Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte's column in the October 22, 2015 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.
This past summer, Gerry and I were very happy guests at a wedding in Salem, Massachusetts. It was a gorgeous weekend. A large tent overlooked Hawthorne Cove and the Salem Harbor beyond to the east. The lucky couple hosted their wedding day reception at the House of Seven Gables The water sparkled with hundreds of sailboats. One of those boats was the venue of the actual marriage ceremony where the bride and groom tied a nautical knot in an intimate gathering of six.
The rest of us spent the entire weekend in Salem, filling our downtime between wedding events with tours of the city, eating and drinking at many of the great waterfront restaurants and watering holes, and enjoying Salem.
I spent quite a bit of time in Salem over the past forty years, but most of my time in Salem visiting friends and their families in private homes. I’d spent little time as a tourist; on this trip, however, we were lucky enough to stay in the center of the downtown at the historic Hawthorne Hotel and have some time to play tourist. Over the course of the weekend, I was enchanted (and perhaps a little bewitched) by the rich history of Salem's maritime history, its literature, its architecture, and its culture heritage in the birth of the United States.
We circled the city several times on the Salem Trolley, passing the Peabody Essex Museum, the historic homes and hotels, and the Willows at the mouth of the harbor. At the same time, of course, we learned of the fact and fiction of the history of the Salem witch trials and the incredible tourism trade that Salem experiences today.
Our grandson, Colin, is a high school senior this year. Several weeks after the wedding, Salem State University appeared on his college tour itinerary. I was more than happy to go back to Salem, this time to tour the campus and eat at one of our new favorite restaurants. This time, the two-hour long walking tour with other prospective students and their parents was around the small, but impressive campus. Students at SSU enjoy everything it has to offer, including a water taxi to Boston and dining card access to the historic Salem Diner. The diner is one of the two surviving Sterling Streamliner diners and it stands at 70-1/2 Loring Street just where it did when it arrived in 1942. Nearly 8,000 undergraduates descend on Salem each September and another 1,800 graduate students travel to campus on a regular basis.
Of course, the Salem we all studied as school children is the Salem of the witch trials or the maritime complexities in the 1956 Newbery Award recipient, Carry On, Mr. Bowditch by Jean Lee Latham. Later on, in high school we might have read or watched The Crucible by Arthur Miller. Certainly, we became acquainted with the literature of Nathaniel Hawthorne in English class, including The Scarlet Letter and the House of the Seven Gables. While Hawthorne and his family lived in many places in New England (and Europe), he was born in Salem in 1805 and settled there several times.
While tours of Salem and its historical houses and museums sets the record straight for visitors, the frenzy of the witch period still marks the city. Each fall, Salem is home to the Halloween event of New England. There are ghost tours, celebratory balls, parades, live music, theater and activities for families. Salem’s rich history sets the stage and its vibrant and historical downtown is swelled by as many as 250,000 visitors late September through mid-November while the events last for six weeks.
This October, Stacy Schiff’s The Witches: Salem, 1692 will continue to explain the story of the Salem witch trials, including the panic that grew exponentially and the ways in which American culture was shaped by the hysteria. In 2013, Six Women of Salem by Marilynne Roach was published. In it, Roach describes the amazing amount of people who were affected by the crisis in Salem. Twenty souls were executed; five more died in prison. Many more suffered the devastation of being accused by their neighbors of witchcraft and everyone seemed suspect. Death in Salem by Diane Foulds (2010) explores the “private lives behind the 1692 witch hunt.” Foulds estimates that 25 million Americans (including herself) are descended from the 20 people who condemned to death in the trials.
Of course, witches are good for tourism and regardless of its rich marine and historical past, Salem would not be the popular place it is today without the witch trials and the fiction surrounded them. Robin DeRosa studied the culture of the witch trials in The Making of Salem: The Witch Trials in History, Fiction, and Tourism (2009).
While most of us watched Hocus Pocus (the 1993 hilarious film starring Bette Middler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy) and recognized many of the scenes as being filmed in Salem, there are some serious films about Salem and the witch trials. Minuteman libraries have copies of the History Channel’s Salem Witch Trials (2005) and PBS’s Three Sovereigns for Sarah (1986) with Vanessa Redgrave.
If you’d like to visit the city and get the most out of your stay, Salem: A Guide to America’s Bewitching City by Alexandra Pecci (2011) is a great resource. Any New England guide book (all Minuteman libraries have great collections of travel books) also includes information on Salem. A good source for maps and tours is the National Park Service Visitor Center and the Salem Maritime National Historic Site.
Additionally, there is a plethora of books for children, including those by celebrated children’s authors Jane Yolen and Ann Rinaldi. If you need help finding books on the witch trials or books about visiting the amazing city of Salem, please call a librarian.
