Salem Women's
History and
Business Community
History and
Business Community
The First Church in Salem
Associated Salem women:
• Elizabeth Peabody
• Mary Peabody (Mann)
• Sophia Peabody (Hawthorne)
• Elizabeth Peabody Sr.
• Susan Burley
• Mary Curtis Verna
• Caroline Emmerton
Salem sites:
• Salem Witch Trials Memorial
• Elizabeth Peabody
• Mary Peabody (Mann)
• Sophia Peabody (Hawthorne)
• Elizabeth Peabody Sr.
• Susan Burley
• Mary Curtis Verna
• Caroline Emmerton
Salem sites:
• Salem Witch Trials Memorial
316 Essex Street — Open for services on Sunday mornings and special events, or by appointment
As the church website explains, “Gathered by the English Puritan settlers of Massachusetts Bay Colony in August of 1629, The First Church in Salem is one of the oldest churches organized in North America and the first to be governed by congregational polity. During its long history the theological position of the Church has changed, most significantly in the early 1800s when Unitarianism was embraced.
Starting in 1718, the Church itself broke into five different churches, with all but one rejoining the original First Church in later years. Today, the congregation worships at the meeting house of the North Church, which was built in 1836.”
It’s interesting to note that this church was founded one year before Boston’s!
Members of the First Church were involved in the Salem Witch Trials, as both victims and judges. According to First Church, “Members of this church caught up in the hysteria included Rebecca Nurse and Giles Corey, who were full members of the First Church until they were excommunicated and sent to their deaths.” In 1992, their memberships were “formally reinstated during the Tercentennial observance of the Witch Trials in 1992,” upon the dedication of the Salem Witch Trials Memorial.
The “junior minister” of First Church, the Rev. Nicholas Noyes, “fanned the flames of religious hysteria as a vocal persecutor of the accused during the trials. Unlike Judges Samuel Sewall and John Higginson, he never expressed remorse for his involvement in the hysteria,” according to First Church.
First Church and Abolition
In the nineteenth century, First Church minister Thomas Treadwell Stone was an outspoken abolitionist. His wife, Laura Poor Stone, was a member of the Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society; she created an abolition quilt that is owned by the Peabody Essex Museum.
North Church and Reformers
The first meeting house of the North Church was located on the corner of North and Lynde Streets, where a parking lot is located today. The second meeting house of the North Church is this handsome granite building, which was dedicated in 1836.
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, members of the North Church (which reunited with First Church in 1924) included some of Salem’s most prominent women reformers, writers, Transcendentalists, philanthropists, and artists:
• Elizabeth Peabody, editor, author, educator
Transcendentalist
• Mary Peabody, educator, author
• Sophia Peabody, artist, educator
• Elizabeth Peabody Sr. (the sisters’ mother),
author, educator who ran schools for girls
• Susan Burley, literary patron
• Mary Curtis Verna, opera star, philanthropist
• Caroline Emmerton, preservationist, philanthropist,
settlement house founder
Sources
• The First Church in Salem website
• Massachusetts Quilts: Our Common Wealth ed. by Lynne Zacek Bassett
• Salem Women’s Heritage Trail by Bonnie Hurd Smith
As the church website explains, “Gathered by the English Puritan settlers of Massachusetts Bay Colony in August of 1629, The First Church in Salem is one of the oldest churches organized in North America and the first to be governed by congregational polity. During its long history the theological position of the Church has changed, most significantly in the early 1800s when Unitarianism was embraced.
Starting in 1718, the Church itself broke into five different churches, with all but one rejoining the original First Church in later years. Today, the congregation worships at the meeting house of the North Church, which was built in 1836.”
It’s interesting to note that this church was founded one year before Boston’s!
Members of the First Church were involved in the Salem Witch Trials, as both victims and judges. According to First Church, “Members of this church caught up in the hysteria included Rebecca Nurse and Giles Corey, who were full members of the First Church until they were excommunicated and sent to their deaths.” In 1992, their memberships were “formally reinstated during the Tercentennial observance of the Witch Trials in 1992,” upon the dedication of the Salem Witch Trials Memorial.
The “junior minister” of First Church, the Rev. Nicholas Noyes, “fanned the flames of religious hysteria as a vocal persecutor of the accused during the trials. Unlike Judges Samuel Sewall and John Higginson, he never expressed remorse for his involvement in the hysteria,” according to First Church.
First Church and Abolition
In the nineteenth century, First Church minister Thomas Treadwell Stone was an outspoken abolitionist. His wife, Laura Poor Stone, was a member of the Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society; she created an abolition quilt that is owned by the Peabody Essex Museum.
North Church and Reformers
The first meeting house of the North Church was located on the corner of North and Lynde Streets, where a parking lot is located today. The second meeting house of the North Church is this handsome granite building, which was dedicated in 1836.
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, members of the North Church (which reunited with First Church in 1924) included some of Salem’s most prominent women reformers, writers, Transcendentalists, philanthropists, and artists:
• Elizabeth Peabody, editor, author, educator
Transcendentalist
• Mary Peabody, educator, author
• Sophia Peabody, artist, educator
• Elizabeth Peabody Sr. (the sisters’ mother),
author, educator who ran schools for girls
• Susan Burley, literary patron
• Mary Curtis Verna, opera star, philanthropist
• Caroline Emmerton, preservationist, philanthropist,
settlement house founder
Sources
• The First Church in Salem website
• Massachusetts Quilts: Our Common Wealth ed. by Lynne Zacek Bassett
• Salem Women’s Heritage Trail by Bonnie Hurd Smith
