"The Witch House"

"The Witch House"

This is the house of Judge Jonathan Corwin which is also known as “the witch house”. Some sources state that the reason why people started calling it “the witch house” was because of its ties to the Salem witch trials.

 This house is located at 310 Essex street in Salem MA. Historians believe that this house was built in 1675 for captain Richard Daveport who was still working on the house when he sold it to Jonathan Corwin who then finished building it.
On Tuesday November 1^st I was passing by this house when I remembered that I had to do a blog for my history class so since I had always been curious to see the inside of this house I decided to go in for a tour. I have to say I was very disappointed because I was hoping for it to be a guided tour so I could obtain good information about the house but, unfortunately it was a self-guided tour so I feel like I missed a lot of information.

I thought this house was perfect to do a blog on since we talked about the Salem witch trials in class and this house is believed to be the only structure still standing that has direct ties to the Salem witch trials of 1692. Some other sources also state that a few of the examinations of the Salem witch trials may have been conducted in this house while Jonathan Corwin still lived there.

Corwin lived in this house for 40 years until his death in 1718. This house remained in the Corwin family for many generations and has been renovated many times since then and it is now a historical museum.

 The house is very nice and big, it consists of four big rooms, two on the first floor and two on the second floor. All the walls are painted white however it is kind of dark. Inside the house there are many signs and displays explaining the general history of the Salem witch trials.

There where many things inside this house that I did not understand what they were or why they there which is another reason why I wish it had been a guided tour.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witch_House

                       

                     

The Rebecca Nurse Homestead is a 17th Century multi acre historical site located in Danvers, MA.  Danvers was previously known as Salem Village when Rebecca Nurse was accused and executed for practicing witchcraft..  Also on the same grounds,  is a replica Salem Village Meetinghouse, the reconstructed Endecott Barn and Endecott Shop, and the Nurse family graveyard.  The Putnam family, her neighbors, had ongoing disputes with the Nurse family about the joined land.  The question raised here is, was Rebecca Nurse accused for practicing witch craft or was it an attempt at retaliation?

                      

Rebecca was a well respected, educated 71 year old matriarch who was accused of practicing witchcraft in Salem Village.  She was married to the local artisan, Francis Nurse, a mother of 8 children and a grandmother.   The first accusers afflicted were Elizabeth Parris (Betty) and her 12 year old cousin Abigail Williams after claiming affliction of several possessive-like fits from Nurse's dark spirit. They were diagnosed with bewitchment by Doctor William Briggs, which led to the spread of the hysteria. Nurse was arrested on March 23, 1692.

The pre-trial examination was held in the Salem Village Meetinghouse(photo to the left) on March 24, 1692, conducted by Judge Hawthorne and assisted by Judge Johnathon Corwin.  The examination was recorded by Reverend Samuel Parris, the father of Betty and Uncle of Abigail.   Abigail Williams was the first to be addressed by Judge Hawthorne and almost immediately after her accusation,  Ann Putnam Jr. went into a fit.  In response to Abigail's accusation and Putnam's fit, Nurse stated, "I can say before my Eternal Father I am innocent and God will clear my innocency".   During the examination,  Mary Walcott and Elizabeth Hubbard joined Ann Putnam Jr. in the accusation that they were afflicted right there in the courtroom.  

Hawthorne had repeatedly tried bullying Nurse into a confession.  However, Nurse was defiant and stood her ground that she was innocent. Initially,  the jury had declared her not guilty.  Followed by, the jury being forced to reconsider and concluded Rebecca Nurse was guilty of practicing witch craft.  She was hanged at Gallows Hill on July 19th, 1692 along with Sarah Good, Elizabeth Howe, Susannah Martin and Sarah Wildes."After the execution, Rebecca's children secretly buried their mother's body in an unmarked grave on the Homestead. In 1885, the Nurse family erected a memorial to Rebecca in the family graveyard. This Homestead is a visible link to many of the famous and infamous events of Salem Village, modern-day Danvers, Massachusetts." 

Works cited

 Madden, Matt. "Salem Witch Trials: Court Examination of Rebecca Nurse." Salem Witch Trials: Court Examination of Rebecca Nurse. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Nov. 2016.

<http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/people/nursecourt.html>

"Rebecca Nurse Homestead." Essex National Heritage Area. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Nov. 2016. 

SALEM WITCH TRIALS

After reading chapter 3  in American History Give Me Liberty, I became interested in learning more about the Salem Witch Trials and decided to visit the Salem Witch Mesuem and Witch House.

SALEM WITCH HOUSE  

   

The Jonathan Corwin House in Salem, Massachusetts, USA, known as The Witch House, was the home of Judge Jonathan Corwin (1640–1718) and is the only structure still standing in Salem with direct ties to the Salem witch trials of 1692, thought to be built between 1620 and 1642. It was bought by Judge Corwin in 1675, when he was 35 years old, and he lived there for more than forty years. Corwin was  buried in the nearby Broad Street Cemetery. The house remained in the Corwin family until the mid-19th century.

  

The infamous Salem witch trials began during the spring of 1692, after a group of young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts, claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused several local women of witchcraft. As a wave of hysteria spread throughout colonial Massachusetts, a special court convened in Salem to hear the cases; the first convicted witch, Bridget Bishop, was hanged that June. Eighteen others followed Bishop to Salem’s Gallows Hill, while some 150 more men, women and children were accused over the next several months. By September 1692, the hysteria had begun to abate and public opinion turned against the trials. Though the Massachusetts General Court later annulled guilty verdicts against accused witches and granted indemnities to their families, bitterness lingered in the community, and the painful legacy of the Salem witch trials would endure for centuries. www.history.com/topics/salem-witch-trials

On September 18th , I went to the Trails and Sails event at Pine Grove Cemetery in Lynn, Massachusetts. 

One of the places I focused on was The Civil War G.A.R Lot. There are 573 veterans buried in the lot.

Civil War G.A.R Lot

In this lot is buried John B. Stackhouse who was born a slave in Nashville, Tennessee.  

John B. Stackhouse's gravestone.

The map and guide of the tour states “He enlisted on December 23, 1863(about 11 months after The Emancipation Proclamation) and mustered out on August 20, 1865. Stackhouse participated in the 54^th campaign in South Carolina, Florida and Georgia. Originally part of the Lincoln Post 7 in Maryland, he then joined the G.A.R post 5 on January 30th, 1896. He died on April, 1899 in the Soldiers Home in Chelsea Massachusetts.”

The EmancipationProclamation. On Jan. 1st, 1863, The U.S. President Abraham Lincoln declared free all slaves residing in territory in rebellion against the federal government. This Emancipation Proclamation actually freed few people.

John Stackhouse was one of the few freed people. The soldiers home where he died is an important place in Chelsea, MA.  Given that many slaves had no rights for such a long time, it is good to know that regardless that once he was a slave he became free, served as a soldier, was recognized for his service and treated equally at the end of his life.

This is a tall water tank in Chelsea labeled "SOLDIERS HOME"

This is the main building at Soldiers Home.

Established in 1882, the Soldiers' Home in Chelsea is a multifaceted health care facility available to eligible veterans of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The mission of the Soldiers' Home in Chelsea is to provide, with honor and dignity, the highest quality personal health care services to Massachusetts Veterans.

Sincerely, I hope that treatment and conditions of the Soldiers Home towards veterans was great when the home was stablished. However, as the time passed by, the conditions and treatment towards veterans changed; I hope the conditions for veterans are much better nowadays.

https://www.facebook.com/ChelseaSoldiersHome/?fref=ts

Paul Revere and a slave named Mark haunt the Holiday Inn in Somerville

Monday and Tuesday of this week I attended a conference that took place at the Holiday Inn in Somerville.  I knew I had to come up with a blog post for this week's class, but still didn't have an idea of what it would be.  As I was walking out to my car after the first day of the conference I saw what looked like a grave stone.  It was a stone commemorating an event that took place during Paul Revere's famous ride.  It is inscribed:
 "Paul Revere on his famous ride April 18, 1776 was intercepted near here by British Officers and escaped". 

I decided to snap a photo of it and then to see what I could find out about the event.

First I googled "Paul Revere and The Holiday Inn in Somerville".  I found lots of references, blogs and newspaper articles about the site.  The site was easy to locate because of a letter that Paul Revere wrote to the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1798 describing the events of his ride.  This is what he wrote about this site:

"I set off upon a very good Horse; it was then about 11 o'Clock, & very pleasant. After I
had passed Charlestown Neck, & got nearly opposite where Mark was hung in chains, I saw two men on Horse back, under a Tree. When I got near them, I discovered they were British officer. One tryed to git a head of Me, & the other to take me. I turned my Horse very quick, & Galloped towards Charlestown neck, and then pushed for the Medford Road. The one who chased me, endeavoring to Cut me off, got into a Clay pond, near where the new Tavern is now built. I got clear of him, and went thro Medford, over the Bridge, & up to Menotomy".  See the letter here.

It gets more interesting because he refers to the place as the place "where Mark was hung in chains".  What did that mean, I wondered.  I decided to search on "where Mark was hung in chains". There I discovered that Mark was a slave who, along with two other slaves, killed his master John Codman by poisoning him with arsenic. His punishment was to be hanged, then they tarred his body, which preserved it, and then gibbeted it near the spot by the Holiday Inn.  The body had been hanging there for over 20 years when Paul Revere encountered the two British Officers.  Why?  It was used as a warning to let other slaves know what could happen to them if they rebelled. Here are some links to blogs and websites that tell more about Mark and the other two slaves.  

 

//paulreveresriderevisited.wordpress.com/2012/06/06/the-gruesome-landmark/

http://www.thefreedomtrail.org/educational-resources/article-codman.shtml

https://archive.org/details/trialexecutionfo00good

It's important to note the punishment of Mark and the other two slaves took place in Boston, not Virginia or South Carolina.  Slavery was  a scourge no matter where it took place and this story really illustrates that.  The cruelty and macabre ways of punishment that were practiced during those times is hard for us to believe in this day and age.  It was not enough to hang Mark, they also "gibbeted" him. When they gibbeted people it meant that they would hang the body in a cage.  Sometimes they put people in the cage alive, and let them die slowly.  Here is a picture of what a gibbeted body/skeleton looked like:

I set out to learn the story of Paul Revere in Somerville on the night of April 18, 1776.  By delving into that story, I found a more interesting story about what happened to Mark the slave in 1755. If Paul Revere had not mentioned Mark in his letter, would the horrific execution of the three slaves of John Codman be lost in history?  Would I have still been haunted at the Holiday Inn if it was only Paul Revere that I found in the parking lot?