https://www.facebook.com/997969206743607/

Faces of Salem, 176 Derby Street, Salem, MA (2026)

09/01/2026

Restaurant Spotlight!

Flying Saucer Pizza Company

118 Washington Street Salem, MA

978-594-8189

Expect the unexpected at Flying Saucer Pizza Company, an independently owned, full service pizzeria in the heart of downtown Salem.

Their fresh, house recipe New York style dough is the foundation for everything from familiar favorites to imaginative specialty pizzas you won’t find anywhere else. Adventurous eaters can explore creative combinations like crab Rangoon pizza, while traditionalists will find plenty to love, like their award winning "Mars Attacks". Whole pies and oversized quarter pie slices are available, so you can settle in for dinner or grab a slice while exploring Salem.

For an extra-memorable experience, order one of their signature smoked specialty pizzas, presented tableside beneath a smoke filled glass dome!

08/31/2026

Monday Spotlight: Parker Brothers

Some Salem stories begin with ships, and some begin with with children having "fits". But this story starts with a board game.

In 1883, 16 year old George Swinnerton Parker created a game called "Banking". Players borrowed money, made investments, and tried to build wealth while cards determined their successes and failures. His family and friends loved it, however, publishers certainly did not.

George approached 2 companies in Boston and was rejected by both. Rather than give up, he spent $40 of his own money to produce 500 copies of the game himself. He sold all but 12 which was approximately $100 in profit.

That small success became the beginning of one of the most recognizable game companies in American history.

George founded the George S. Parker Company in Salem in 1883. His approach to games was unusual for the time. Many 19th century board games were designed to teach children morality, good behavior, religion, or proper social values but he thought games could simply be fun, and that philosophy would eventually help change the way Americans thought about board games.

In 1888, George's brother Charles joined the company, and the business became Parker Brothers. Their brother Edward joined them in 1898.

For many years, George personally designed much of what the company produced and wrote the rules himself. He also understood something that modern game companies still rely on today: people wanted games connected to the world around them.

When the Klondike Gold Rush captured the country's imagination, Parker Brothers produced Klondike.

As tensions with Spain grew before the Spanish American War, the company produced War in Cuba.

The company continued expanding, and in 1906 Parker Brothers released Rook, which became the bestselling game in the country.

But its most famous success came during one of America's most difficult periods....

You know what's coming.

Monopoly.

They released this in 1935 during the Great Depression, Monopoly became an enormous success. Demand was so great that the company struggled to manufacture enough copies. The irony is difficult to miss. During a period when millions of Americans were struggling financially, families gathered around kitchen tables pretending to become real estate tycoons, buying railroads, building hotels, collecting rent, and occasionally going directly to jail.

Parker Brothers went on to become responsible for some of the most famous games ever found in American homes.

Clue. Risk. Sorry! Boggle. And, of course, Monopoly.

Games were only part of the company's story. Parker Brothers began producing jigsaw puzzles as early as 1887. Its celebrated Pastime Puzzles, introduced in 1908, were intricate hand-cut wooden puzzles that remained in production for half a century.

And as technology changed, Parker Brothers changed with it. The company entered the electronic game market in the 1970s with products such as Merlin, which became a massive commercial success. By the early 1980s, Parker Brothers was producing video games for systems including the Atari 2600, securing licenses for some of the biggest properties in entertainment. That included Star Wars.

Between June and December 1982 alone, Parker Brothers reportedly earned $74 million from video game cartridge sales. The company also released home versions of arcade favorites such as Frogger, Qbert, and Popeye.

By then, however, the company was no longer independent. Parker Brothers remained family-owned until 1968, when it was purchased by General Mills. Its headquarters eventually moved from Salem to Beverly in 1977. A series of corporate acquisitions followed. Parker Brothers became part of Kenner, then Tonka, and finally Hasbro when Hasbro purchased Tonka in 1991.

The Parker Brothers name continued appearing on games for years, but in 2009 Hasbro officially retired the brand.

More than a century after George Parker created Banking, the company bearing his family's name had disappeared but the influence hadn't.

Generations of families grew up playing Parker Brothers games. Christmas mornings, rainy afternoons, family gatherings, arguments over Monopoly money, accusations of cheating, somebody knocking the board over when they lost, all of it became part of American culture.

And it started right here in Salem, where a 26 year old boy spent $40 printing a game that two publishers had already told him they did not want.

Sometimes the best ideas begin when someone refuses to accept no for an answer.

08/29/2026

Living Histories: How Communities Shape What We Remember
Today 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Peabody Essex Museum

161 Essex Street Salem, MA

866-745-1876

Event Details

In a discussion for the North Shore AAPI Coalition’s Salem 400+ exhibition, Afterimages: Retracing BIPOC Histories, director Rachel TonThat speaks with Erika Lee, Thomas Green and Sarah Kanouse on the gap between written records and living memory, and how regions and communities preserve and pass down history in ways that often differ, particularly in tone, from official archives. Sharing their own experiences, panelists will discuss how oral tradition, community projects and grassroots organizing can help shape a fuller, more accurate picture of the past.

The North Shore AAPI Coalition’s community history project was created through collaboration with other members of the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color) community, with contributions from regional organizations and historians. Their work will be on view in Salem’s Old Town Hall beginning August 24.

08/28/2026

McIntire Tour for Kids and Families
Tomorrow @ 10:30 am - 12:00 pm
First Church in Salem

316 Essex Street Salem,

Salem has never seen a tour like this!

Four historic buildings, one price, all proceeds go to support the organizations.

Salem Kids Tours is thrilled to be partnering with four jewels of the McIntire District for a family tour that will allow guests to peek inside four historic properties for one low price.

This 75-minute family friendly adventure is open to children ages 7 and up, and their adults. Come hear the stories that shaped Salem’s past, all while standing in “the room where it happened”.

Tour meets at First Church in Salem at 316 Essex St., runs rain or shine. $30 per guest.

08/28/2026

Friday Spotlight: John Willard

This August, we remember the 5 innocent people executed together during the Salem Witch Trials on August 19, 1692.

Today, we remember John Willard.

John Willard’s story is especially tragic because, before he became one of the accused, he had been part of the system carrying out the arrests.

He was a deputy constable in Salem Village, responsible for serving warrants and transporting accused people to the jail. At some point in the spring of 1692, however, John began to doubt what he was seeing.

According to later accounts, he became increasingly uncomfortable arresting people he believed were innocent and eventually refused to continue.

Not long after that, he was accused himself.

John’s early life is difficult to reconstruct. Historians disagree over his exact age and birthplace, but he had lived in Groton and Lancaster before settling in the western part of Salem Village with his wife, Margaret Wilkins. The couple had married in 1687 and had children together.

Margaret came from the large and well established Wilkins family, while John was very much an outsider. He was also interested in land speculation rather than farming, something that may have caused tension with his wife’s relatives.

When the witchcraft crisis began, John apparently did not immediately reject it. One witness later claimed he had once said, “Hang them. They are all witches.”

But spending time around both the accusers and the accused seems to have changed him. And when people like Marth Cory and Rebecca Nurse were accused, he knew the accusations were false. By late April, he had seen enough and he refused execute the warrants and that decision cost him his life.

Shortly after, Ann Putnam Jr. claimed John’s specter was appearing to her and tormenting her. John went directly to the Putnam home to confront the accusation and denied that he had harmed her.

He then turned to his wife’s grandfather, Bray Wilkins, asking him for prayer and advice but that help never came. Instead, Bray soon became sick and began to suspect that John had somehow bewitched him. Then Bray’s seventeen-year-old grandson Daniel Wilkins also became seriously sick.

The "afflicted" girls were brought to the Wilkins home and identified John Willard as the person tormenting the family. When Daniel later died, a jury concluded that witchcraft had caused his death.

John had gone from refusing to arrest accused witches to being blamed for murder himself. An arrest warrant was issued on May 10th and John fled. The court would later treat that decision as evidence of guilt, but John explained he was terrified. Who wouldn't be.

“I was affrighted,” he told the magistrates, adding that he believed the Lord would eventually make him “white as snow.” He was eventually captured while working with a hoe on land near Nashaway, in the Lancaster area.

According to Robert Calef, the afflicted girls in Salem cried out at almost the exact moment of his capture “Now Willard is taken!”

For the court, this seemed miraculous but for John, it meant he was being brought back into a system he already believed had been corrupted.

His examination was brutal. The magistrates told him that his attempt to escape proved his guilt. The afflicted fell into fits whenever he looked toward them. Members of his own wife’s family testified against him.

At least 10 members of the Wilkins family helped build the case against him.

He was blamed for Daniel Wilkins’ death. He was blamed for Bray Wilkins’ illness. He was accused of abusing his wife. Others claimed the ghosts of dead people appeared and named John as their murderer. Ann Putnam Sr. even claimed that John’s spirit confessed to killing a long list of men, women, and children, including her own infant daughter.

Of course, John denied it all. He wasn't guilty of any of this.

He asked the court to call Margaret, his wife, to testify but she was never questioned. When the magistrates pushed him to confess, John answered “If it was the last time I was to speak, I am innocent.”

A physical examination was also performed to search his body for a witch’s mark and, as usual, nothing was found, which never made a difference.

Not a single person In Salem Town and Salem Village testified in John Willard’s defense but Margaret did not give up on him. 2 days before the ex*****on, she somehow managed to obtain a temporary reprieve or release for her husband.

The paperwork, however, did not arrive in Salem when expected.

She traveled from Boxford to Salem, hired a horse, and rode all the way to Boston herself to find out what had happened. She was trying to save her husband’s life and she was too late.

He was hanged.

2 years later, she remarried William Towne, nephew of Rebecca Nurse, Mary Easty, and Sarah Cloyce. In a strange and heartbreaking way, families devastated by the witch trials began finding one another afterward. They shared the same grief, trauma, and stigma.

In 1710, Margaret petitioned the government for compensation.

She described not only the financial damage caused by John’s imprisonment, but also the “grief & sorrow” she had suffered.

Their farm had gone largely untended while John was jailed. She had spent months paying for food and necessities for him in prison. She had traveled back and forth trying to help him.

In 1711, Massachusetts finally gave restitution.

Margaret had always maintained that she had “not the least reason in the world to think he was guilty.”

Nearly 20 years after his ex*****on, the government finally agreed.

08/24/2026

Monday Spotlight: Mary Crowninshield Silsbee Sparks

There are plenty of people in Salem history who became famous because of the men around them and Mary Crowninshield Silsbee could easily have become one of them.

She was the daughter of a U.S. senator, the wife of one of the country's leading historians, and, for a brief and rather dramatic period, possibly one of Nathaniel Hawthorne's romantic interests...but Mary had a story of her own.

Born in Salem in 1809, Mary Crowninshield Silsbee came from some of the city's most powerful families. Her father, Nathaniel Silsbee, built his fortune in Salem's maritime trade before entering politics, eventually serving Massachusetts in both the United States House of Representatives and the Senate.

Her mother, also named Mary, was a Crowninshield, connecting the younger Mary directly to one of Salem's most prominent merchant families. Through the Crowninshields and Derbys, Mary grew up surrounded by the wealth and influence created during Salem's great age of international trade.

When she was about 10 years old, her father built the imposing mansion at 94 Washington Square East overlooking Salem Common. Completed around 1819, the house reflected both the family's wealth and Nathaniel Silsbee's growing social and political standing.

Mary herself soon became one of Salem's most talked-about young women.

She was remembered as intelligent, cultured, beautiful, and socially prominent. Admirers reportedly called her "The Star of Salem."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow admired what he described as her intellectual style of beauty, while others compared her appearance to classical sculpture.

…and then Nathaniel Hawthorne entered the picture.

During the late 1830s, Mary and Hawthorne appear to have developed a close relationship. Salem "tea", as we presently say, went even further, with rumors circulating that the 2 were engaged. There is no solid evidence that a formal engagement ever existed, but the relationship was serious enough to cause some tension...especially with Sophia Peabody.

According to later accounts, Mary had a portrait painted around this time that included a mysterious hunter who was said to resemble Hawthorne and Sophia was not impressed. In a letter to her sister Elizabeth, she reportedly declared that she wanted to "put Miss Mary out of the window.", which may be one of the more relatable moments in 19th century Salem history.

To make things even messier, Hawthorne reportedly became involved in a dispute between Mary and his friend John O'Sullivan. After Mary accused O'Sullivan of behaving dishonorably toward her, Hawthorne became angry enough to challenge him to a duel.

Yep. You read that right...Nathaniel Hawthorne nearly fought a duel over Mary Silsbee.

O'Sullivan refused the challenge and later traveled to Salem to confront the situation directly. Exactly what happened between the 3 of them remains difficult to reconstruct because most surviving versions came from Hawthorne's own circle, and Mary left us no account of her side of the story.

By the end of 1838, however, whatever relationship existed between Mary and Hawthorne appears to have ended and Hawthorne's relationship with Sophia Peabody soon became much more serious.

Sophia ultimately got Hawthorne and Mary avoided being thrown out a window.

In 1839, Mary married Jared Sparks, one of the most respected American historians of the 19th century. He had edited the North American Review, worked extensively with the papers of George Washington, became a professor of history at Harvard, and eventually served as president of Harvard University from 1849 to 1853. They had 5 children together.

In 1847, Mary's father purchased a house in Cambridge for the couple. Today known as the Treadwell-Sparks House, it became closely associated with Jared's years at Harvard.

Mary also became part of the intellectual and literary community surrounding Cambridge. In fact, one of the most interesting things about Mary is something that rarely appears in short biographies of her. She became a published writer herself. In 1883, at around 74 years old, she published a nearly 300 page collection titled "Hymns, Home, Harvard." It contained poetry dealing with religion, family, marriage, grief, Harvard, history, memory, travel, and the sea.

Surviving archival collections also include letters written by Mary to Frances Appleton Longfellow, wife of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, showing that Mary's connection to the literary world of Cambridge extended well beyond her famous husband.

Mary passed away in 1887 at the age of 78. By then, the world she had been born into had changed dramatically. The great Salem merchant fortunes that shaped her childhood belonged to another era. Nathaniel Hawthorne and Sparks had both been gone for more than 20 years.

Today she is often remembered as the beautiful Salem heiress who may have captured Nathaniel Hawthorne's attention before Sophia Peabody did.

And what a great and funny story. Especially that whole window part.

But despite what she's most known for in Salem, she's more than a footnote in Hawthorne's love life.

She's the daughter of Salem's maritime aristocracy, the child of the Silsbee and Crowninshield families, the woman once celebrated as the "Star of Salem," a member of Harvard's intellectual community, a wife and mother, and eventually a published poet in her own right.

And perhaps that is the better way to remember her. As a strong woman who has a story, and a voice, of her very own.

08/23/2026

As we approach what locals affectionately call "Septober" here is some advice and some hints for visiting over the next few months!

Most visitors come here because they truly love this city, and we are proud to share it with you. The history, the culture, the architecture. We want you to explore, learn new things, support local businesses, meet interesting people, and have an unforgettable time.

So here are ten friendly ways to enjoy Salem while being a wonderful guest:

Leave the car behind.

If there is one thing Salem residents could collectively wish for, it would be fewer cars in October. Our narrow streets were not built for this kind of traffic. And we only have so many parking spaces. It's better on a weekday but still challenging. I highly recommend parking outside the city and taking the train. Your visit will be much more enjoyable.

Unless you are the literal Sanderson sisters, please do not walk three abreast.

Our sidewalks are narrow, and people still need to get to work, catch trains, make appointments, and move through their daily lives. Walk in pairs, keep moving, and leave room for others to pass. Sometimes you, unfortunately will see tours taking up the whole sidewalk and, trust us when we say, we don't want the guides doing that either. Spatial awareness is key in our small city.

Use the crosswalks.

We promise nothing you want to see is in the middle of traffic.

Respect private property.

Those beautiful steps, railings, gardens, and decorations may look perfect for a photo, but they belong to someone’s home. Please admire them without climbing, sitting, or rearranging anything.

Remember that Salem residents are people, not content.

Servers, shop employees, performers, guides, and locals are not props for social media. Please ask before filming someone or putting a camera in their face.

Tip generously when you can.

Servers, tour guides, buskers, bartenders, drivers, and other hospitality workers help create the Salem experience. Many of them depend on tips.

Bring your patience.

No city of Salem’s size could welcome this many people without some crowds, delays, stress, and exhaustion. We are only a town of 45,000 people and, some days, our population doubles. A little kindness and grace go a very long way.

Be curious.

Salem is not a staged backdrop or a theme park. It is a living city with literally four hundred years of history, culture, architecture, art, food, and community waiting to be explored. Branch out beyond Essex street. Pickering Wharf, for example is a wonderful place to branch out to. Incredible stores like Wicked Wardrobe, Stardust, Partridge in a Bear Tree and awesome restaurants like Brodies, Amazing Pizza, and Finz would be happy to see you. Also fun fact, the National Park Service, right by the wharf, gives free tours to the Custom House, Derby House, and Narbonne house.

Take a walking tour with a LOCAL company with a good reputation.

Witch City Walking Tours, Black Cat Tours, 1692 Before and After, etc. Salem is more than Witches and Hocus Pocus. We are genuinely a city of firsts and a this is the best way to learn about it

Lastly, have fun!

08/22/2026

School to Sea Family Cruise

Tomorrow @ 10:00 am - 11:30 am
Pickering Wharf 24 Congress Street Salem, MA

978-825-0001

Event Details

Set sail aboard Mahi Cruise’s Finback for a fun, family-friendly cruise on Salem Sound. Discover local wildlife, learn about coastal ecology, and support Salem Sound Coastwatch.

Meet at Pickering Wharf Marina (23 Congress Street, Salem)

08/21/2026

Friday Spotlight: John Proctor

This August, we remember the 5 innocent people executed together during the Salem Witch Trials on August 19, 1692.

Today, we remember John Proctor.

For many people, the name John Proctor immediately brings to mind The Crucible. Arthur Miller's play turned him into perhaps the most famous victim of the Salem Witch Trials.

The real John Proctor, however, had a wildly different story.

John was born in Assington, England, in 1631 and came to Massachusetts with his family as a small child. They settled in Ipswich, where his father became a successful farmer. John eventually married and started a family of his own, although tragedy followed him through his early adult life. His first wife, Martha, died in 1659. His second wife, Elizabeth Thorndike, died in 1672.

In 1674, John married his third wife, Elizabeth Bassett.

By then, he had moved to the Salem area and leased a large farm of around 700 acres. He also operated a successful tavern on Ipswich Road, just outside the boundary of Salem Village. John had built a prosperous life for himself and his family.

Then came 1692.

From the beginning of the witchcraft crisis, John was skeptical. He didn't quietly question what was happening behind closed doors. He OPENLY called the "afflicted" girls frauds and liars and one of those girls lived in his own house.

Mary Warren was the Proctors' twenty-year-old servant and became one of the afflicted. When she began suffering "fits", John responded harshly. According to testimony, he threatened to beat her and kept her working at her spinning wheel. The fits stopped.

On April 2nd, Mary posted a note at the Salem Village meetinghouse asking the congregation to give thanks for her recovery. When questioned about it, she reportedly said that "the afflicted persons did but dissemble," which those present understood to mean that the girls were pretending. They were faking it.

Then John left home on business and Mary's fits returned. Before long, she was once again participating in the accusations.

John's opposition to the trials had made him dangerous but it was the accusation of his wife that finally pulled him directly into them.

Elizabeth Proctor was pregnant when she was accused of witchcraft in April. John accompanied her to her examination and watched as Abigail Williams and Ann Putnam Jr. claimed Elizabeth's specter was attacking them.

Then suddenly, the girls turned on John. They cried out that they could see "Goodman Procter himself."

Within moments, the afflicted began collapsing into fits.

John answered simply "I know not, I am innocent." but it didn't matter.

He went into the room to defend his pregnant wife and left accused of witchcraft himself.

He was formally indicted and examined on April 11th. And, as always, the accusations followed the familiar pattern. The girls claimed his spirit pinched, bit, choked, and tortured them. At one point, Abigail Williams even claimed she could see John's specter sitting in the magistrate's lap.

When he was imprisoned, the accusations spread through his family.

His wife was already in jail. Three of their children, Benjamin, Sarah, and William, were accused. Elizabeth's sister, Mary Bassett DeRich, was accused. Her sister-in-law Sarah Bassett was accused. One accusation had begun consuming an entire family.

Friends and neighbors tried to help. A group of people who had known John and Elizabeth for years signed a petition on their behalf. They testified that the Proctors had lived Christian lives and were "ever ready to help such as stood in need of their help." but it did nothing.

John was physically searched for a witch's mark nut nothing suspicious was found which did nothing either. Then Mary Warren, herself, testified against him

She claimed his specter had pinched her, bitten her, choked her, pressed on her stomach until blood came from her mouth, and tried to force her to sign the Devil's book. John's own words also came back to haunt him. Witnesses remembered him saying that the afflicted should be whipped for lying and describing how he had threatened to "thresh the Devil" out of Mary Warren. In an ordinary court, those statements might have made John look angry, harsh, or even cruel but in Salem in 1692, they helped make him a witch.

But perhaps the most important thing John Proctor did happened from inside his jail cell. He realized that people were being tortured into confessing.

On July 23rd, John and several other prisoners wrote a letter to ministers in Boston begging them to intervene. They asked for different judges or for their trials to be moved to Boston because they believed there was no possibility of receiving justice in Salem through the Court of Oyer and Terminer.

John described what had happened to prisoners who refused to confess, among them was his own son William. According to John, William was tied "neck and heels" because he would not admit he was a witch. He was bound so brutally that blood came from his nose, and John believed he might have remained that way for twenty-four hours had someone finally not taken pity on him and ordered him released. John also described similar treatment inflicted upon Martha Carrier's sons. People were being tortured until they admitted to crimes they had never committed.

John begged the ministers to stop it. "Our innocent blood," he warned, would otherwise be shed....and he was right.

On August 5th, John and Elizabeth Proctor were both convicted of witchcraft and sentenced to death. Elizabeth had only one thing protecting her. The fact she was pregnant. Her ex*****on was postponed until after the birth of her child but John had no such protection.

On August 19th , 1692, John Proctor was taken to Gallow's Hill (now called Proctor's Ledge) with all the others I'm posting about this month. Elizabeth remained in jail, pregnant, knowing that her husband was dead and believing that once she gave birth, she might be next.

Sadly, the destruction of the Proctor family did not end with John's death.

Their property had been seized to pay jail expenses. Because John and Elizabeth had been convicted, they were stripped of their legal rights.

John had also removed Elizabeth from his will, because he expected her to be executed and therefore unable to inherit.

Elizabeth gave birth to a son on January 27, 1693...she was not executed. Instead, she remained imprisoned until May, when the last prisoners were finally released. Miraculously, the baby survived the harsh conditions.

But she walked out of jail a widow. Her family had been scattered. Their property had been taken, and because she was legally considered a convicted felon, she could not even claim the inheritance normally owed to a widow, which left her penniless. It took years for Elizabeth to regain her legal rights and it took even longer for Massachusetts to admit what had been done. In 1711, the family received £150 in restitution for John's death and the family's imprisonment.

Today, John Proctor is remembered around the world largely because of The Crucible. But it is important to separate Arthur Miller's fictional character from the real man.

As a tour guide, I often have to dispel the myth, due to The Crucible, that he and Abigail Williams had an affair. They did not. Abigail was eleven years old during the trials, while John was sixty. That relationship was fabricated by Miller for his play.

08/20/2026

The Grimshawe House

53 Charter Street, Salem

Built around 1770, the Grimshawe House sits beside the Charter Street Cemetery and is one of Salem's most overlooked literary landmarks. While its exact construction history remains somewhat uncertain, the house is believed to have begun as a 2 story dwelling before later alterations gave it much of the appearance we recognize today.

Its most important chapter began in 1835, when the house became home to dentist Dr. Nathaniel Peabody, his wife Elizabeth, and their 3 remarkable daughters, Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia Peabody. For the next 6 years, this house became a gathering place for some of the writers, educators, artists, and reformers who would help shape nineteenth-century American culture.

Among the visitors was a young Salem author named Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Hawthorne was introduced to the Peabody family through the eldest daughter, Elizabeth, but it was her younger sister Sophia who captured his attention. Their relationship developed during Hawthorne's visits to the house, earning it the nickname "Hawthorne's Courting House." Nathaniel and Sophia eventually married in 1842, a year after the Peabody family left Charter Street.

And Hawthorne wasn't the only famous future husband visiting the Peabody sisters. Horace Mann courted Mary Peabody and married her in 1843. Mann became one of the most influential advocates for public education in American history and served as the first Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education.

But the Peabody sisters were far more than just the wives and acquaintances of famous men.

Elizabeth Palmer Peabody became one of the most influential women in 19th century American intellectual life. An educator, author, publisher, bookseller, and reformer, her Boston bookstore became an important meeting place for the Transcendentalist movement. She published works connected with writers and thinkers including Nathaniel Hawthorne and helped publish The Dial, the influential Transcendentalist journal.

Elizabeth also became a major force behind the American kindergarten movement. After studying the educational ideas of Friedrich Froebel, she helped introduce and promote kindergarten education in the United States, eventually becoming one of its most important advocates.

Mary Peabody Mann was an accomplished writer and educator in her own right, working alongside her husband in the movement to reform American public education.

Sophia Peabody Hawthorne was a talented painter and writer whose work has increasingly received recognition independent of her famous husband.

That's all I will say on them now. They will eventually get their own spotlights.

The house itself would eventually become part of Hawthorne's literary world. He drew upon the gloomy old home beside the cemetery for 2 unfinished works, Dr. Grimshawe's Secret and The Dolliver Romance. His descriptions transformed the house into something darker and more mysterious, with eccentric old doctors living beside an ancient Salem burial ground.

There was an interesting personal connection hidden beneath Hawthorne's fictional imagery. While he was visiting the Peabodys and courting Sophia, members of his own Hathorne family were buried just beyond the house in the Charter Street Cemetery.

After the Peabodys left in 1841, the property passed through several hands and eventually became a boarding house and later apartments. The great Salem fire of 1914 resulted in additional alterations to the building. Its original portico was eventually removed and is now preserved by the Peabody Essex Museum on the rear exterior of the nearby John Tucker Daland House.

Today, the Grimshawe House remains privately owned and is listed as a contributing property within Salem's historic district. Sitting beside one of Salem's oldest burial grounds, its weathered appearance certainly fits the name Hawthorne eventually gave it.

But behind that gloomy exterior is something much more interesting. This was once a lively intellectual gathering place where Nathaniel Hawthorne courted his future wife, Horace Mann courted his, and 3 extraordinary sisters participated in conversations about literature, art, education, and social reform that would extend far beyond Salem.

The house may be remembered as the Grimshawe House today, but during one remarkable period in the 1830s, it was really just the Peabody sisters' house.

Photo credit: historicmassachusetts.org

Faces of Salem

09/01/2026

08/31/2026

08/29/2026

08/28/2026

08/28/2026

08/24/2026

08/23/2026

08/22/2026

08/21/2026

08/20/2026

Address

Website

Alerts

Shortcuts

Share

Category

Listing takedown request