I am just back from a delightful four days in Nova Scotia, and have several impressionistic takeaways. First, flags are definitely unfurled in Canada: I'm sure you can understand why. Second, a question: why is Canada so much better at presenting and representing its multicultural history than the United States? Third, wow so many Gothic Revivals (properly called Carpenter Gothic, I think)!

I was reading about the general lawlessness in England during the seventeenth century in general, and highwaymen in particular, when I asked myself: "I wonder if there were any highwaymen in colonial New England?" And then I immediately thought of New England's most notorious highwayman, who of course has Salem ties: Captain Lightfoot! Born Michael Martin in Kilkenny County, Ireland, this colorful character served his brigand apprenticeship with John Doherty, aka Captain Thunderbolt, on the roads around Dublin before the situation became too hot and both emigrated to America.

In honor of Salem’s 400th anniversary, we’re inviting everyone to join us for Witch Hats on the Wharf, a one-of-a-kind community photo opportunity and world record attempt on Salem’s historic...

On this day in 1692, eight people were executed in Salem after being found guilty of witchcraft. In Theodore Spencer's 1945 poem, "Salem, 1692: Cantata for Mixed Chorus," they are a chorus: (And he seems to have forgotten Martha Corey). For most of the year, I don't really indulge in much thought about the Salem Witch Trials to be honest with you.

Yesterday my husband and I finally made it into Boston to see a herd of elephants on Commonwealth Avenue: the very last day of The Great Elephant Migration which brought 100 elephants to the Back Bay. They had been there since August 8, and there had been many fine days between then and now, but we just couldn't manage to get in to see them.

I wish we had more labor history in Salem's Centuries. We have a great piece by Avi Chomsky on the Pequot Mills Strike of 1933, but I'd like a bit more on the transformation of Salem's economy a century earlier from a labor perspective. More specifically, I'd like to understand the occupational evolution that accompanied the decline of the city's maritime trade-based economy from the 1830s on.

I felt that I needed one more road trip before I start school later this week, so I headed to Vermont by myself to engage in some intensive "house hunting." For me, a road trip has to have some kind of quest beyond just seeing the scenery and I've long wanted to chart Gothic Revival houses in Vermont. I spent my early childhood in Strafford, Vermont, where the…

The research is part of Harvard’s long-running and controversial effort to investigate its ties to slavery.

We're on the Pemaquid peninsula in Maine and I finally feel that I have the terrain down. We've been alternating between the adjacent Boothbay peninsula and Pemaquid over the last few summers, and I drive around without navigation but just yesterday I came upon a peninsula off the peninsula which was still unknown territory and I have still not figured out all the islands.

This is my third year working at the Phillips House of Historic New England once a week or so over the summer, and it's been such a great experience for so many reasons. My colleagues are great: we're all part-time old house people who are solely interested in showcasing the house and the family who lived there to the best of our abilities.

Thomas Carlyle: In a symbol there is concealment and yet revelation I probably promised that I would not write about the Salem city seal in a previous post but here I am again writing about the Salem city seal. I just can't help myself: the process through which it will likely be discarded has resumed again with the Salem City Council and frankly, the seal and its context, past and present, is really the only Salem topic I'm inspired to write about these days.

I have been looking forward  to Salem's 400th anniversary parade all summer so my expectations were high and definitely a bit unrealistic when it finally unfolded on this past Saturday. I've been so steeped in Salem's history in general, and the spectacular Salem Tercentenary in particular, that I expected a lot of elaborate floats about big historical moments, which was definitely the case in 1926.

I've been super busy this summer so just getting around to posting my summer reading list---on the eve of August! For those of you that have followed the blog for a while, this list might be a bit surprising as there is quite a bit of fiction on it (and rather unserious fiction at that). Usually I'm a pretty serious reader, but I've written two books in five years and I am really tired; I need to lighten up.

Of course, flags are historical artifacts and also sources; history has evolved as a discipline to consider material culture as well as texts. But what about a flag with writing on it? That's like a doubly powerful source, a testament to the era but also to the personal beliefs or acts of a particular person who lived in said era.

This past weekend I drove out west to the lovely little town of Cummington, Massachusetts to see the summer home of journalist and poet William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878). A Federal farmhouse transformed into a Victorian "cottage" at the close of the Civil War, it possesses an impressive profile and situation and I've wanted to see the interior for quite a while.

I haven't written a What I Want Now post for a long while: this one is another expression of earnest materialism but also of a desire to return to a world and a nation in which "corporate art" was not a contradiction in terms and could also possess civic goals, there was no AI, and renderings of regional views could still capture something regional.

So many towns around us have had house and walking tours featuring houses connected to prominent patriots for this big anniversary year, but not Salem. It's not surprising. The Witch Trials are an eclipse that darkens so much of our city's history, and Salem's myriad roles in the Revolution have been relatively ignored for the last century or so, not only by locals but also by academic historians.

I was down in New Jersey for a celebration of life event for a cherished member of my husband's family over the weekend, and as the region where he grew up, Monmouth County in the central part of the state, is a veritable crossroads of the American Revolution, I took advantage of a free and beautiful afternoon to see a recreation of the 1778 Battle of Monmouth on its preserved battlefield.

So my title is a bit lofty and deceptive. There are beautiful miniatures of privateersmen and of course maritime paintings of great sea battles, but most of my post is going to be focused on a pen-and-ink "picture book" of privateering written and illustrated by a western New England medical doctor. I just had big book week, presenting Salem's Centuries 

How to summarize a long trip all around Ireland? I've got lots of photos---and thoughts---but I always think it's better to focus when presenting anything, any way, so I've narrowed much of it down to three takeaways covering three topics that I feature on this blog consistently: architecture, gardens, and public history. So here I go with: more Pugin please, highlights from the Wild Atlantic Way, …

I always like to have a preservation post for preservation month so here it is: a little populist spin on Salem's experience of urban renewal in the 1960s and 1970s. This is a long and rather complicated story that I've written about here before, several times, and in Salem's Centuries, so I'm going to streamline it considerably, I promise. I've been wanting to do a post like this for a while, because I'm a bit troubled by a trend I see in Salem today, one which has been emerged for several years, maybe even over a decade.

We were in Pennsylvania for the last leg of our spring road trip, principally, but not exclusively, in Philadelphia. I've been to Philadelphia many times for different reasons, but this was definitely my favorite visit. It certainly wasn't the weather---it was as unseasonably cold as it was elsewhere for most of the time we were there. Since we really slowed down and confined most of our touring, eating and drinking to the Old City it was most definitely the architecture, but it was also seeing so many people coming for the history, and being awed by it.

Virginia was the second leg of our southern road trip: we visited family in Richmond, toured historic gardens, and saw several Lost Cause and revolutionary exhibitions. I am enjoying the regional America 250 interpretations. For example, the Virginia Museum of History and Culture has branded Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington, Virginians all of course, as the "Voice, Pen, and Sword" of the Revolution.

I'm on the first leg of what has become my annual spring southern tour, stopping in at Annapolis for a few days. I love Annapolis, so I visit here every other year or so, but generally during my spring break in March when the historic houses I want to see are not open yet. But this spring I'm on sabbatical, so I shifted my visit later to see the…

We are returning to the Revolution with the big Lexington & Concord 250th commemoration coming up next week! I find that I must revisit a question posed in a post several years ago: why didn’t Timothy...

Over the past few weeks Salem residents have learned that our city will become the site of yet another dark attraction, styled a museum of course, an establishment that seems even worse than the last arrival in terms of tackiness, kitschiness, darkness, and removal from anything to do with our past or present. I'm not going to name it as I don't want to shower any publicity on the horrid thing, but you can read about it…

On either side of Salem, Beverly and Marblehead have a longstanding rivalry as to which is the birthplace of the U.S. Navy: the Hannah, owned by John Glover of Marblehead and the first ship to be commissioned for warfare by General George Washington, set sail from Beverly in September of 1775 with a Marblehead crew and munitions. Other places sustain that claim as well, including Whitehall, New York (where the continentals captured a British schooner and renamed her…

I would love to hear about Revolutionary exhibitions, programs and events sheduled for your area in this 250th anniversary year: 1776 is certainly alive and well in the Boston area! Since I'm on sabbatical, I've been able to attend quite a few happenings, and my favorite collaborative initiative is the Declarations Trail, on which four institutions, the Boston Athenaeum, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Boston Public Library and Harvard University's Houghton Library, have put more than a dozen copies of the Declaration of Independence on view, "originally created in different printings for different audiences" along with lots of other contextual objects.

A promotional post today: I've got to events coming up at the end of this week and the beginning of next on women's history in Salem for the close of Women's History Month. Both are free and all are welcome. The first is on Saturday at Old Town Hall, and very squarely focused on women's organized philanthropy over the centuries, but particularly in the nineteenth.

Nineteenth-century monied New Englanders loved camillas and living embodiments of their desire exist at the Lyman Estate greenhouses of Historic New England, which hosts "Camilla Days" in February and March when these old trees are in bloom. Somehow I miss this event every year, but not this year. I drove to Waltham on Wednesday and had a quick view of the Lyman Estate mansion followed by some alone time with the camillas.

I came across this book entitled The Trolley and the Lady (1908) and thought, wow, great, this is going to be a great exploration of turn-of-the-century "transportation liberation" from the perspective of a liberated woman! But I should have known, as it was written by a man (William J. Lampton), that this would not be the story. Indeed, it's a tale of a man chasing a woman on a trolley from New York City to southern Maine.

Well, it's been quite a winter here in eastern Massachusetts, and last week was quite a week, so I think I'm going to take a break from topical posting and just present the week that was. It started with a blizzard, and even though it is now March 1, as I am typing I see big fluffy snowflakes out there again.

So many untold revolutionary stories in Salem's history. SO MANY. I started thinking about Joseph Hiller, a soldier (Major, in fact), watchmaker, engraver, and Collector of the Port of Salem and Beverly, last week and put together a little visual sketch of his life, just to have everything in one place and illustrate how he both impacted and reflected his time.