Salem, Massachusetts (MA) Buyers Agent |
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(((REALTORS®, click for listing information.)))
| Salem, MA with a little under eight thousand
inhabitants, was the sixth city in the United States in 1790. Her
appearance was more antique than even that of Boston, and her reek of
the salt water, that almost surrounded her, yet more pronounced. For
half a mile along the harbor front, subtended by the long finger of
Derby Wharf, ran Derby Street, the residential and business center of
the town. On one side were the houses of the gentry, Derbys and Princes,
and Crownshields, goodly gambrel or hip-roofed brick and wooden mansions
dating from the middle of the century, standing well back with tidy
gardens in front. Opposite were the wharves, separated from the street
by counting rooms, warehouses, ship-chandlers' stores, pump-makers'
shops, sailmakers' lofts; all against a background of spars, rigging,
and furled or brailed-up sails. Crowded within three hundred yards of
Derby street, peeping between the merchants' mansions and over their
garden walls like small boys behind a police cordon, were some eighteen
or nineteen hundred buildings, including dwellings of pre-witch-craft
days, with overhanging upper stories, peaked gables, small-paned
windows, and hand-rifted clapboards black with age."
The Maritime History of Massachusetts, Samuel Eliot
Morison The Capt. John Turner House 1668 Salem's is known as the "Witch City". Henry Kitson's bronze statue of the city's founding father, Roger Conant, stands in front of the Salem witch museum, many visitors assume that the likeness of Conant as one magazine erroneously called it a "determined sorceress". It was Conant 's vision and faith that sowed the seeds of the new plantation at "this place called Naumkeake" in 1626, shortly after the demise of the English fishing settlement at Cape Ann. And it was Conant's tenacity and commitment- with probable encouragement from his wife, Sarah, who had just moved for the fourth time since leaving the comforts of London in 1623-that made the colony a success despite disease, depression and the powerful lure of the warmer Virginia climate. Roger Conant's decision to stay at Naumkeag and to cooperate with the settlers sent over by the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1628, even after the company replaced him as the legal head of the plantation, that gave the settlement it's new name: Salem, "city of peace". Roger Conant not only stayed, he devoted his life to serving the town and colony. he was admitted to the first church in 1628 and chosen a freeman, or voting stockholder, of the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1630. Conant was one of the first two Salem representatives to the colony's general court or legislature, and was repeatedly elected a selectman by the people of Salem. When communities were granted the right to establish district courts by the legislature, Roger Conant became a fixture on the Salem quarterly juries for sixteen years. he was frequently called upon to establish boundaries for new communities as far away as Boston and Saugus. In 1636, Conant, John Woodbury, Richard Trask and John Balch, all original settlers of the town, served on the committee which created separate lots from remaining public lands in Salem. in return for their efforts, these men were each given 200 acres of valuable agricultural land in the Bass River. In 1659, Roger Conant led the drive by Bass River residents to form their own church. By 1667, they had their church and, a year later, Bass River became the new town of Beverly. Conant was given the task of establishing the boundaries between Salem and Beverly and was the latter's most important citizen. Before giving up civic life in 1671, he served briefly as both selectman and juror. Conant oversaw the laying out of Beverly land grants just has he had in Salem. Roger Conant's service was rendered against a backdrop of personal tragedy. He had to endure the death of a daughter and four of his five sons. But he trudged steadily on, working for the common good right up until his own death in 1679. His perseverance in the face of adversity, even more than his status as Salem's founding father, is his legacy. |