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Salem Witch Trial Historical Sites in Danvers

When most people think of the 1692 Salem Witch Trials, they think of modern-day Salem, Massachusetts. The trials and hangings did happen in Salem, then called Salem Town. However, the witch hysteria began in Salem Village, now known as Danvers, Massachusetts.

While Salem houses key historical sites and fascinating museums (see my list of the best museums in Salem, Massachusetts here), Danvers has some of the most important witch trial sites. In this article, I list the locations that my husband and I visited on our trip to Danvers. This is only a sampling of Danvers’ rich history, and I fully intend to explore more of the city on future trips.

Salem Witchcraft Victims’ Memorial

I recommend starting your Danvers visit at the Salem Witchcraft Victims’ Memorial. The memorial has a gravel parking lot and is within walking distance of a few other significant locations. You’ll notice that the memorial, along with the other sites I list, lie within a residential neighborhood. If you do travel to Danvers, please be respectful of the residents and their privacy.

The Salem Witchcraft Victims’ Memorial stands on Hobart Street, directly opposite the site of the original Salem meetinghouse. Today, there are homes where the meetinghouse used to be, but there is a sign that marks the spot (on the same side of the street as the memorial). The memorial itself is a beautiful stone structure, which features haunting quotations from the witch trial victims. It was dedicated on May 9, 1992, to commemorate the trials’ 300th anniversary.

First Church & Ingersoll’s Ordinary

From the memorial, walk southwest along Hobart Street. At the intersection with Center Street, you’ll find three more historical landmarks. First, you’ll see the First Church of Danvers Congregational. In 1702, after the witch hysteria, the village built a new meetinghouse at this site. It is commemorated with a sign that honors Reverend Joseph Green, who helped restore peace to Salem.

Additionally, this small hill was once the highest point in Salem Village and the site of the watchtower. The militia used the watchtower to watch for intruders, and it might have functioned as a jail during the Salem Witch Trials. No marker for the watchtower stands at the site.

On the opposite side of the intersection, you’ll see Ingersoll’s Ordinary. During the 1692 witch trials, this white, colonial-style house was a tavern. Residents gathered at Ingersoll’s after the witch examinations to drink, eat, and gossip. Today, the building is a private residence, so you cannot see inside.

Salem Village Parsonage

Head northwest on Center Street. Between houses 67 and 69, you’ll find a path marked by a blue sign. Follow it between the private residences to visit the Salem Village Parsonage. This was my favorite Salem Witch Trial historical site in Danvers because it marks where the witch hysteria began. Today, nothing remains but the home’s stone foundation, which archaeologists excavated in 1970. But back in 1692, this site held the home of Reverend Samuel Parris and his daughter Betty and niece Abigail Williams, the first two girls “inflicted” by witchcraft.

The site includes signs that give historical information on the parsonage and its role in the Salem Witch Trials. Though fencing surrounds the area, visitors can go inside to read the signs and even stand inside the home’s foundation. Just be careful on the uneven steps and don’t disturb the foundation!

The Rebecca Nurse Homestead

On our way out of Danvers, my husband and I stopped at the Rebecca Nurse Homestead. This historical property features the original home of Rebecca Nurse, one of the most prominent witch trial victims. It also includes a life-sized reproduction of the Salem Village meetinghouse, which was constructed for the PBS film, 3 Sovereigns for Sarah. The property hosts four tours per day, and the tour is well worth the $8 price. My husband and I have taken the tour twice now, and both times, the tour guides have been incredibly knowledgable and friendly.

As a bonus, you can walk through the pasture behind the homestead to visit the Nurse family burial ground. It features a memorial to Rebecca Nurse, a second statue honoring the witch trial victims, and the graves of other prominent Nurse family members. As you might know, the church did not allow witch trial victims a proper Christian burial. Instead, they buried the bodies in shallow graves near the hanging site. However, according to legend, the Nurse family retrieved Rebecca’s body in the middle of the night and buried her in the family plot. Her grave is likely marked by one of the burial ground’s unengraved stones.

A Final Word

Unlike your trip to Salem, Massachusetts, your visit to Danvers will be solitary and quiet. There are no crowds of tourists or cheesy witch figurines. You will stand at the actual sites where the witch hysteria began, where monuments to the past have been erected alongside people’s homes, a school, and a modern church. Visiting these sites was a deeply moving experience, but I also felt like an intruder, gawking at the biggest tragedy in Danvers’ history. The best I could do, and the best you can do when you visit, is to be respectful of its residents, past and present.

For more information on Salem Witch Trial historical and tourist sites, I highly recommend Hunting For Witches: A Visitor’s Guide to the Salem Witch Trials by Frances Hill. This short book features a chronicle of the trials, as well as tips and information on visiting dozens of trial-related sites.

Which are your favorite Salem Witch Trial historical sites in Danvers? What are your tips for people planning a visit here? Share in the comments!

Want a FREE short story set in Salem? Join Kate’s Coven to read The Witch and discover whether Salem’s one true witch can save the town from the devil.

Salem Witch Trials Memorial (Salem, MA)

In the midst of half drunk college pranksters, families on day trips, tourists dressed in their Halloween costume of choice and an assortment of other revelers stands a somber memorial to the victims of the Salem witch trials.

Directly across from shops that hawk kitschy tourists souvenirs and “haunted houses” designed to spook people of all ages, is a memorial that commemorates a dark part of American history. Without this dark time, there would be no kitschy souvenirs or haunted houses.

Dedicated in 1992, the Salem Witch Trials TerCentenary, the Salem Witch Trials Memorial, pays tribute to the 20 victims of the hysteria.

Twenty benches, representing each of the 20 victims, stretch out from the stone wall. Each bench or slab has each victim etched into it with the date of their death. Often times, people will leave stones, coins, flowers, notes and other little gifts or mementos behind.

At the entrance on the ground are snippets of the quotes from some of the victims just before their deaths.

Of course, trials has a double meaning and it is a fitting use of the term.

About New England Nomad

Hi I'm Wayne. Welcome to my blog. I am a true New Englander through and through. I love everything about New England. I especially love discovering new places in New England and sharing my experiences with everyone. I tend to focus on the more unique and lesser known places and things in New England on my blog. Oh yeah, and I love dogs. I always try to include at least one dog in each of my blog posts. I discovered my love of photography a couple of years ago. I know, I got a late start. Now, I photograph anything that seems out of the ordinary, interesting, beautiful and/or unique. And I have noticed how every person, place or thing I photograph has a story behind it or him or her. I don't just photograph things or people or animals. I try to get their background, history or as much information as possible to give the subject more context and meaning. It's interesting how one simple photograph can evoke so much. I am currently using a Nikon D3200 "beginner's camera." Even though there are better cameras on the market, and I will upgrade some time, I love how it functions (usually) and it has served me well. The great thing about my blog is you don't have to be from New England, or even like New England to like my blog (although I've never met anyone who doesn't). All you have to like is to see and read about new or interesting places and things. Hopefully, you'll join me on my many adventures in New England! View all posts by New England Nomad

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 25th, 2015 at 12:31 am and tagged with Historical, history, Massachusetts, memorial, New England, Salem, Salem Witch Trials Memorial and posted in historical, history, massachusetts, memorial, monument, New England, Salem, salem Witch Trials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

33 responses to “ Salem Witch Trials Memorial (Salem, MA) ”

Taking and break from work; reading this post. It’s very fascinating! I very much enjoy history and am glad passers bring and leave little things for them. Thank you so much for posting AND including pictures. It’s so nice to see images of places that I may not get to see in my lifetime! Like Liked by 1 person

Thank you! It is heartening to see people leave behind gifts and mementos. Many of those people who leave gifts are direct descendents of the accused witches. Like Liked by 2 people

Margo Shea

The Salem Witch Trial memorial was erected in 1992 to mark the tercentenary of the witch hysteria. It was designed as the first physical structure in the city of Salem to commemorate the trials and the execution of twenty innocent people suspected of witchcraft in 1692.

What a beautiful, reflective, introspective space. People often forget just how long the memorial was in coming to fruition. Historic Salem, Inc. created a committee in 1963 to commemorate what they then referred to as the Witch Delusion. The idea was that the memorial would rest on Gallows Hill, where the hangings are believed to have taken place. At that point, the Essex Institute, now part of the Peabody Essex Museum, and the Massachusetts Society for the Preservation of American Antiquities, now Historic New England, had tossed around the idea of purchasing the Gallows Hill lot on Proctor Street. They intended to erect a granite shaft to honor those who were executed.

In 1963, a simple, granite obelisk was perfectly in keeping with the memorial logic of the day – it would have looked very much like a grave marker and as such was unmistakable, dignified, and reflective of famous memorials like the Washington monument.

But by the early 1990s, ideas of what memorials might be had changed radically – most notably because of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC. With her design, Maya Lin, then a student at Yale, introduced a new architectural language for memorials. The Vietnam Memorial violated the conventional form for war memorials. It didn’t glorify war. It didn’t give a lot of information to the visitor, but rather let the visitor interpret the space on his or her own terms. It had a welcoming stance, meaning no matter how you felt about the Vietnam War, there was a place for you at the memorial.

Designed in 1991, the Salem Witch Trials memorial itself was very cutting age – it won the design competition, edging out 245 other submissions, because it was innovative – especially in the way it used architectural language to make visible, indeed to make physical, a series of idea, of concepts, of abstractions, really.

The memorial’s designers really wanted the memorial space to respond to the injustice of 1692. Artist Maggie Smith and architect Jim Cutler defined injustice in relation to the events in Salem as silence, deafness, persecution and memory.

· Silence: the memorial is laid out tombs of the Old Burying Point Cemetery, where many of the accusers of 1692 are buried. Here they represent themselves - mutely watching events unfold, passively (and in some cases, not so passively) allowing injustice to occur. In our memorial here in Salem, victims and perpetrators dwell side by side, just as they did as the events unfolded.

· Deafness: the protests of some of the innocent accused are etched into the granite beneath our feet. As we walk through the space, we have the opportunity to step over them, drowning out the protests, or to give them space, to “hear” them.

· Persecution: The memorial space is marked by a planting of black locust trees, from which many of the convicted were believed to have been hanged. Black locusts are known to be hardy, utilitarian trees, symbolizing tenacity under adversity. They honor those who refused to plead guilty for crimes they were not guilty of, even though guilt and penitence was a certain way to avoid death. While some local experts argue that locusts never would have been able to withstand the weight of a human body, the lore remains salient and shaped the designers' intentions.

· Memory: The memorial focal points are the benches on which the names, dates and methods of execution are engraved. In 1991, as in today, we live in a divided community when it comes to witchcraft. Many in Salem insist on a historical interpretation of the witch hysteria and tell us that none of the accused identified as practitioners of the pagan religion. And yet, there are members of our community who are Wiccan; they consider the denigration of witchcraft that occurs in much memorialization of 1692 an insult to their beliefs and practices, because “witch” is generally a synonym for “scapegoat” and so discourse in Salem does not broaden understanding of Wiccan tradtitions. The memorial reminds us about the consequences of intolerance.

Memorials are interesting creatures. They tend to tell us a LOT more about the era in which the memorial was erected than they do about the era during which the events being memorialized took place. In this case, the language of this memorial is reflective of our times – of the late twentieth century and the early twenty-first.

Fear, othering, intolerance were not unique to colonial America. Hardly. Just as an example, when Salem was accepting designs for the memorial in 1991, Charles Stuart and David Duke, for example, were two prominent names associated with fear-mongering. Both capitalized on ingrained racism in the United States. Charles Stuart manufactured a black villain as the man who car-jacked and killed his pregnant wife in a Boston neighborhood when he himself murdered her. Evangelist David Duke blamed black "welfare cheats" for the nation's economic ills.

One of the questions that hangs out there for anyone visiting this memorial, standing here under the locust trees is this --- what does it mean to bear witness? As the world shrinks, as information becomes available to us instantaneously, as it is ever and ever more difficult to seclude ourselves from violence and conflict, I think -- how we bear witness becomes an ever pressing question. In a postindustrial city increasingly dependent on heritage tourism, the ways we choose to engage the memory of 1692 speaks to our own abilities to deal honestly with difficult histories. Was Salem an aberration or is it an object lesson in the ways institutions and people with power deal with uncomfortable others in their midst?

Looking back just this year, architect Jim Cutler thinks that the Salem Witch Trials Memorial is his best work. "When people go there, they weep." Once we wipe away the tears, the question remains, how best shall we bear witness to injustice in our own lives, in our own communities? That’s the question the Salem Award Foundation asks and the one we all should ask, and in our own ways, answer to the best of our ability.

Discover Salem Ma

This memorial is dedicated to the 20 innocent victims of the 1692 Salem Witch Trials. Surrounded by three granite walls, you will see the victims’ protest inscribed on the threshold as you enter the memorial. The six locus trees in the middle of the memorial represent the injustice of the trials, as they are the last to flower and the first to lose their leaves every year. Along the stone wall are 20 benches with the names and execution dates of each of the 20 victims.

Proctors Ledge Memorial

Located at 7 Pope Street

This memorial is dedicated to the nineteen victims hanged during the 1692 Salem Witch trials. It sits at the base of Proctor’s Ledge. The location where the executions took place.

The memorial consists of a stone wall with 19 markers bearing the names and dates of their executions. In the center is an Oak tree, which symbolizes endurance and dignity.

Statues

Roger Conant Statue

Though this statue is in front of the Witch Museum, it has nothing to do with the Salem Witch Trials. The statue is of Roger Conant, who founded Salem in 1626.

Conant, his wife, and their first son immigrated to the Plymouth Colony in 1623 aboard the ship “Ann” from England. Finding the strict Puritan way of life uncomfortable, he moved his family to Neumkeag. They lived there for a year, then moved to a fishing settlement in Cape Ann, where he became Governor. After a year, the Colony failed, and many returned to England. Conant moved with the remaining colonist to a nearby area called Neumkeag in the fall of 1626. Their new home would later be called Salem. He passed away on November 19, 1679, at 87.

Bewitched Sculpture

Located in Lappin Park

This sculpture was donated by TV Land in 2005 and is of Elizabeth Montgomery.

Nathaniel Hawthorne Statue

Located at 20 Hawthorn Blvd

Installed in 1925, this statue depicts Hawthorne sitting on a moss-covered rock with a tree stump behind him. Hawthorne is considered the first great romantic novelist of America. He wrote several novels while staying in Salem. Two of those novels were The House of Seven Gables and The Scarlet Letter.

Cemeteries

The Old Burial Point Cemetery

Located at 51 Charter Street

This cemetery was established in 1637 and is one of the oldest in the US. Several people with ties to the Salem Witch Trials are buried here.

Judge John Hathorne and Bartholomew Gedney. Reverend Nicholas Noyes was the assistant minister during the witch trials. Samuel Shattuck Jr. claimed to have been bewitched by Bridget Bishop and gave testimony against her. You will also find the second wife of Giles Corey and other notable Salem residents.

Broad Street Cemetery

Located at 5 Broad Street

This is the second oldest cemetery in Salem. Established in 1655, you will find the graves of Judge Jonathan Corwin and Sheriff George Corwin here.

St. Peter's Church Cemetery

Located at 24 St. Peter Street

The Land this Church was built on was donated by Philip English. English was the wealthiest Merchant in Salem and was accused of witchcraft during the 1692 Salem Witch Trials. He was of Anglican faith, and his first language was French. He avoided paying his fair share of taxes, was quick to sue, and represented a more cosmopolitan lifestyle. Needless to say, his Puritan neighbors did not like him. English and his wife escaped to New York with the help of two Boston reverends. When he returned in 1693, he found his belongings had been confiscated by Sheriff Corwin. He died in 1736 at the age of 85, and he is buried in the Church Yard.

Howard Street Cemetery

Located at 29 Howard Street next to the Old Salem Jail

Before there was a cemetery here, it was an open field. On September 19, 1692, Giles Corey was believed to have been pressed to death at this location. In 1801 the cemetery was established, and the oldest stone is that of Second Mate Benjamin Ropes. He was crushed to death while launching the fore-topmast of the ship Belisarius. It is also the resting place of several Revolutionary War soldiers.

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