This week in North Philly Note, Donna Seger and Brad Austin, coeditors of Salem’s Centuries, write about the history of a city that should be known for much more than just witches.
If one looks only at the vast number of academic studies of its history, Salem is surely one of the most scrutinized of all American cities, especially among those in the “small city” categories. Over the last century, scholars have published hundreds of books on Salem’s history, and the number of journal articles dwarfs the monograph total. If one prefers metrics related to tourism (Salem’s attractions and museums host more than 1,000,000 visitors a year) then it is easy to conclude that the last thing the world needs is another examination of the city’s past. What else is there to be said and shown, right?
Quite a lot, as it turns out. Those truly impressive numbers of publications and visitors conceal as much as they reveal. The overwhelming majority of the publications focus on Salem’s role as the host of the 1692 Essex County Witch Trials or the maritime history of the city’s “Golden Age of Sail.” Most of those million visitors come to see sites associated (sometimes very loosely) with the accused witches or that feature some Halloween connection.
Our experience working as historians in Salem convinced us that there was a need for a close look at Salem’s history outside the 18 months of the witch trials and the couple of decades of Salem’s maritime dominance. The fact that Salem’s quadricentennial was looming in 2026 inspired us to fill that void.
Salem’s Centuries: New Perspectives on the History of an Old American City builds on the much smaller, but still substantial, scholarship on Salem’s history outside of the usual foci, and elevates the fascinating ways that Salem has both shaped and reflected the contours of American history for four centuries. While the book includes discussions of the accused witches, it considers the witch trials from a variety of new perspectives. The relevant chapters focus not on the trials themselves but on scholars’ recent confirmation of the long-lost execution site and on oral histories passed down through descendants’ families. A separate chapter explores why so many tourists participate in Salem’s “ghost tours,” taking their interest and engagement seriously.
Most of the book, though, explores fascinating topics unrelated to maritime or macabre history. Readers will find explanations of the complicated and exploitative processes colonists used to secure land deeds from Native American nations, Salem’s extensive and troubling relationship with slavery, the role of a Salem preacher in the killing of an English king, and the city’s centrality to the American Revolution and the Civil War. Other chapters introduce Salem as the antebellum home of significant Black entrepreneurs as well as mobs looking to attack abolitionists.
Readers will learn about how Salem has experienced a host of economic and demographic changes. They’ll see how the “new immigrants” of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries led to the establishment of more than a dozen Catholic parishes in a former Puritan stronghold andhow Salem’s national leadership of the colonial revival movement was, in part, a reaction to those new Salemites. Chapters explore how Salem survived World War II and the turmoil of the 1960s and document labor strife and the contributions of more recent migrants from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.
As colleagues who share an enthusiasm for connecting local history to national and global narratives, we have found studying history in Salem to be endlessly fascinating. We fervently hope that Salem’s Centuries helps readers understand why we remain captivated by this city’s compelling history four hundred years after its founding.
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