USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Salem > Short story of three centuries of Salem : 1626-1926 > Part 4
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But in those days there were people in advance of the times and there had been criticisms of one nature or an- other of witchcraft for centuries. There were free lances and critics then who worked as well as they could and free lances and critics there must ever be lest we die of error. If, at the outset of Witchcraft here, there had only been among the leaders just a few with such sanity and strength of spirit as that shown in the case of Philip and Susannah English, we might have been spared the distinction the period gave us. The wife of English had been on a visit to the house of the Rev. Mr. Parris in Salem Village, now a part of Danvers. Philip called to return with her and she spoke to him on the journey back of the wickedness of witchcraft. She was an in- telligent and superior woman and felt resentment and sorrow as the result of her talk with Parris and was ob- viously agitated. Philip tried to divert her and said, "I don't think I ever smell a primrose that I don't think of those you used to pull and bring to me"; but his wife continued on the subject of Witchcraft and was for pro- claiming in some way their disapproval of the situation.
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Philip listened patiently and sympathetically but, all the time, counselling prudence in action and utterance. Sometime later when he was informed that his wife was accused and he, in turn, informed her, "he put his arms about her" and said, "Susannah, you are accused as a witch"; and she said, "Who have I ever injured, who has accused me?" And Philip, probably thinking of the primrose, answered, "I will bury them deep in Hell be- fore God sends me death".
English calmed down after this burst of spirit. He knew the characteristics of the mania with which he was dealing. His wife had committed the error of going to Goodwife Cloyse in church and comforting her. The Goodwife had a sister, then under confinement, charged with being a witch, and to comfort a witch's sister in church was surely the open work of the Devil. English was rich for those days and wise, also. Justice Hathorne did not believe Susannah guilty and had informally in- timated this and suggested a course to Philip for her deliverance. Hathorne saw old Increase Mather in Bos- ton and Mather saw Gov. Phips and (happy circum- stance) Mrs. Phips the "Grand Dame" of Sir Edward was present. She was a friend of Susannah English and she let her husband know it in no uncertain way. The escape of English and his wife to New York from Bos- ton, whither she had been remanded, was planned and successfully carried out. "Could anything" says the nar- rator of these details, "be impossible to such a combina- tion of Church and State in those days? It could hardly be in any". Others were not so fortunate. "Now in the sunny noontide, as they go tottering to the gallows, it is the Devil's turn to laugh". There is the saintly Bur- rows, sweet Martha Carrier, old Goodman Proctor and his wife and the others. The heart is deeply touched in
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recounting the victims of this murderous mania taking their last view of that free sweep of country to the west and south of Gallows Hill.
The Squaw Sachem and Wappacowet walked "beneath the tangled shade holding high talk on matters of state and religion and imagined, doubtless, that their own sys- tem of affairs would endure forever". Their system did not last. High talk on matters of state and religion were held by the Puritans in the same place with the same confidence that their scheme of things would endure in perpetuity. But by what has been called "the wreckful siege of battering days", systems and institutions have changed, rules and statutes, forms and ceremonies in government and religion, have been abandoned or modi- fied in the light of time and experience; and inflexible things have become flexible and in scriptural reading and interpretation we have learned to separate precept and principle and soften and explain the inexorable in- junctions which our minds instinctively deny and repu- diate. The imperialists gave their laws and made their subjects honor them and punished with torture and death all who defied. Only for the martyrs they might be doing the same today, but where tyrants set at naught the claims of reason and humanity and, through a long and cruel sway, had all but quenched the spirit of tolera- tion and the flame of justice, mercy, truth, and liberty, time operated, their hands were lowered, their seats va- cated, and their system vanquished.
Although there were executions for witchcraft in Eu- rope for nearly fifty years after ours occurred, the delu- sion began to decline here with every step of the mob down Gallows Hill. The spirit of Corey and others had really triumphed. The leadership of Mather and other Puritan divines, whose jealous control was threatened by the Quakers and the witch victims, yielded to the
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common sense of the sturdy English people. The Puri- tan inner man changed. "As a man thinketh in his heart so is he" and after the executions on Gallows Hill the Puritan thought on religion began to change. It did not lose its religion ; it lost its religious obsession, and yield- ing itself to the growing demands of work and trade and commerce, and in happy, wholesome occupation, a sturdy christian manhood, surmounting external objects and winning the greater victory of conquering doubt, melan- choly, fear, and superstition, and creating a spiritual covenant between God and man, contributed notably to the building of a sovereign Commonwealth and a free and independent nation.
At the commencement of the seventeenth century "the style and spirit of the pulpit had declined" and when the Revolutionary War came "most of the clergy inclined to the popular side, and in the changes effected in public sentiment by that bold assertion of civil rights, a more tolerant religious spirit came to prevail ; so that when the State Constitution was formed in 1780, the right of every man to worship God in the manner and season most agreeable to the dictates of his conscience provided he does not disturb the public peace, is acknowledged". So bloody persecutions were over and religious intolerance was put in chains; it may live still but only in dark corners with clerical and professional pin prickers, only with those who have some form of demoniac possession. Looking back over the centuries, civil and religious lib- erty seem to have moved with a leaden step before they blessed mankind in the land where the Puritan set his home and heart and where he outgrew his narrow limita- tions. Civil and religious liberty had a long journey and survived many attacks from lustful power, cruel tyran- ny and insane or crafty religious leadership before they rested permanently with us, and became a part of the fundamental law.
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unshields Wharf, Salon, built 198.
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CHAPTER IV.
THE SHIPPING PERIOD
"It is not by any amount of material splendor or prosperity, but only by moral greatness, by ideas, by works of imagination; that a race can conquer the future. Of Carthage, whose mer- chant fleets once furled their sails in every port of the known world, nothing is left but the deeds of Hannibal".
LOWELL.
I T must be true of communities as well as of individ- uals that the evil done may survive a long time and that the good accomplished may have brief duration in the minds and memories of the greater number. From our many visitors, inquiry is, seemingly, more frequently made for the Witch House and witch pins than for the treasures from every land and sea so carefully preserved and classified in our Marine Hall and Institute. But it must not be inferred that these latter places are over- looked or underestimated. Visitors by the many thou- sands come here annually, and students, scholars and scientists have these spots principally in mind when they journey hither.
In our early probate records for the purpose of identi- fication but probably, also, as an expression of pride in station or occupation, the deceased are described in many cases as gentleman, esquire, yeoman, farmer, cordwainer, etc., and, in the appropriate period, as seaman, super- cargo, mariner, and merchant. Of these latter, many found snug harbor here after eventful days on foreign
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seas and shores and now rest in peace in the soil they loved so well and in the city to whose fame they con- tributed so richly.
But the darkening sky and the seething wave met many others who put to sea, and these are "in the deep bosom of the ocean buried". Many fair young Hannahs drooped at their work in the cordwainer's shop, hunger- ing for "the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that was still". The inconstant sea, placid at departure, held promise of Ben's sure return but, be- coming cruelly tempestuous, forgot the plighted troth made in a magical summer twilight within its hearing alone, and, in its cold arms, clasped in death the strug- gling lover within a single day's sail of home.
Our shipping period was full of adventure and as ro- mantic and colorful as our witch period was sombre and saddening. The use of primitive water craft in the busi- ness of our early settlement was natural and imperative. The settlers used canoes made of whole pine trees twenty feet long to cross the North and South Rivers, and "in these they likewise go a fowling sometimes two leagues to sea; there be more canoes in this town than in all the whole patent; every household having a water horse or two". In a later time and in larger boats the distance of two leagues to sea was extended to the uttermost parts of the sea ; Divitis Indiæ usque ad ultimum sinum ; the "large and spacious harbour of Naimkecke" became, finally, too small for our trade and, as in the early days, "it was wonderful to behold so many islands replenished with thicke wood and high trees and many faire green pastures", so later it was wonderful to watch the sea gulls dip and swing in graceful curves and tip the masts of many vessels adventurously outward bound or returning home laden with the silks and spices of the farthest shores. We became one of the important shipping places
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of the world and every household furnished a water horse or two in the shape of a mariner.
Ten years after Conant landed, all the canoes in the set- tlement were ordered assembled for inspection by the sur- veyors, Roger Conant, Peter Palfrey, Mr. Halgrave, and two others. The use of any canoe, not sealed by the in- spectors, was subject to a fine of 40 shillings. There were no bridges yet, and canoes linked up the settlements across the North and South rivers. After the inspection there were races to show the skill and strength of the paddlers, and Venice could not have had greater pride in her thirty thousand gondolas than we had in our water horses.
It seems unnecessary to state that shipbuilding was an early industry, starting around 1636 with a ship of 120 tons burden. The shallop, a light river craft, the pinnace, the ketch, the schooner, the sloop, and brigs, clippers, merchantmen, and privateers, as time went on passed our islands in sailing out to sea. Our ships lived through the age of piracy and figured nobly in the Revo- lutionary War and the War of 1812, and sought trade in a remarkable spirit of enterprise on every known shore and many unknown ones. The city became a leader in commerce and, from the Puritan log settlement, grew to be known and respected the world over. When the first President of the United States was our guest, he was good enough to say to us that we were "deserv- ing men and good citizens" and added "may your naviga- tion and commerce, your industry in all its applications, be rewarded".
Our shipping era was a long one, reaching its height during the period of twenty years following 1800. It declined gradually until just before the Civil War. The Custom House on Derby Street, which was later to house Nathaniel Hawthorne as Collector of the Port, was built
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in 1819. Like the ships of Venice, we visited every pagan and Christian country and brought trade and tro- phies to the old home town. One of our trophies made an interesting exhibit. When the circus comes to town, the elephant, flapping his great ears in the parade and clinging with his trunk to the tail of his companion in front, would take some pride and interest in our city if he only knew ; not in the witch pins and the first church, but in the old market place. When he passes near this spot there would be every justification for him to break ranks and gaze around as long as he liked, for the ele- phant was a pilgrim to our shore and among, perhaps, a thousand similar facts of passing interest, is the one that the first place an elephant set foot on American soil was Salem. He was exhibited here in the Market Place, having been brought from India by Roger Crownin- shield. We show our hospitality in modern times by offering this tropical monster the best brand of double jointed peanuts ; the Salem crowd of those days fed our visitor with bread and hay, and if Dr. Bentley is to be believed, and we agree he is, the crowd gave this ele- phant a bottle of porter. The elephant was never in doubt about the medicinal value of the gift and imme- diately drew the cork and poured the contents down his huge throat. There must have been a superabundance of porter in those days to make such a use of it. This market house locality down to prohibition days and the order of "the new righteousness", has been the scene, with the elephant out of the picture, of many trans- gressions in the drinking line, transgressions meriting the pillory and, perhaps, the gallows, in early days. But Puritan rigidity had changed; the growing of tobacco, for example, or the use of it, had ceased to be an issue. Trading in it was helping fill the coffers of the merchants. Confined as it was in Conant's day to "ancient men", all
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were now admitted to the solace of its use, and, along the wharves on Derby street, the chewing and the smok- ing of it distressed no one's conscience. As for rum, it was never under such a ban as now. The first ship sailed from Salem without rum aboard in 1829. With the im- portation, in 1629, of shoes, doublets, beef, firkins of but- ter, etc. came "45 tuns of beer". But it must be remem- bered that it was only at funerals that the Puritans buried some of their too solemn thoughts by a slightly intemperate indulgence.
During the shipping days some of the blue eyed sailor lads and the seasoned old sea dogs, always an ardent company, hastening relaxation from very long voyages with libations of excellent beer and liquor, broke down, or perhaps broke up, in a fashion different from the Quakers, a little more of the Puritan decorum and auster- ity, and flaunted their irreligion in the open highway within the precincts where Cotton Mather drew a very sober face. Several were "cast away among the savage Indians by whom they were slain".
Sailors flocked here from everywhere. Men were in demand and there were as many sailors on our ships at one period as there were people in the town. Many ne- groes brought from the West Indies, where we early traded, were in many crews. The worthies of the town did not now torture blacks or whites when they became obstreperous or threw out a life line in the heart of the city. Witchcraft was over, and any delusions prevalent were obviously of alcoholic origin. As to punishments on land or sea, the cat-of-nine-tails, among our marine exhibits, tells a story all its own, and the mate's belaying pin was stouter a bit than our policeman's night stick. We continued to do a little scourging to dispossess the victim of rum, a wholly understandable demoniac pos-
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session, but this was all incidental in a wonderful period of patriotism and industry ; it was just a bit of color in a very colorful day.
Our shipping period started with Philip English, here- tofore mentioned, before the Witchcraft period. He owned twenty-one vessels. His life had an interesting romance interestingly told in the charming book entitled "Philip English's Two Cups". Philip's father, Roger English, and his brother Walter, lived on their estate in England. The mother died young and the care of the boys was largely in the hands of their old nurse Margery. After their days at Cambridge were over, they returned home. They lived in comparative seclusion but they were visited by Richard Hollingsworth, the owner of an adjoining estate, a widower whose only daughter, Su- sannah, often called with him. She was good and beau- tiful and both brothers loved her. Neither had formally declared his love nor did they know her feelings or her choice. But she loved Philip, only. Walter later sensed her love for Philip but determined to have her. As the author puts it "Walter English knew that Susannah loved Philip and not him; and he knew that a lie, be- lieved by both, was all that could separate them-and he dared to tell it". Walter told Philip that Susannah had promised to marry him and Philip, in sorrow, be- lieved.
Walter was two years older than Philip and, by the English law of primogeniture, he would inherit the father's estate to the exclusion of Philip, and his two years seniority, by prevailing custom, gave him prece- dence and certain privileges over his brother, and Walter was of necessity deferred to in several matters.
Philip decided to go to the New World and try to forget Susannah, and his brother encouraged his pur- pose. Philip's departure was soon made. He left with
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the nurse, Margery, a gold cup, inherited from his mother's family, as a gift for Susannah. After Philip's departure Walter told his second lie and tried "by every artful speech, a word here, a look there, to make Susan- nah believe that Philip had followed to the new country Dame Stearforth's niece who had, with her father, sailed more than a year before for America". But Susannah was not deceived. When the nurse presented Philip's gift to her of the gold cup, the women had an under- standing and Susannah then knew that Philip went away loving her alone. At this time Susannah's father declared he "was displeased with the condition of Church and State and would end his days in another realm". He soon departed with his beautiful daughter, and the gold cup, Philip's gift to her, was among her treasured belongings.
They landed in Salem harbor, and now let the author tell the rest. "Who do you think was one of the first persons that put his foot on the deck of that little craft, little dreaming of what awaited him? Why, Philip English. We cannot tell what a ship from England was to the dwellers in this town then, but we can all feel what it might be to have the greatest sorrow we had ever known turned into the greatest joy we had ever hoped for. "Susannah English," cried Philip, "I am your Walter's brother, Philip English, and you do not know me?" "I am Susannah Hollingsworth and not your brother's wife", she answered. Their manner of greet- ing each other need not be described. All about shared their joy. Hawthorne in the Scarlet Letter describing the meeting of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale says "Love whether newly born or aroused from a death- like slumber, must always create a sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance that it overflows upon the out- ward world". And so Philip and Susannah were mar- ried.
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Susannah, as before related, was charged with witch- craft in later days and escaped to New York with Philip. While there, food was scarce in Salem and English sent an abundance of corn. Susannah's father and daughter, Mary, continued in Salem during the witch- craft period and a letter from them told Philip and his wife that they were wanted home. They decided to come. Entering Salem "the people drew near in throngs ; they seized the horses and almost tore the clumsy gear- ing from their smoking sides; those who were not lucky enough to lay their hands on the shafts would fain push the heavy mud-laden wheels; I cannot tell what words from Susannah called forth shouts from many, and sturdy Preserve Parkins the blacksmith cried out, "bread put into starving men's mouths makes their arms strong, most worthy Mistress English". The Queen of Sheba never heard a more heart-felt salutation". The people of Salem on this occasion presented Philip with a silver cup and around this and the gold one an interesting tale is woven.
Of the father of the wife of Philip English, it is re- corded in our local histories, that "Richard Hollings- worth built ships on the "Neck" so called, near what is now the Rowell House". In the laying of the ribs and keel and the launching of the ship, let us hope that he found the relief he sought from the then vexing question of Church and State.
Our fishing and trading and ship building prospered up to the time of the Revolutionary War and, though our commerce seemed open to possible destruction, it was at that time the great fortunes of our merchant princes were started. Our population was soon doubled. Our merchants, notably Elias Haskett Derby, turned their merchant vessels into ships of war and built priva- tecrs superior to them in size, speed, and construction.
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CLEOPATRA'S BARGE
We furnished 158 privateers for the Revolution, some of them like the "Harkey" and the "Adventure" mount- ing two and four guns and carrying ten men while others like the "Bunker Hill" and the "Essex" mounted twenty guns and carried from 100 to 150 men.
The transition from the merchantman, always armed against pirates and marauders, to the privateer, was easily and quickly made, and we sailed out of Salem Harbor to fight British vessels and prey on British com- merce and strike another blow at tyranny. Among our dauntless commanders of privateers was Captain Jonathan Haraden. He was born in Gloucester but came here as a boy and lived among us, fought for us, and died with us. He had a fine record of capturing a thousand British cannon, and as commander of the pri- vateer "General Pickering" he fought the British pri- vateer, "Achilles" off the shores of Bilboa with many thousands of Spaniards as spectators. His ship had fourteen guns and forty-five men while his adversary had forty guns and one hundred and fifty men. The fight lasted two hours before the Achilles withdrew choosing so to do rather than be sunk. Haraden had a cargo of sugar when he left Salem and this kept his ship low in the water while the Achilles loomed high and made a good target. Haraden made the fight a long range one to avoid certain destruction in close combat against such odds. We smile a little today to read of Haraden cramming his guns with crowbars and sending them into the side of his adversary. When the Achilles with- drew, Haraden entered Bilboa and received an ovation. To perpetuate his name and fame there is a tablet on a little one-and-a-half story brick house on Essex Street picturing this naval battle. The tablet contains the fol- lowing inscription :
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CAPTAIN JONATHAN HARADEN,
a patriot distinguished for his daring, skill, and success, as a commander of armed vessels in the war for American Independence, lived here dur- ing the later years of his life. He commanded the Massachusetts State Brigantine, Tyrannicide, in 1777-8 and the privateer ships, General Picker- ing in 1780 and the Julius Cæsar in 1782. He died here November 23rd 1803 aged fifty-nine years.
"He was a hero among heroes" and his name should live in honored and affectionate remem- brance.
Placed by the Massachusetts Society Sons of the American Revolution September 25th, 1909.
We repeated our privateering effort in the War of 1812, contributing over two thousand seamen drawn, of course, from the whole territory now surrounding our present boundaries. Both wars were immensely pop- ular, patriotism and prize money being the double in- centive. Commerce and wealth and aristocracy are al- ways linked closely together and so are war and prof- iteering ; and commerce brought us wealth and gave us our old time aristocracy, and war gave us profiteers. We recognize the value of all elements in society when war assails us but we give honor and affectionate remem- brance chiefly to those who faced the wind and wave and left only the cherished story of their manhood. The evidence of the wealth of the merchants is all about us but the inventories of the estates of the mariners is often pitifully small and our probate records show that Mary, the widow of Captain Haraden, and executrix of his estate, sold chairs, tables, desks, book cases, etc., and pew 18 in Rev. John Prince's meeting house "to pay his just debts".
Richard Derby and his sons, Elias Haskett and John Derby, Nathaniel Silsbee and the Crowninshields, Ben- jamin, Jacob, and George, Billy Gray and Nathaniel
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CAPT. GEORGE CROWNINSHIELD
West, are familiar names among our merchant princes ; their faces, many fine ones among them, are familiar, too, in the portrait gallery of the Museum. Some of them were more than merchants. Gray became Lieu- tenant Governor and Benjamin Crowninshield was Jefferson's Secretary of State and Jacob Crowninshield went to Congress. George Crowninshield, however, was apparently the victim of his money. Newman says some- thing to the effect that money is a sort of creation and tends to make the possessor idolize himself. At the age of fifty George Crowninshield launched in Salem Harbor in 1817 his Cleopatra's Barge. Perhaps the "glorious sorceress of the Nile" may have been one of his favorite characters in history or perhaps the idolizing tendency of which Newman speaks, gave this manifestation of its existence and caused Crowninshield to choose this name for a pleasure craft, called the first private American yacht to fly our flag in European waters. He caused her sides to be painted in gaudy fashion with the colors of the spectrum, and some others, but except for this bizarre feature she was fitted in fine taste and with lux- ury far ahead of the times. She was completed at a cost of $50,000 and excited the greatest attention at the Mediterranean ports and other places where she touched. He entertained lavishly aboard and was visited by thou- sands of people including many distinguished foreigners. Crowninshield returned from his first voyage and was preparing for a second one when death laid a sudden hand on him while aboard his craft. He served "elegant collations" and the best of wine to his visitors and fur- nished music and hired bands when he could get them. He evidently intended to make the balance of his life one grand sweet song. Probably he never forecasted it, but his beautiful yacht finally became the property of the king of the Sandwich Islands.
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