historical-perspective-mr-munroe-edgartown-tailor-millionaire-14119/.

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

Town of Danvers. The Celebration of the One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Establishment of the Town of Danvers, Massachusetts, as a Seperate Municipality. Boston, Mass.: Fort Hill Press, 1907.

Zollo, Richard P. On the Sands of Time: The Life of Charles Sutherland Tapley. Danvers, Mass.: Danvers Historical Society, 1990.

Ingersoll’s Tavern, Anything But “Ordinary”

On By Daniel A. GagnonIn 1692 Witch Trials, Danvers History8 Comments

(In the Danvers Herald, 1/24/2019)

Ingersoll House 10.18.JPG
(Author’s photo, October 2018).

At the corner of Hobart and Centre St. in Danvers lies a house through whose door passed “witches,” revolutionaries, and ordinary Danversites over the past almost 350 years, and played host to the screams, contortions, and finger-pointing of the 1692 Salem Village Witch-Hunt.

The Ingersoll House, a tan-painted clapboard home at 199 Hobart St., was originally a tavern run by Nathaniel Ingersoll, Deacon of the Salem Village Church and Lieutenant in the militia, beginning in 1677. It was Ingersoll who donated the land for the Training Field (at the corner of Centre St. and Ingersoll St.) where the Salem Village, and later Town of Danvers, militia drilled.

Ingersoll and his family ran an “ordinary” – the 17th century term for a local tavern –  which was the social center of the community. The tavern served food and drink to locals, and rooms on the second floor were rented to travelers who passed along the dirt roads of colonial New England. Located at the center of Salem Village, just down the road from the meetinghouse where church services were held each Sunday, the tavern did a particularly steady business when parishioners came over between the morning and afternoon church services to eat a hot noon meal.

Despite modern-day stereotypes of the Puritans, they did indeed drink alcohol – sometimes too much – and Ingersoll’s was the favored spot for local farmers to unwind and share news with their neighbors.  The tavern featured a sizeable tap-room with a large fireplace, bare sanded floor, and many stools and chairs. There were also hooks on each side of the fireplace to hang firearms that locals brought with them. Cider, served by the quart, was usually the drink of choice, and in colonial times there was only one kind of cider: what we in the 21st century call “hard” cider. Beer, wine, whiskey, and rum were also enjoyed, and hot food was served.

There were strict restrictions on taverns in the 17th century, which were forbidden to serve Indians, apprentices, students at Harvard College (the only college around in those days), or anyone who seemed drunk, and they needed to close by either sunset or 9pm. Certain sinful and unlawful games, such as cards, dice, billiards, and shuffleboard (which particularly riled the Puritans) were prohibited. If one drank to excess, they could be punished with a scarlet letter “D” (for “drunk”) sewn onto their shirts, and could also lose their voting rights.

In addition to socializing, the tavern was where local government committees met, along with the Essex County court, which delivered justice in front of the kegs.

Ingersoll’s played a particularly interesting role in the 1692 Salem Village Witch-Hunt. Those accused of witchcraft were brought there before their initial post-arrest hearings with the magistrates, and kept under lock in an upstairs room. Originally, the hearings themselves – with accusers throwing themselves on the ground in front of the judges, screaming, and claiming to see the “specters” of the accused torturing them – were to be held in the barroom as county court sessions were. Due to the large crowds that wanted to watch the spectacle, the hearings were moved down the road to the meetinghouse, but afterwards the judges and spectators returned to the tavern for lunch and drinks.

During the time of the witchcraft delusion, a particularly fantastic scene took place in the tavern involving a sword fight with one of Satan’s supposed agents. One day in 1692, Ingersoll’s foster son Benjamin Hutchinson was working outside along the main road (present-day Centre St.). One of the witchcraft accusers, Abigail Williams, walked by and claimed to see the specter (a ghostly image that only the accusers could see) of an accused witch – George Burroughs –  standing in the road! Hutchinson turned and threw his pitchfork into the center of the road where the invisible witch was supposed to be as Abigail Williams fell to the ground, screaming. She then told Hutchinson that he succeeded in tearing the ghostly jacket of the alleged witch before he vanished.

The two then went inside to the barroom, where Williams claimed she saw the same specter again. Hutchinson drew his rapier from his belt and attempted to stab the invisible witch in a spectral duel (probably to the shock of those who happened to be at the bar enjoying a pint) as Williams shouted out where the apparition was. Next, Williams told him there was also a ghostly cat in the room, which he proceeded to do battle with and, according to Williams, kill – though she was the only one who claimed to be able to see these invisible enemies. To everyone else it would have appeared as though Hutchinson was merely stabbing at the air.

John Indian, Reverend Samuel Parris’ Indian slave and husband of Tituba, the first accused of witchcraft, worked the bar sometimes for Ingersoll, and he would show off scars on his arm to out-of-towners who passed through, bragging that he got them when he was attacked by witches. The barroom at Ingersoll’s is also where one of the accusers admitted that they were accusing and sending innocent people to their deaths for nothing but “sport.”

The tavern remained in operation through the 1700s and into the 1800s under different owners, and being close to the militia training field it was frequented by the men who later marched from Danvers to confront the British soldiers on the day of the Battle of Lexington and Concord. The establishment later “fell into disrepute,” to the chagrin of the First Church of Danvers across the street, and the Church bought the house to be the home for its minister in 1832. It remained owned by the Church until 1968, and has been a private home ever since. It is a preservation priority among important historical sites in Danvers.

Here is a beautiful rendering of the Ingersoll House by Danvers artist Paul Meinerth:

meinerth - ingersoll

 

Sources:
Alice Morse Earle, Customs and Fashions in Old New England (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1894), 166.

Daniel Wait Howe, The Puritan Republic of Massachusetts Bay in New England (Indianapolis: Bowen-Merrill Company, 1899), 104, https://archive.org/details/puritanrepublico00howe/page/n7.

First Church of Danvers Congregational, Church Record Book Belonging to Salem Village, 13-14, January 17, 1693).

Marilynne K. Roach, The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-By-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege (Lanham, Maryland: Taylor Trade, 2002), 140.

Bernard Rosenthal, ed., Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), docs 85, 500, 862.

Salem Deeds Online, 5528:237.

Harriet S. Tapley, “Old Tavern Days in Danvers,” Historical Collections of the Danvers Historical Society 8 (1920), 2-3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8-9.

Charles W. Upham, Salem Witchcraft: With an Account of Salem Village and A History of Opinions on Witchcraft and Kindred Subjects (Mineola, New York: Dover, 2000),162.

Upcoming Presentation: Legacies of Rebecca Nurse and George Jacobs Sr., post-1692

On By Daniel A. GagnonIn 1692 Witch Trials, Danvers HistoryLeave a comment

At the invitation of the Danvers Historical Society, I will be presenting some of my research on the legacies of witch trials victims Rebecca Nurse and George Jacobs Sr., especially focusing on the differences in how they were later memorialized by their descendants and the community.

The presentation will be at Tapley Memorial Hall on Page St. in Danvers on the evening of May 16, 2019. More details to come. Check https://www.danvershistory.org/events/events.html for updates.

Online Historical Resources for Danvers and Salem Village History

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

Just added to the menu above is a page entitled “Online Historical Resources” (https://spectersofsalemvillage.com/online-historical-resources/).  This page features primary and secondary sources relating to Danvers, Salem Village, and 1692 history. These sources are all available online through the links under each bibliographical entry.

More sources, especially from the 19th and 20th century, will be continually added. Additionally, suggestions are always welcome!

First Update: Map of Sites in the Life of Rebecca Nurse

On By Daniel A. GagnonIn 1692 Witch TrialsLeave a comment

Just published, and located on the menu bar at the top of the page, is the Map of Events in the Life of Rebecca Nurse. Based on primary source research with documents from 1692 along with maps of the Salem and Boston area,this map shows the locations of many important sites relating to the 1692 Witch-Hunt. Although done with a focus on the case of Rebecca Nurse in particular, many of these sites (such as the Salem Town Court House, Salem Village Parsonage, the execution site, etc.) are important to the events of 1692 overall, and are connected to many or most cases of those accused of witchcraft in 1692.