{"id":9386,"date":"2018-04-27T06:15:18","date_gmt":"2018-04-27T12:15:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9386"},"modified":"2018-04-27T16:41:34","modified_gmt":"2018-04-27T22:41:34","slug":"where-were-the-witches-hanged-in-salem-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9386","title":{"rendered":"Where Were the Witches Hanged in Salem? (Part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Read Part 1 here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"

Proctor’s Ledge from the Walgreens parking lot, filtered by Dreamscope.<\/p><\/div>\n

Once there was a dirt road, the “Boston road,” that ran beside a pond on the way out of Salem.\u00a0 (Now it is called Boston Street.) Then there came a railroad, and a shoe factory, and today a Walgreens drugstore with the actual witch execution site in back, next to the drive-up prescription window.<\/p>\n

Why did no one know that?<\/p>\n

When the last person who remembered the executions of 1692 was gone \u2014 and with no one interested in building a memorial to a shameful episode \u2014 memory of the site was lost. People knew that they took place “over there” (gesturing to the southwest), and the most notable geographic feature over there became known as Gallows Hill. As Emerson Baker, a history professor at Salem State University puts it,<\/a><\/p>\n

The executions on Gallows Hill were the climax of one of the most famous events in American history, but the hangings themselves are poorly documented. The precise location and events of the executions have been, until this point, generally lost to history. Tradition has simply placed it broadly on Gallows Hill, which covers many acres of land. In the 17th century Gallows Hill was common land located just outside the boundary of the city of Salem, then defined by a protective palisade (a fortified wall)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Watch this videotaped lecture delivered in October 2016 at the Salem Witch Museum by Prof. Baker and local historian Marilynn K. Roach.<\/a> They point\u00a0 out that Sidney Perley, a Salem lawyer and antiquarian, worked out the answer in the early 20th century \u2014 they call him their “patron saint.” Key evidence: sight lines from known 17th-century houses from which people viewed the hangings: they could see Proctor’s Ledge but not Gallows Hill from there.<\/p>\n

For even more information, see Baker’s Gallows Hill Project website.<\/a><\/p>\n

With the site identified<\/strong>, Baker said, descendants of the accused witches contacted him from all around the country, offering contributions toward a memorial. But Salem’s mayor, Kimberly Driscoll, stepped forward and said that building the memorial was the city’s responsibility. Here is the city’s news release.<\/a> (They did accept donations but funded it mostly through a state Community Preservation Act<\/a> grant.)<\/p>\n

\"\"

The Proctor’s Ledge rock outcropping is in the wedge-shaped parcel between Proctor, Pope, and Boston streets. There are\u00a0 houses on Proctor and Pope, and much of the site is in residents’ back yards. The pink line is the crest of the ledge, roughly, and the blue dot the memorial site. North is at the top.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"

The memorial on Pope Street. Very simple, with kind of a “Park & Rec” low-maintenance touch. “Hey, George, do we will have some of those granite blocks left over from the XYZ project?”<\/p><\/div>\n

As for me<\/strong>, I liked the view from the Walgreens better, and I left a little tribute (an antique British shilling) there under a stone.((If archaeologists ever find it, they might attribute it to a Victorian-era visitor.)) The contrast between the stark rock outcropping where “witches” died and the tidy Walgreens drive-up lane is just another Salem thing. You cannot easily make them mesh, any more than you can mesh those nineteen people and today’s Pagan Witches. (Well, I can think of one way, and I will try to deal with it later.)<\/p>\n

The name “Gallows Hill” is wrong too.<\/strong> For one thing, as Marilynn Roach points out, the sheriff’s and constables’ expense records and requests for reimbursement survive, in minute details. And nowhere is there something like “X<\/em> shillings for dressed timber and labour for building of ye gallows.”<\/p>\n

There are no oaks on Proctor’s Ledge today (mostly locust), but in 1692 apparently there was a big oak tree with sturdy, spreading branches. No cost, just bring a ladder. Hence the sapling oak in the memorial??<\/p>\n

Archaeologists crawled all over Proctor’s Ledge and used ground-penetrating radar, but they found nothing: no bones, no remnants of any structure. There had been a report of bodies dumped in crevices in the rocks, but if so, their families or somebody recovered them.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Salem State University.<\/p><\/div>\n

And now some “woo,” since you have read this far. <\/strong>On June 25, 1914 a fire burned through the southern part of Salem, pretty much everything south of Derby Street.<\/a> Eighteen thousand people were left homeless, and more than 1,300 buildings destroyed, many of them wooden tenements housing factory workers (shoes, textiles, etc.) Photo source here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Where did it start? At the foot of Proctor’s Ledge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Read Part 1 here. Once there was a dirt road, the “Boston road,” that ran beside a pond on the way out of Salem.\u00a0 (Now it is called Boston Street.) Then there came a railroad, and a shoe factory, and today a Walgreens drugstore with the actual witch execution site in back, next to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,20,103,325,29],"class_list":["post-9386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-religion","tag-archaeology","tag-massachusetts","tag-salem","tag-witchcraft"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-2ro","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9306,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9306","url_meta":{"origin":9386,"position":0},"title":"Approaching Salem","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 17, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"We arrived at the apartment in \"Witch City\" ( Salem, Mass.) a little after 11 p.m.after a 100-mile drive, two Amtrak trains, a Boston taxi, a MBTA train (picture) and a Lyft car ride.","rel":"","context":"In \"Salem\"","block_context":{"text":"Salem","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=salem"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/approaching-salem.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9473,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9473","url_meta":{"origin":9386,"position":1},"title":"Aye, My Hearties, the Six of Coins!","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 6, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"The history of Salem, Mass., is more about the sea than the witches \u2014 at least through the 18th and early 19th centuries, the peak of the Age of Sail. In the beginning, all the coastal communities were fishing ports, but while some like Gloucester stayed that way, Salem went\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"history\"","block_context":{"text":"history","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=history"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/pickering-wharf-cropped-sm.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/pickering-wharf-cropped-sm.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/pickering-wharf-cropped-sm.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/pickering-wharf-cropped-sm.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9376,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9376","url_meta":{"origin":9386,"position":2},"title":"Where Were the Witches Hanged in Salem? (Part 1)","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 26, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I left our Salem apartment last Thursday to walk to the site, but what people used to think was the site is not the site. In fact, the true location, which was of course known at the time and remembered through at least the mid-18th century, when the last persons\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"Gallows Hill municipal water tank, Salem, Massachusetts","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Gallows-hill-water-tank-sm.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Gallows-hill-water-tank-sm.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Gallows-hill-water-tank-sm.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9456,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9456","url_meta":{"origin":9386,"position":3},"title":"Witchy Cultural Tourists Do Exist","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 2, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"In J. W. Ocker\u2019s book A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts, Jay Finney, chief marketing officer of the big Peabody Essex Museum, tells Ocker that \u201ccultural tourists\u201d who visit the museum are a different crowd than those who come to Salem for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"art\"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/PEM-and-witchy-stuff.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/PEM-and-witchy-stuff.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/PEM-and-witchy-stuff.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/PEM-and-witchy-stuff.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9206,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9206","url_meta":{"origin":9386,"position":4},"title":"Witches, Sea Captains, and Art \u2014\u00a0We Go Back to Salem","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 4, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Last November, during the American Academy of Religion annual meeting in Boston, I made a quick trip to Salem, Mass., with some fellow Pagan studies scholars. It was only one afternoon\u2014long enough to visit some of the witchy shops, a magickal temple, the Charter Street\u00a0cemetery, and a few other sites.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/black-magic-rum-ocker-sm.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9439,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9439","url_meta":{"origin":9386,"position":5},"title":"Salem, Arkham, and H. P. Lovecraft","author":"Chas S. 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