USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Salem > Reminiscences of Salem, Massachusetts : embracing notices of its eminent men known to the author forty years ago > Part 13
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Whether the anniversary of our separation be thus
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felicitously marked or not, it needs not the gift of proph- ecy to discern that the time is coming when the proud empress of the seas, laying aside her ancient diadem, will point to our prosperous states - her children - and say to the world " These are my jewels ! "
Old Houses of Salem."
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MACHINE STITCHERS WANTED
Moral Exhibition.
FOR SALE!
SIX WITCHES
Steam Tug 1X GOOD REPAIR.
Will be hung to-day.
COME ONE! COME ALL!
Admission 12%% Cts.
Todd, Printer.
Published at the Office of "Go-Day," SALEM, OCT. 31, 1870.
AVVI
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HOUSES
SALEM
LAGER BIER
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MAGHINE STITCHERS WANTED
FOR SALE! Steam Tug
Moral Exhibition. SIX WITCHES Will be hung to-day. COME ONE! COME ALL!
GOOD REPAIR.
Admission 124 Cts.
Todd, Printer.
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Published at the Office of "Go-Day," SALEM, OCT. 31, 1870.
Old Houses of Salem.
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HISTORICAL
SKETCHES
F you ask the tourist why he visits Salem. he will tell you that he has four reasons : to see the old houses, to feel the witch pins. to gaze upon the terminus of the Horse Rail- road at Danvers, and to ponder over the birth- place of Lord Timothy Dexter. Now we of Salem know how many other things there be of interest, (dis- count at eight per cent), but the sights just mentioned. are really the attractive points to outside barbarians. One has only to feel the witch pins to see the point. As to the birthplace of T. Dexter. he was born in several places in Salem. none of which are clearly known, and therefore the tourist gets a view of the whole town gratis in hunting them up.
We are to give our attention to the old houses. There is something tangible about them, since Salem has always been in the leather business, and they all rest upon a substratum of tan.
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The most ancient building of which we have any account, is the old church in the rear of Plum- mer Hall. As we gaze on this venerable and majestic pile, our pulsating 'vesicles swell with emotion.
As. the geologist traces the habits of that exceed- ingly slow coach, the Ancient Glacier, by the scratch- 1 ing and polishing of the rocks, so we may trace the habits. of the original occupants of this church by the rubbing and polishing, dents and marks, left by them on the wood work of the building.
On the pew seats we may see the little marks made by the youthful Puritans with Faber's lead pencils. These marks alone, furnish, not only con- vincing proofs that the sermons were lone had the highly seasoned character of the wood upon which they were made, show that they were dry also. A careful inspection of these marks prove that finger nails were not evolved at that time, as we cannot find any moon-shaped scars. Finger nails were not developed till sometime after, and it was only when this singular appendage became evolutionized, that Satan was called the "Old Scratch." When they first appeared, they were looked upon as excrescences, and every effort was made to remove them. The habit still . continues among a few, of nibbling the nails, and is unquestionably an hereditary feature. It was only when naturalists showed that the nails were homologous to the claws of lower animals, that the inhabitants, (true to their zoological training at the field meetings) tolerated their growth.
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Singular looking dents upon the walls and pew backs, indicate the force of the blows dealt by the ministers of that period, against fraud, deceit, and many kindred vices. In order to save the pews from being marred in this way, as well as to deaden the alarming sound of the blows, recourse was had to padding the seats, and hence the custom originated, and still exists, though the reason for it has long since passed away.
The abrasions on the window sills give painful evi- dences of the perils of our Four Fathers in withstand- ing the attacks of the enemy. There are four windows in the church, and it was customary to put one of the Fathers that had the largest families land conse- quently the most at stake, though they didn't put them to the stake for sometime after) at each of these windows ; hence the name of Four Fathers.
FOUR FATHERS.
One may see where the trusty Four Fathers rested their Spencer carbines, and on the outside of the
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church the marks of the Indian attacks are still visible. From beneath some of the clapboards, the entire col- lection of stone arrow heads in the museumi were shaken ..
... 'A good thermometer, and one of Ashcroft's Steam Gauges always stood behind the minister, and unless the thermometer stood at 18° below zero, and the steam guage indicated a pressure of only four pounds per square inch, it was necessary to leave the door wide open, as the air became altogether too hot from the heat evolved in the doctrines of those days. In view of this fact, it was customary to build the churches with the door facing some large building, and this is the reason why this church was built with its door facing Plummer Hall, as this venerable pile of brick afforded ample protection gainst their only weak spot - a door wide open, throu, h which many a liberal spirit has crept out, and mar y a liberal spirit has crept in.
We called Plummer Hall a venerable pile of brick, because we have incontestable proof, despite its modern appearance, that it was built and occupied sometime before the vacant field in the rear was ornamented by the church of which we speak.
One pew, marked in quaint galvanized tin letters. R. W., settles forever, the dispute regarding the num- ber of children possessed by Roger Williams. Here you may perceive the nine areas upon the seat highly polished. Two of these areas next the pew door, are scarcely visible. This is because Mr. and Mrs. W.
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were interested in sermons, and sat still. The other seven areas are deeply worn, and show the uneasy movements of the younger Rogers under the infliction of a three hours' sermon. Near the baptistry you may still see the hole in the floor through which the S. &. D. aqueduct pipe came. They had but little use for water anyway in those days, as we know from old bills of fare, and invoices, the early inhabitants lived upon Plantation Bitters. It was only after the Maine Law, that water commenced to be drank, and the Wenham Water Works had to be established.
Having briefly described the oldest building of which we have any historical account, we proceed to mention two other buildings still in existence, whose origin and use is wrapt in the gloom of ages.
Our only information regarding their high antiq- uity furnishes another one of those curious chapters of great discoveries being made through accidental causes. Now it is the digging of a well, or the cutting of a railroad, or a strawberry mark upon the left arm, that gives us the richest openings for the historian. And this is how the little information we are to give of the two buildings, of which we speak, came about.
Many years ago, an eccentric genius took forcible possession of the church, and converted it into a men- agerie. Besides a lot of wild beasts that he confined in the pews, there were four insane young men who ran wild on bugs, rocks, fishes and shells. One was guilty of the heterodox idea that stone walls preached sermons, and told us that the world was a few years
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more or less older than the elders had dreamed of. Another one traced a decided resemblance between the back bone of a fish, and Cotton Mather's back bone, though it wasn't quite so stiff. Another one pulled snails' teeth, and the other one tortured insects by sticking pins into them ; a favorite amusement of everybody in those days, only other people stuck pins into their neighbors.
There were also others confined in the brick build- ing, on account of their more furious aspect.
Their mania consisted in hoarding up every con- ceivable object that they could lay their hands upon, and many of the spinning wheels, letters, hair pins, and patent churns, hymn books and account books, that were stolen from the village, might be traced to nooks and crannies of this building.
The keeper of this menagerie is still remembered by some of the older inhabitants as a man with short . curly, auburn locks, and a height of eleven feet, four inches. He disappeared among the Hottentots on his fifty-fourth visit to Africa in search of novelties for the menagerie. It seems that these insane men annoyed the animals by calling them the most out- rageous names, and not content with crushing them under the incubus of one name, they would give each one a dozen, more or less, and each one generally proved worse than the last.
As an example of heartless cruelty in this respect, we relate as an actual fact, that the innocent squash bug was deliberately insulted one day by being called Gon-
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ocerus tristis. A harmless moth, while struggling in the agonies of death, from getting burnt in a gas jet, was wickedly abused by being called Batrachedra salicipomo- nella. To make the matter worse, they seemed to take a grim delight in overwhelming the smallest animals with the biggest names, thus not only crushing a little bug with such gigantic sounds, but making all the big bugs crazy with envy.
We are digressing however.
It seems that one day, a little wriggler, having a cylindrical, shiny body, a lot of little eggs, crawled up through a hole in the floor, and was greeted with the following :
" You myriopodous cuss, you degenerate epitome of an arthropod ! you miserly articulate ! though each seg- ment of your body bears two pairs of legs, yet each pair of legs has by rights a segment, and you're a fraud ! While you ape the cent-i-pede, you're nothing but a brummajem. Get out, you Scolopocryptops exspinosa !! "
This load of scathing insults was beyond endurance, and a frantic fight ensued. Having a good many legs, he kicked right and left, and set everything a going. The insane men brought their biggest words to bear upon them. They taunted them with their homologies and morphologies ; they proved their wretched ancestry, and the bugs flew, and the rocks flew, the fishes scaled impregnable positions, and the snails shelled them without mercy. The keeper swallowed his pipe, and added four inches to his stature. So great was the rumpus that the old church was shaken from its foundations, and the
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corner stone exposed, and the crazy men from the brick building rushed out and confiscated the tin dinner pail that contained the archives, and its contents were as follows': a copy of the Town Directory for 1603, a war map of Horace Greeley's, a Beverly Horse Car ticket, a mss. account of the 784 Field Meeting, a revenue stamp stuck to a toddy stick, and more valuable than all, a sheet of parchment, and worked in worsted upon it was a representation of the two first buildings in Salem. We give here a correct copy of this inestimable treasure.
. As there are no other houses upon the drawing, and the primitive pines still cover the land, we have every reason to believe that Salem looked like this when first discovered. One of the buildings is called, on the draw- ing, the Coliseum. In this early chart it is represented as a vast amphitheatre in ruins. Quakers and witches were probably sacrificed in the arena for the delight of the early Puritans.
This building has been restored, a shell or covering being built over the seats to protect them. It is still used as a hall of torture, and is now called Lyceum, on account of the many strange stories told in it. The other building is evidently as old, if not older.
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It was undoubtedly built for a barn, the slender pillars in front being used to tie oxen to when hay was being unloaded. Afterward it was used for a church, but so many of the parish perished in it while attending service, and so many ministers had to go to Europe to find their voices that had escaped through the numerous chinks, that the burial expenses of the one party, and the tray- elling expenses of the other party, run the parish deeply in debt, and it was put up at lottery. The mechanics of the city subscribed together for one ticket, and drew it, and it was then called Mechanics' Haul. It was con- sidered a big haul in those days. Some idiot conceived the idea from the sound of the word Haul, that it might be used as a Hall, and this, we have ample proof, was the only circumstance that ever led to its being used as a Hall. No improvements were made in it, however, to hide its original design, namely, that of a barn, but the inhabitants very patiently endured catarrh, bronchitis, asthma, and a lot of kindred diseases caught there. Shame, however, stirred them up at last from the fact that the citizens were mistaken for prison birds on account of the black numbers indelibly printed on the backs of their coats, and so this led to a complete remodeling.
We close our densely accurate sketch of the old buildings of Salem, by giving a view of a portion of Derby Street, two years after the settlement of the town.
Before the S. & D. aqueduct pipes were laid, the
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inhabitants had to go to the Post Office pump for water, and as the tramps back and forth proved destructive to boots, the times were said to try men's soles; mean- ing the times they had to go for water. Salem went into the boot business early on this account. To show the progress made in this street, we give a sketch of
it a century later, and still another two centuries later.
Whatever change may, or may not have taken place in the houses, it is known as a fact regarding this street, that while in olden times, each house contained but seven or eight inhabitants, they now contain from fifty to sixty inhabitants each.
We must'close. It was our intention at the outset to give only a sketch of those houses whose high antiquity rendered them gamy, and we have made game of them. The remaining five thousand old houses not being over two or three hundred years old, are hardly worth mentioning, as our less youthful inhabi- tants still remember the brand of liquors drank when their frames were raised. We give in our frontispiece a sketch of a few of them, taken by an itinerant am- brotyper, in 1602, who came round from Boston in a boat, and landed at the Lead Mills.
The whole of Salem proper could best be seen at
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that time from the hill in South Salem, where Harbor Street comes in. Essex Street is seen in the distance, with two houses upon it. This picture then, shows the proximal end of Lafayette Avenue, as it was in those days. The draw of the bridge is up, retaining the South Salem horse car, a peculiarity inherited by the new draw. An East India merchantman is bound for the Eastern R. R. Depot with a cargo of elephant tusks and ginger tea. A train is seen running along Essex Street, conveying a delegation of women's rights men for Beverly. A season ticketer is seen in suspense, having consulted the winter time table. A reward of seven cents will be given to any one who can tell what the fellow in stocks is about.
They gamble in stocks nowadays, and have gold boards, and put their foot in it sometimes. Then, they used to gambol in stocks, and had a hard pine board, and always put their head and hands in it, and sometimes both feet. Other changes have taken place in this line. Nowadays they house up their banks; then they banked up their houses.
But to our frontispiece. Two individuals are stand- ing before the only lager beer saloon that ever existed in Salem, before or since. Its stately chimney has been removed brick by brick, for change was so scarce in those times that it was customary to fine each cus- tomer a brick, who carried it away in his hat.
Hence the origin of the expression applied to a man in liquor.
HISTORICAL SKETCHES
OF THE
OLD HOUSES OF SALEM,
And the Daily Issues of
"TO-DAY,"
A Sheet Devoted to
The Institute and Oratorio Sair
AT SALEM,
Are all for Sale
At Mechanic Hall,
At Loring's, No. 35 School Street,
In Boston, at 319 Washington Street,
And by Newsmen generally, on the Cars and Elsewhere.
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POT
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THE FIRST HOUSES IN SALEM.
BY WILLIAM P. UPHAM.
[Reprinted from the Bulletin of the Essex Institute.]
NEWBERRY -
Hon. James Kimball, with the respects of Wmp. Upham.
FIRST HOUSES IN SALEM.
BY W. P. UPHAM.
THE earliest permanent settlement within the limits of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay was made in 1626, at Salem, then called, by the Indians, Naumkeag, by a small company of persons, among whom were John Woodbury, John Balch, Peter Palfrey, William Trask, Thomas Gard- ner, Richard Norman, William Allen and Walter Knight, some of them with their families, and all under the super -. intendence of Roger Conant, the first Governor of the infant colony. A very full and valuable account of this company of Old Planters, as they were called, written by Mr. George D. Phippen, will be found in the first volume of our Historical Collections, page 97. J. W. Thornton, Esq., has given us a new and most interesting insight into their previous history as a company, and the nature of the government under which they were associated, in his "Landing at Cape Ann."
It seems that Conant had already explored this neck of land called Naumkeag, before finally concluding to remove
THE NEWBERRY LIBRARY CHILAUD
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here ; and they were thus prepared to take advantage of the best locations for their dwellings. We should there- fore naturally expect to find that they at once availed themselves of the good building ground, excellent and numerous springs of water and convenient harborage, which the central portion of the town affords. Whether this was actually the case, or whether the opinion is cor- rect which has recently prevailed, that the first settle- ment was in the vicinity of Collins Cove, and near the Salem end of Beverly Bridge, we cannot at present decide with certainty. The facts of record, however, so far as they have yet been investigated, as well as the descrip- ions by contemporaneous writers, do not confirm the latter opinion, but on the contrary seem to lead to the conclusion that the first houses built in Salem, were in what is to-day the most central part of the city. Some of these facts will appear in the course of this article.
After the arrival of Gov. Endicott, in 1628, the town seems to have been regularly laid out in house-lots, in compliance with the order to that effect by the Company in London. We propose here to show, so far as we have been able to ascertain, the situation of some of these house-lots, and to give the names of their first known occupants. For our authority for the facts stated, we must refer generally to the various town and county records, from which they have been almost wholly de- rived. To secure certainty, we have traced the history of many of these house-lots down to the present time ; and in many instances, in order to establish a single point, it has been necessary to bring together a great amount of facts, all of which we are obliged to omit here. In this inquiry we have found great assistance from the lists of Commoner's rights, in the Commoner's Records of the year 1714, when every person owning land on which
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a house had stood before the year 1661, had a right there- for in the Town Commons.
Washington street was originally laid out four rods wide from river to river; undoubtedly for the purpose of connecting the two primitive highways, which ran by the rivers' side, at the point where they approach nearest together. The Fort was enclosed between this street on the east, and North street and Summer streets, which were parallel to it, on the west. Essex street was probably at first only a way to the meeting house, and did not ex- tend farther west than Washington street. This would account for the fact that the lines of Essex street, east and west of Washington street, do not agree, as they in all probability would have done if the street had been origi- nally continued across. And this fact is still more notice- able when we remember that the house which formerly occupied the site of the Stearns Block, on the corner of these streets, stood out as far south as the curb-stone of the present sidewalk. That part of Essex street, west of Washington street, was called in 1670, "Mr. Batter's lane."
The four meeting houses of the First Church have all occupied the same spot ; the first was built in 1634, and the "unfinished building of one story," which had been previously used for worship, was no doubt in the same vicinity. The dwelling house of Rev. Francis Higgin- son, who died here in 1630, was on ground now covered by the Asiatic Building, and faced towards the South river. That of Rev. Samuel Skelton, who died in 1634, was near where the Police Station now is, on Front street, and was called in 1643, "an old house," being then in the possession of William Brown.
The Fort above referred to was near the western corner of Sewall and Lynde streets, on what was the highest
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land in that part of the town. Samuel Sharpe, who was sent over in 1629, by the Company in London, to take charge of military affairs, lived where the "Hunt house" lately stood, on the northern corner of Lynde and Wash- ington streets. His land, consisting of about three acres, running back to North street, was known as "Sharpe's field." The house, with about half an acre of land adjoin- ing, was conveyed by his son Nathaniel Sharpe, in 1684, to John Price, who, in 1698, conveyed the same land, the house having probably been taken down or removed, to Lewis Hunt, who, in 1701, built the house which was taken down a few years ago. North of the Sharpe homestead was about an acre of land, owned in 1656 by the widow Eleanor Robinson. North of that and extending from where the Court House is, to the North river, was a homestead of two acres, conveyed in 1656, by Thomas Wilkes, a shipwright, to Thomas Hale of Newbury. Next south of Mr. Sharpe's house was a house and one acre of land bought by Henry Cooke of Edmond Thomp- son, in 1645, and afterwards owned by Rev. Nicholas Noyes ; the house stood just south of the residence of the late Robert Brookhouse. Next south was the house and one acre of land of Robert Adams, conveyed in 1649 to Edward Norris, and next south, on the corner, lived Edmond Batter, a leading man among the early inhabi- tants. On the opposite corner, where the Horse Railroad Office now is, was a house belonging to Hugh Peters, Pastor of the Church from 1636 to 1641, which was sold to Benjamin Felton in 1659. South and west of this was the homestead of Ralph Fogg, the first town clerk, after- wards owned by John Hathorne. South of that was a small house occupied, for a time, by the Lady Deborah Moody, and next south was the homestead of Hugh Peters, afterwards occupied by John Corwin. On the
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corner of Norman street, lived Dr. George Emory, here as early as 1637. These house-lots on the west side of Washington street originally extended through to North and Summer streets, the houses being at the eastern end.
South of Norman street, and east of Summer street, was a house and nine acres of land, bounded east on the South River, conveyed in 1651, by Thos. Ruck to John Ruck, afterwards known as Ruck's Village. After the Mills on the South river were built, in 1664, an extensive business, connected with shipbuilding, grew up in the neighborhood of Creek street, then a cove called Sweet's Cove, from John Sweet, who was the original owner and occupant of the lot next north of the cove. South of Sweet's Cove, and forming the southern portion of the nine acres above mentioned, was a lot of four acres which had belonged to Rev. Samuel Skelton, and was laid out to him in 1630. Next south of this, and extending along the South river (now the Mill Pond) to land of Wm. Hathorne, which was west of where Hathorne street is now, was the "Broadfield," originally owned by Governor Endicott, and by him conveyed to Emanuel Downing, who sold it to John Pickering.
What is now Broad street, together with the ground south of it, which has been used as a cemetery since May 17, 1655, was called the Town Common, and for the first few years, before the Town Bridge in Boston street was built, appears to have been the only means of exit from the town. A broad road thus led from Summer street to the Town Pasture, then common land, and there branched out in one direction round the west side of the South river, to Marblehead, and in the other passing near where the house of Mr. Horace Ware is, and around the west side of Norman's Rocks, and coming out on Boston street, above where the town bridge was afterwards
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built (which was where the Engine House stands, near Goodhue street), thus avoiding the creek, which was then quite large, but has since almost wholly disappeared. Persons now living can remember when the low land to the north of Norman's Rocks was filled with water at high tide, and a very considerable stream ran under the town bridge. Goodhue street is, perhaps, a remnant of this old way, and the part of it on the other side of Boston street can still be traced.
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