Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-06-08

thus concentrating three centuries
of history in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. 1t
was not at Boston, but at Salem, that this
history began, for Salem was earlier settled and
was originally the port for the colony. So the
reproduction of Winthrops ship, the Arbella,
will be seen first in Salem Harbor, before 1t Is
taken to Boston, and the waterside OF this
sleepy old town WILL for day at least, be
crowded with people, lively with color, gay with
music and flags and guns, as Salem re-enacts'
in pageant that moment in American history
when the new Bay Colony governor and charter
arrived on these shores, and the PuritanS
started in to lay the foundations of democracy
in New England.
The pageant will last all day, and Will INCLUDE
both land and water spectacles, with the COM
ing of the Arbella, of course, the chief event.
On her decks will be many descendants OF the
very people who originally stood there and
watched a Wild rocky little spit of land, where
a few rough houses hudded. draw nearer and
nearer. Salem is making provision to handle
800, 900 spectators during the day. But she Is
also preparing to entertain many visitors all
Summer and to furnish special exhibits in
keeping with the year There will be hos
pitality center established in a seventeenth
century house. there will be reproduction or
a Colonial store in full operation and there Will
be an old-fashioned garden, craft shops and
other reproductions of Colonial village life. The
initial pageantry on June II will leave an echo
through the entire Summer.
Undoubtedly it will be peculiarly thrilling to
stand on the Salem waterfront and see the
quaint ard tiny Arbella come sailing in. a
symbol of that small beginning 300 years ago or
the vast Nation of today. But it is always
thrilling to stand in Salem at any time; for
built into its walls and whispering in its very
air are perpetual reminders of the birth of this
republic
SUPPOSE you taking one of those as
ISOLATION tests, where word Is given you.
and you then put down, instantly, the first
word it suggests to you; and suppose the word
given you was Salem" What would you write
down? The vast majority of Americans would
probably write witches" A literate minority
might write Hawthorne" A few might put
down ships" Still fewer Samuel McIntire'
(and they would be the architects). Probably
not one in million would put down -. P.
Morgan 81 Co."
No. the witches would win in walk. That
tragic decade at the end of the seventeenth
century when Salem got touched by the strange
witchcraft fever which was burning in Europe
(witchcraft was not Salem phenomenon, nor
Puritan phenomenon; it was European),
troubled the brooding Puritan conscience ever
after, and threw a sort of lurid light
Salem in all our histories, that the real
tributionS of this extraordinary little town to
the life of the Nation not generally en-
phasized. while its one early and accidental
blunder is never forgotten.
Salem is and always was, a seaport. 1t is
one, but the approach by rail or road is through
the back yard. Jutting into the bay between
Marblehead and Beverly, hanked by tidal rivers
and backed by marshes, the little peninsula
originally called by its Indian name of Naum-
keag not capable of supporting large
population, and the population it did support
had to get about by water. 1t was settled in
1926, under leadership of the Pilgrims from
Plymouth, fishing station but the Pilgrims
were poor fishermen.
In 1923 the Puritan, John Endicott, arrived
with new charter, to take the colony,
and in the year 500 settlers came from Eng
land. Among them certain Francis Hig-
gibson, of st. Johns College, Cambridge, who
made the first teacher of the town. by
popular election. The name is still good on a
check anywhere in these United States. He
lived but year and was followed by Roger Will
hamS, who was too liberal for Salem and was
soon driven out
BY 1888 it said that almost every family