Jim and Anne's Road Trip 2: Salem, MA 7/1/14

Accusations of witchcraft thread the fabric of history. It wasn’t until 1486, however, in the midst of the Inquisition, that the definition, detection, interrogation, torture, trial, and punishment of witches was codified in western culture with publication of the Malleus Maleficarum (the Hammer of the Witches). Although the Catholic Church never formally published the Malleus, and later condemned it, the detailed book demanded the active participation of civil authorities in what would become an increasingly brutal prosecution of witchcraft.

The Puritans of Salem were neither Catholics nor legally bound by the Malleus. Nonetheless, the empowerment of civil courts to deal with witchcraft had been firmly entrenched in Protestant as well as Catholic European countries by the time the Puritans landed in Provincetown in 1620. The Royal Charter governing the Massachusetts Bay Colony established the supremacy of English law and legal traditions in Puritan settlements.

From 1692 to 1693, two hundred people from Salem and several surrounding villages were accused of practicing witchcraft which, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was a crime. Nineteen of the accused were hanged and one, eighty year-old Giles Corey, over the course of three tortuous days, was pressed to death in an attempt to make him admit or deny the accusation. He did neither, speaking only to request that more weight be added. By doing so, he spared his family the certain loss of property.

The bodies of those executed were denied Christian burial and were interred in unmarked graves. Many citizens of Salem remained silent as the lethal hysteria over witchcraft grew. Others spoke out against the mania and, because of their efforts, the persecution ended and the remaining accused were eventually found innocent.

In 1992, a memorial to the victims was built adjacent to the cemetery where many of Salem’s first citizens are buried. Two low, stone walls face each other across a grassy, tree-lined mall. Each wall contains ten stone seats on which are inscribed the name of a victim as well as the method and date of death. The back of the memorial is separated by a wrought-iron fence from the graves of citizens who lived during the trials. Protests of innocence from some of the victims are carved into the memorial’s entrance.

One of the judges during the Salem witchcraft trials was John Hathorne. Hathorne's great-great grandson, Nathaniel, who grew up in Salem, changed the spelling of his last name to Hawthorne in order to avoid association with his notorious ancestor.

The home of Judge Jonathan Corwin who served on the court which eventually executed twenty people.

Libraries:

Salem Athenaeum, “a membership library.”

The Phillips Library (of the Peabody Essex Museum), undergoing restoration.

Shops:

Random houses:

The house below was owned by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s cousin, Susanna Ingersoll, and Hawthorne visited the house frequently when he lived in Salem. This is the house that inspired him to write the novel, House of the Seven Gables.

The harbor in front of the House of the Seven Gables.

The U.S. Customs House where Hawthorne worked for three years, and where he wrote the prologue to The Scarlet Letter. At the time he was Surveyor of the Port of Salem, employees were given an office but were expected to provide their own furniture and supplies. The inkwell and pens belonged to him while he worked here.