THE PEABODY ESSEX MUSEUM: ONE OF THE USA'S OLDEST, CONTINUING OPERATIONAL MUSEUMS AND LOCATED IN ONE OF THE MOST INFAMOUS PLACES IN AMERICAN HISTORY©

 

Located in Salem, Massachusetts in Essex County, the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) origins date back to the 1799 founding of the East India Marine Society (EIMS), an organization of Salem captains and supercargoes that had sailed beyond the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn. The Society’s charter included a provision for the establishment of a 'cabinet of natural and artificial curiosities' -- what we today refer to as a 'museum'.

The East India Marine Society built the East India Marine Hall in the 1820s to house its Collection of "curiosities" acquired by the Salem sea captains on their oceanic excursions.   The Marine Hall, which now is a National Historic Landmark, is an integral part of PEM's facilities.

East India Marine Hall
circa 1909

Salem was also home to the Essex Historical Society founded in 1821, which celebrated the area’s rich community history, and the Essex County Natural History Society (ECNHS) founded in 1833, which focused on the County’s natural wonders.  In 1848, these two organizations merged to form the Essex Institute which represents the “Essex” in the Peabody Essex Museum’s name.

The Collection located in the Marine Hall was acquired in 1867 by the Peabody Academy of Science, later renamed the Peabody Museum along with the Marine Hall building which continued to serve as a museum space through these mergers and acquisitions.

Salem, Massachusetts, however, is more often associated with the infamous Salem Witch Trials of the 1690s during a period of great misguidance and superstition which led to false accusations of witchcraft levied at women, men and children of the community by a number of  Salem's citizens.  Ultimately, 25 innocent people were put to death.

 "Examination of a Witch"
Thompkins H. Matteson, 1853.

In the following centuries, the Salem Witch Trials have become known as an infamous part of American history that has forever associated Salem. Massachusetts with intolerance and injustice.  The personal tragedies and grievous wrongs of the Salem Witch Trials continue to provoke reflection, reckoning and a search for meaning by residents and visitors to Salem.

The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) holds one of the world’s most important collections of objects and architecture related to the Salem Witch Trials.  Through exhibitions, research, publishing and public programming, the Peabody Essex Museum is committed to telling the story of the Salem Witch Trials in ways that honor the victims and amplify the teachings of wrongful persecution that have current relevancy.

From 1980 to 2023, PEM’s Phillips Library was the temporary repository of the state’s Supreme Judicial Court collection of Witch Trial documents. These legal records were returned in 2023 to the Judicial Archives following the expansion and modernization of the Massachusetts State Archives facility,

The earliest formal recognition of a library was by the East India Marine Society, founded in 1799.  Among the first documented acquisitions of the EIMS were “The Art of Medicine Among the Chinese,” dated 1741, and copies of voyages by Cook and La Perouse, as well as other maritime-related materials.

Concurrently during the early 1800s, the Essex County Natural History Society (ECNHS) had been operating in relative obscurity;  however, in 1848 when it merged with the Essex Historical Society, the new entity took the name “Essex Institute,” combining both the museum and library Collections.  Over the next 20 years, the library Collection grew to approximately 50,000 bound volumes.  In 1867, the East India Marine Society became the Peabody Academy of Science, later known as the Peabody Museum of Salem.

The Phillips Library Collection is the result of the merger more than 100 years later in 1992 of the James Duncan Phillips Library of the Essex Institute with the Stephen Phillips Library of the Peabody Museum of Salem which resulted in the consolidated Peabody Essex Museum.  The present Collection at PEM covers a broad range of subjects, in both print and manuscript form, serving researchers from around the world.

Early Territorial Map in the Phillips Library

Also included in PEM's Collection is local historic architecture located within three historic city blocks on the PEM campus in Salem where there are buildings, gardens and varying architectural styles spanning three Centuries.  The Peabody Essex Museum has been a pioneer in the acquisition, relocation, restoration, and interpretation of historic environments.  In 1865 the Museum reconstructed the Quaker Meeting House from beams thought to be original to the First Church.  In 1910, under the direction of curator and early preservationist George Francis Dow, the Museum moved the John Ward House — split in two and rolled on ox-drawn logs — from its original site three blocks away.  In 1911 the Ward House opened to the public, becoming the first outdoor museum of architecture in the country.  Since then, the Peabody Essex Museum has grown to include more than twenty pre-Civil War buildings, including four National Historic Landmarks and many properties listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Ropes Mansion
in the McIntyre Historic District 
Architect: Samuel McIntyre (1757-1811)

Today, PEM's Collection is very extensive, containing over one-millions works of art and culture -- many that are the first to be collected by any museum in America.  Included are Japanese, South Asian, European, African, Native American, Maritime Art and History, Fashion and Textiles, Oceanic Art, Photography and Natural History, among others.  According to PEM, "deep and far ranging, the Collection opens windows onto how people live, work and celebrate".

Currently on view in PEM's James Duncan Phillips Trust Gallery is the Special Exhibition, "Let None Be Excluded: The Origin of Equal School Rights in Salem", which celebrates Salem's abolishing racially separate public schools in 1844.  "Salem was one of the first US municipalities to do so. A decade later, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts would become the first US State to pass a law forbidding school committees from classifying students by race."

This Special Exhibition "features documents that capture the impassioned activism of young Black leaders, including Sarah Parker Remond and Robert Morris.  These youth, as agents in their own education, sparked the national equal school rights movement by tethering education rights to democracy and racial equality." 

This Special Exhibition continues through April 28, 2024.

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(Primary sources and photo credits: Peabody Essex Museum; libraries.org) 

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