Victorian Salem Tour

01/11/2024

Gandalf from Alaska. Victorian lady from San Francisco.
Another Halloween in the books.

30/10/2024

What did Halloween in Boston look like one hundred years ago? Not all that different

26/10/2024

26/10/2024

15/10/2024

Only two blocks from downtown. A lot of Revolutionary War veterans are buried here, as well as the infamous Sheriff George Corwin, the villain of the Witch Trials and his uncle Jonathan, judge, and owner of THE Witch House. They have an obelisk!
Feel free to visit but footing is tricky!

18/09/2024

Congratulations to actress Jean Smart for winning the "Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series" Emmy award last night for her role on the television show "Hacks"!

Did you know that Smart has a deeply rooted connection to Beverly? It was at Hale Farm in 2018 during the filming of the ancestry program, "Who do you think you are?" that the actress found out that she was descended from Dorcas Hoar, a Beverly woman born in 1635 and later accused of being a witch. Hoar was working for Reverend John Hale at the time who was heavily involved in the witch trials himself.

"I found out that my eight-times-great-grandmother on the maternal side was convicted of witchcraft in Salem in 1692. I had no idea," Smart recently told IMDb in an interview. "Nobody in the family knew this, and it was a very moving experience to find out."

Funny enough, the story of Smart's family lineage made it into the Emmy winning show "Hacks" during one of the episodes!

05/08/2024

Once there were many Victorian seaside resorts and parks dotting the shoreline from Connecticut to Maine. To my knowledge now, leaving aside Cape Cod and the Islands and Newport, there's only Salem Willows between Salisbury Beach Massachusetts and Watch Hill Rhode Island. :(

17/07/2024

This is called "too lazy to get out of the car" photography, but you can make out the lovely Eastlake details around the windows and entrance if you enlarge the photo. On Dearborn St. where I don't usually go. The ungainly dormers I suspect are a later addition. And hey, what's with the ugly black shutters?

20/06/2024

Salem Willows pavillion. Demolished perhaps in the nineteen forties or fifties?

31/05/2024

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/7C42dUzu5egv6JNn/?mibextid=qi2Omg

27/05/2024

It's been a long haul!
The fountain is on the lawn of the Salem Public Library on Essex St., only two blocks past the Witch House. The Library was a gift from Captain John Bertram, a well known Victorian benefactor to Salem.

24/05/2024

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14/05/2024

Mrs. Abraham Lincoln was very gracious to Mrs. Sophia Peabody Hawthorne on a lovely spring day at a Civil War event. Sophia knows that Mrs. Lincoln is famous for her fashionable dress and she deems the meeting well worth the rough trip from Salem to Milton! Also a very lovely house museum built in 1833. The ladies enjoyed some fine music in the drawing room too.

02/05/2024

Her house is now a part of the Hawthorne Hotel.

Fidelia Bridges (1834-1923) daughter of Salem Sea Captain, Henry Gardiner Bridges, is said to have painted as if all the year were springtime. Fidelia grew up at 100 Essex St. in Salem. After the death of her father at age 15, Fidelia studied drawing and took a job as a mother's helper wiched moved her to Brooklyn, NY. Studying with Anne Whitney (Sam Adams sculpture, Boston's Dock Square) and William Trost Richards (White Mountains paintings). In 1865 she opened a studio in Philadelphia, later traveling to Rome to study. After returning she worked for Louis Prang, the Boston printer who popularized the Christmas card and was governess to Mark Twain's children.

https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/fidelia-bridges-lonely-painter-found-joy-nature/

29/04/2024

Sping comes to Salem!