Tag: Salem Witch Trials

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

Dr. Samuel Holten – Danvers Patriot

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

Photo of the Samuel Holten House, June 2021

Last week the Salem News had two articles (see Erin Nolan’s reporting here and here) about a curious auction: the letters of Danvers patriot leader Dr. Samuel Holten. Taking place in Cincinnati, Ohio the auction of 200 letters between Holten and other famous patriot leaders was expected to go for about $10,000-$15,000 but instead sold for more than $46,000. Who is this Danvers revolutionary whose writings are so valuable?

Holten, a member of both the Continental Congress and the first US Congress, rose to prominence as a leader of the patriot cause well before the American Revolution. Educated by the Rev. Peter Clarke in the parsonage of the First Church of Danvers, he was destined for Harvard at age 12 before illness prevented him from attending. Instead, he studied medicine with Dr. Jonathan Prince, and opened his own practice at age 18. He became active in Danvers politics and the local militia, rising to the rank of Major.

His first steps towards becoming a revolutionary occurred in September 1768, when word spread throughout Massachusetts that British troops were being sent to the colony to restore order, and ostensibly to put down protests over British policies in Boston and other towns. An extralegal, unofficial meeting was called in Boston to decide how to respond to the approaching British fleet. One hundred and four Massachusetts towns and districts each elected a representative to attend, and Holten attended as Danvers’ representative.

Meeting even after the royal governor declared it an illegal assembly, these delegates voted to petition the government in London and to protest against the British troops. A month later, when British troops arrived, news of this convention had already reached them and this show of opposition so alarmed the British fleet that they feared Massachusetts may have already taken up arms. Upon their arrival, they therefore sailed their warships into Boston Harbor in battle formation, with their cannon aimed at Boston, and disembarked troops in full battle gear, as if invading an enemy land.

Holten continued to oppose British policies over the next few years, as events such as the Boston Massacre and Boston Tea Party occurred, and as the people of Danvers began boycotting tea and other British goods. Holten was Danvers’ delegate to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1774, when General Thomas Gage ordered the Massachusetts legislature to be dissolved because it was controlled by patriots opposed to Gage’s administration in Massachusetts. Instead, the House of Representatives declared themselves to be a “Massachusetts Provincial Congress,” the true representatives of the people, and therefore the legitimate authority in Massachusetts – not General Gage.

Portrait of Samuel Holten, painted circa 1790. Image from Wikimedia, portrait currently in the Danvers Archival Center.

After war broke out when the British advanced on Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, the British soldiers retreated into Boston, leaving the Provincial Congress and the Massachusetts militia in control of the rest of Massachusetts. Holten was appointed to the executive committee that served in place of a governor – since General Gage still claimed to be the rightful governor of Massachusetts.

Recognized for his ability and dedication to the patriot cause, in 1777 Holten was among the Massachusetts representatives to the convention that drafted the Articles of Confederation, America’s first constitutional document, and he signed the Articles on behalf of Massachusetts alongside John Adams, John Hancock, and other revolutionary leaders.

From 1778 to 1780, he represented Massachusetts in the Second Continental Congress, returned home to help draft the Massachusetts Constitution, and then once the Articles of Confederation were ratified served in the Congress of the Confederation, at one point serving temporarily as its president during a brief absence by Richard Henry Lee. Since there was no executive branch under the Confederation, President of Congress was the highest political office in America.

After returning once again to Massachusetts to serve in the state senate, he was elected and served as Congressman from 1793-1795 in the third U.S. Congress under the new federal Constitution. Notable for being a supporter of Thomas Jefferson, he was an opponent of the first Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton. After his time in Congress ended in 1795, he continued holding elected positions in Danvers, and was an Essex County Probate Court judge.

After he returned to Danvers, Holten continued to live in his family’s house at the intersection of what are now Holten Street, Centre Street, and Collins Street. This historic structure, located in the Salem Village Historic District, has been owned and preserved by the Gen. Israel Putnam Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution since 1921. Built in 1670 by his ancestor Benjamin Holten, the Holten family also played a prominent role in the 1692 witch trials, with members of the family among both the accusers and defenders of those accused of witchcraft.

Photo of the Samuel Holten House, in the 1890s. Frank Cousins photo, Digital Commonwealth.

Dr. Samuel Holten died in January 1816, and is buried in the Holten Burying Ground, which bears his name on Holten Street. Once Danvers established its first public high school in 1850, it was named Holten High School in his honor, the name used until the new Danvers High School was built in Woodvale in the 1960s. The old high school building and the old Richmond junior high building are currently used for the Holten-Richmond Middle School.

  • Photo of Samuel Holten’s grave in the 1890s. Frank Cousins photo in Digital Commonwealth.
  • Photo of Samuel Holten’s Grave, June 2021

In addition to Holten’s letters that were recently auctioned, he has other letters in the collections of many major archives and libraries that were written to various leaders of the American Revolution, papers from his medical practice are at Harvard’s Countway Library of Medicine, and there are many of his documents located in the Danvers Archival Center.

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Dan Gagnon is a lifelong Danvers resident and the author of the forthcoming biography A Salem Witch: The Trial, Execution, and Exoneration of Rebecca Nurse.

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Sources:

Mulholland, Elizabeth. “Judge Samuel Holten and His House.” In 250th Anniversary of the Town of Danvers, 98. Danvers, Mass.: Danvers 250th Committee, 202AD.

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.

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.

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.

‘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.

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.