Salem and "the trials"

All right then - here we go with what most people think of when they think of Salem:  the "witch trials" of 1692. 

By 1692, Salem had been a settled town for (uh oh - math.  92-26 is 66 years - checks with calculator.  Yup, that's it.  It was a sea port in the colonial period and habors one of the Tall Ships - the Friendship - today.  Here she is while we were visiting. 

The sky is blue and the water is calm here, but it was like walking through a wall of ice because the weather was so wintery.  We got to the port at low tide, and stayed to watch the tide rise under the ship.  And to eat lunch at The Capn's.  Most excellent ways to warm up, believe me!

The port has several piers and would have been a welcome sight for anyone who had survived crossing the stormy waves of the Atlantic.  The ship is a National Historic Monument and people can listen to an explanation of the ship's history by rangers assigned to the monument.

I'm not going to disucss the trials in Salem or make any assumptions about them .  That is the task of other people, and they most assuredly can do it well enough.

What remains of those horrifying times?  A quiet memorial to the fallen - we saw it in its bedraggled late winter dress.  The memorial sits in a small open space next to a cemetery.  Open at the sidewalk, its other three sides have memorials in the form of rock shelves coming out of the stone wall.

This is Sarah Good's:

There are 18 more along the walls, one for each of the nineteen who lost their lives.  While we were looking about, we saw one bench that had a candle and a flower placed on it by someone, in memory of the person who had died.

No one was burned at the stake.  No one was beheaded.  All of those killed were hanged, with the exception of one man, who was "pressed" to death.  Think of lying on a platform with another platform over you with heavy stones being piled on the upper platform until the unfortunate person between the wood pieces was, literally, pressed to death.  Giles Corey was pressed to death when he refused to implicate his wife or to confess that he was a witch.

There is a place in Salem called the Witch House, which is a misnomer, since none of the accused ever lived there.  It was the home of one of the judges, Jonathan Corwin, and his rather extensive family.  Between himself and his second wife, there were 10 Corwin children to care for, and the house was large enough to at least keep them off the street!

Here 'tis!

Forgive the angle - I was freezing and my fingers just weren't working all that well!!!!  It reminds me that I am a bit better off plodding, you know?

SO, there are like a bunch of pictures of the inside of the Corwin House, mostly because I think things like that are way interesting.  I want to cut off for now and then do more later just talking about the house.

I'm going to leave with a picture of one of a witch with an itchy twitchy nose that everyone may be more or less familiar with.  Here is Elizabeth Montgomery as Samatha Stevens.  The statue stands in Salem and is seen by everyone who visits, I'm sure!