I AM DANIEL WEBSTER

SAM THE EAGLE WAS INSPIRED BY ME

Daniel Webster and Sam the Eagle

I shaped the Constitution, I was one of the three most powerful senators, director of two branches of the Second Bank of the United States, prosecutor of the real murder Clue is based on, the real Sam the Eagle from the Muppets, a traitor at the Hartford Convention, agent of Barings/ Bank of England, and I assassinated 3 presidents. Senator Henry Clay helped, but along the way we killed off members of each other’s family…

For more info read Sub Rosa to find out how Salem shaped America and your lives! Available at Remember Salem, Jolie Tea, Wicked Good Books, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.com.

Salem House Press
http://www.salemhousepress.com

Ghosts, the First Phone Call, Dante’s Inferno, and Tunnels

Welcome to the Salem Tunnel Report. Every Monday we will post new and old tunnel finds along with those who built them. In our posts you will learn how Salem has shaped American history from the profits of the smuggling that happened in these tunnels; sometimes for the good, but more often not.

Lyceum
43 Church Street

Joshua Holbrook borrowed a concept from the Mechanics Institutes he had encountered in England and created the Lyceum movement. In 1828 Holbrook started the first lyceum in Milbury, Massachusetts. Soon 100 others sprinkled throughout New England. By 1834, the number of lyceums in America had grown to 3,000.

The Salem Lyceum started in January 1830 when Captain Joseph White was dying from a sickness he could not shake. The mission of the Salem Lyceum was the “mutual education and rational entertainment” for both its membership and the general public through a biannual course of lectures, debates, and dramatic readings. The new hall could accommodate 700 patrons in amphitheater-style seating and was decorated with images of Cicero, Demosthenes and other great orators of the classical period. Lectures were held on Tuesday evenings. Admission was $1 for men and 75 cents for women, who had to be “introduced” by a male to gain entrance.

Over the next 60 years there were over 1,000 lectures. John Quincy Adams delivered a lecture on politics, Agassiz on geology, and Alexander Graham Bell made his first public demonstration of the telephone here. Well sort of…he was a hit at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition first.

Bell had invented the phone on the property that the Salem YMCA now is on Essex Street. In 1873 Thomas Sanders hired Bell to teach his deaf son George in his mother’s house at 292 Essex Street. The house was torn down in 1898. Bell was teaching to the deaf in Boston and working on the phone in a laboratory in Boston. He would take the last train home to Salem and continued to work on his invention in the attic and basement of the Sander’s house. On February 12, 1877 he had his expo at the Lyceum. Thomas Sanders became one of his first investors in his telephone company which became The Bell Telephone Company. The Ma Bells of America. Later it became Atlantic Telephone & Telegraph company. Sanders was their Treasurer.

What was the conversation that happened with that first phone call of any distance:

Bell~ “Mr. Watson, will you speak to the audience?”
Watson~ “Ladies and gentlemen. It gives me great pleasure to be able to address you this evening, although I am in Boston, and you in Salem!”

Thomas A. Watson was at Exeter Place in Boston with musicians, reporters, and artists. Watson and band sang Auld Lang Syne and Yankee Doodle Dandy (a song the Regulars sang as they attacked the North Bridge in Salem) to Bell in Salem with everyone hearing them. This won Bell a 2nd appearance on Feb. 23rd in front of an audience of 500 people netting him $8,500 which was the first money the phone ever made.

Bell was not the only inventor in Salem. Tesla had created a generating facility for Pequot Mills/Naumkeag Steam Cotton Co. in Salem, Moses Farmer created the light bulb purchased by Thomas Edison and was the first to light his home by electricity in the world, Joseph Dixon created a crucible that could withstand high heat for minting coins for the U.S. Mint and the #2 pencil, Charles Grafton Page worked in the patent office in D.C. and created a magnet that could lift a 1,000 pounds, and Louis Packard was making electric cars in the 1800’s. In fact half of the room on electricity in the Smithsonian Institute houses inventions from Lynn, Salem, and Swampscott.

The Lyceum was the destination that people like Agassiz, Thoreau, and Longfellow would walk through the tunnels from Col. George Peabody’s home on the common to give a lecture or try a out a reading before they published a work. Oliver Wendell Holmes had a lecture on “Lyceums and Lyceum Lectures;” and abolitionist Frederick Douglass gave one on “Assassination and its Lessons” shortly after President Lincoln’s murder. The man who got away with the assassinations of three presidents, two in office and one three months after, Daniel Webster was paid the most. He received $100, for his lecture on “The History of the Constitution of the United States”.

Ralph Waldo Emerson gave the most lectures at the Lyceum for a total of 30. Emerson, whose maternal granduncle Jonathan Waldo was the man who refitted the old hill fort and chose to rename it Fort Pickering in 1801.

As Derby was getting money from Common Improvement Fund subscribers, Waldo just got paid by the War Department. After fighting with them for two years since 1799 for the funds necessary he will refit the fort with strong brick arches. Does the old hill fort have tunnels leading to Richard Derby’s wharf that Elias Hasket Derby Sr. was looking to refit before his death in 1799?

James Russell Lowell, also gave a lecture on “Dante’s Inferno”. He was working with Holmes and Longfellow on a translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy at Harvard. The book The Dante Club goes over the history of that undertaking within a murder mystery where people are being murdered by various punishments found in Dante’s work.

That hill fort, the man it was named after, Timothy Pickering. He was Washington’s Aide to Camp, his Secretary of State, and Secretary of State for John Adams. Pickering after leaving Washington was the head of the Essex Junto. An organization whose sole purpose was giving New England back to the British. He had worked with John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and Aaron Burr in this process that culminated in the Hartford Convention in 1814 that Daniel Webster participated in that threatened cession and siding with the British in the War of 1812. Little did they know the peace treaty was signed in Ghent, Belgium before they left Salem for Hartford…

In 1898, the Salem Lyceum voted to dissolve and give the records and remaining monies to the Essex Institute. The money became the “Salem Lyceum Fund” to be used to maintain a course of lectures.

In fact the Salem Boy’s Fraternity purchased the building next from the Lyceum that was owned by then by the Essex Institute. This was the boy’s second location in town after moving out of the Downing Building and they were the second and last tenants of this old wooden building; for they created their own inferno in it.

The modern brick building built on the location houses Turner’s Seafood. During the reconstruction of the Lyceum/43 Church restaurant to Turner’s the construction crew were disturbed by the “Flushing Ghost”. An entity would enter the women’s room who kept flushing the toilet. After much aggravation, the construction team decided to dismantle the plumbing since they were moving the bathroom anyway; the ghost then proceeded to the men’s room. Pictures of girl materializing out of the floorboards on the second floor also have been taken. Why is she cut in half by the picture? Because she remembers the original floor of the wooden building and not the current one.

Elsie also haunts the ladies room in Murphy’s. Up to the second floor in the back the foundation of the building supports the Old Burying Point. They say two coffins fell through the wall in the building. Since then Elsie has been rattling stall doors aggravating those women preoccupied with nature’s call for years now.

The Lyceum was built in the apple orchard of Bridget Bishop. Her house stood where the Salem Five Bank is now on the corner of Washington Street and Church Street. Her first husband Mr. Oliver had died and left her a house with many gables. Then she married Mr. Bishop. Even though she married a bishop, the church still hanged her as a witch. Her home was an influence on the exterior descriptions of The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne and the interior based on his cousin Susan Ingersoll’s home which at the time was missing a few gables…Hawthorne never spoke at the Lyceum, but acted as their secretary and his father-in-law sold tickets.

Now back to the boys; it is strange that their three locations in town were in buildings attached to tunnels. The boy’s were from the working classes without much affluence, could they have been doing the work of the ‘Artful Dodger’ and ran by some sort of ‘Fagin’. Their third and first location were in brick buildings; I guess they learned quick.

Zack Fagan of Ghost Adventurers and Ghost Hunters have filmed episodes in this building.

Now about Charles Lenox Remond and his sister Sarah training Frederick Douglass within these walls into the Abolitionist Movement; that is another story.

Many secrets in Salem!

For more read info Salem Secret Underground: The History of the Tunnels in the City and its sequel Sub Rosa by Chris Dowgin published by Salem House Press. Available at Barnes & Noble, Remember Salem, The Witch House, Jolie Tea, and Amazon.com.

The Murder that Inspired the Game Clue and Edgar Allan Poe

Welcome to the Salem Tunnel Report. Every Monday we will post new and old tunnel finds along with those who built them. In our posts you will learn how Salem has shaped American history from the profits of the smuggling that happened in these tunnels; sometimes for the good, but more often not.

Gardner Pingree House
128 Essex Street

Built in 1804-1805 for John Gardner Jr. by Samuel McIntire. Jeremiah Page provided bricks, David Robbins was the mason, Joseph Fogg the lumber, Epes Cogswell was housewright, and William Luscoomb III painter. Gardner had owned 6 ships. All but 2 had different captains and co-owners. He never captained any of his ships. The only economic venture he went on twice with anyone was with his relative Simon Gardner who had owned two ships with him and captained both.

Next door was the site of the Captain Joseph Gardner home where the Plummer Hall now stands that houses the Essex Institute. The Captain was killed by Narragansets in 1675 at the Great Swamp Fight. At the Captain’s death his wife Anne inherited her father’s Emmanuel Downing’s house which was west of Plummer Hall and married Gov. Simon Bradstreet and lived there. This house was torn down in 1750 and Francis Peabody built his mansion. This book was written across the street from where the first American poet wrote her books, Anne Bradstreet.

In 1811 John Gardner Jr. ran into financial problems and sold the house to Nathaniel West. Could he have received a bribe from Russell Sturgis as well? Nathaniel West was a captain who owned many ships with Nehemiah Andrews, Crowninshields, Derbys, Benjamin Pickman, and Francis Boardman. Nathaniel West bought the John Turner mansion, next to the Peter Palfrey House to the right, opposite Central Street in 1833 and opened it as a tavern called “The Mansion house” in time for President Andrew Jackson’s visit. Later it would be called the “West Block”. Nathaniel West sold the Gardner-Pingree House three years later to Captain Joseph White. He was murdered in this house.

“It’s raining, it’s pouring.
The old man is snoring.
He went to bed bumped his head,
and he couldn’t get up in the morning.”

Captain Joseph White who bought the Come Along Patty from Elias Haskett Derby with the Cabot brothers and renamed it the Revenge became the first privateer from Salem. He was in the slave trade. He was heavily invested in The Second National Bank of the United States. He had questionable feelings towards a young niece who lived with him. He hated the man whom she would marry and made a fortune of $3 million dollars before 1830, which he was not going to give her any. In the winter of 1829-1830 Captain Joseph White was feeling ill and had his lawyer Joseph Waters draft him a new will. In 1830 someone snuck through the tunnel and murdered him.

This murder would inspire Edgar Allen Poe’s to write the Tell Tale Heart. It is reminiscent of Agatha Christies’s Murder on the Oriental Express. The intrigue of the murder and the sudden death of Judge Parker might of led Parker Brothers to buy the U.S. rights to the 1949 Cluedo/Clue game because it reminded them of the strange tale that happened in this Salem house! I wonder if it was a literature fan who moved the Crowninshield-Bentley House to the right from its old home in the Hawthorne Hotel’s parking lot. That house was in H.P. Lovecraft’s story The Thing on the Doorstep. Also Rev. Bentley wrote his memoirs of Salem in the Crowninshield-Bentley House.

Captain Joseph White was not kind to his relations that had worked for him in his house. He only showed a special form of kindness to his young attractive niece. The announcement of her engagement to a captain that was just released from Joseph Jr. & Stephen White Co.’s employment just sent him into a furor.

At 82 he has been abandoned by his niece for 3 years and is ill during a hard winter. His favorite nephew has been dead for some years but his brother is still at the old captain’s side. Was Stephen jealous of the attention his uncle gave to his female cousin or the attention she deprived him? Did Stephen foster some hatred towards his uncle for favoring his dead brother over him? Did the old Captain plan a mercy killing that would blame the Knapps and Crowninshields of murder to remedy the capture of a ship he once owned and a public insult? Remember Joseph J. Knapp Jr. was born the same year his father had lost the captain’s baby the ship Revenge.

We will not know, but we do know who ever snuck into to kill the old man knew of the tunnels. The tunnels connect the White/Story compound to the old man’s mansion. The old man bankrolled Joseph Jr. & Stephen White Co. and the construction of his nephews houses with the tunnels attached to them. I have been in the White brothers homes and seen the sealed up entrances to the tunnels and I have friends who have played in the tunnels attached to Judge Story’s House.

Many secrets in Salem!

For more read info Salem Secret Underground: The History of the Tunnels in the City and its sequel Sub Rosa by Chris Dowgin published by Salem House Press. Available at Barnes & Noble, Remember Salem, The Witch House, Jolie Tea, and Amazon.com.

I AM HENRY CLAY

Welcome to tales of Nineteenth-Century Salem. A time in which Salem was the richest city and the most influential in shaping our young country. In our posts you will learn how Salem has shaped American history from the profits she made by the smuggling that happened in her tunnels by the most wealthy and powerful in their day; sometimes for the good, but more often not. So join us every Monday for new tales!

Henry Clay

I WAS ONE OF THE THREE MOST POWERFUL SENATORS, BUT YOU DON’T REMEMBER ME

I first came to Salem to advise a rope maker on the advantages of hemp. Once in town, I met John Quincy Adams and became his Secretary of State. I also met Daniel Webster who was one of the Triumphant of senators with me. We plotted and got away with assassinating 3 presidents trying to make the third national bank.

For more info read Sub Rosa to find out how Salem shaped America and your lives! Available at Remember Salem, Jolie Tea, Wicked Good Books, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.com.

I AM PRESIDENT ZACHARY TAYLOR

Welcome to tales of Nineteenth-Century Salem. A time in which Salem was the richest city and the most influential in shaping our young country. In our posts you will learn how Salem has shaped American history from the profits she made by the smuggling that happened in her tunnels by the most wealthy and powerful in their day; sometimes for the good, but more often not. So join us every Monday for new tales!

Zachary Taylor

I LASTED 16 MONTHS IN OFFICE

You don’t know me. It is hard to be a famous president when you were assassinated 16 months into your presidency. Even worse when most people believe you ate a combination of strawberries, milk, and ice cream and died. My name is President Zachary Taylor and I was assassinated by typhoid poisoning by Daniel Webster and Henry Clay for my reluctance for making a third national bank. Plus I was not the first they got away with…Another Whig Candidate, President William Harrison only lasted a month before he died of typhoid. We were the only two ever elected from the Whig Party to become presidents.

For more info read Sub Rosa to find out how Salem shaped America and your lives! Available at Remember Salem, Jolie Tea, Wicked Good Books, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.com.

Stephen White Tunnels and the Game Clue Murderer

Welcome to the Salem Tunnel Report. Every Monday we will post new and old tunnel finds along with those who built them. In our posts you will learn how Salem has shaped American history from the profits of the smuggling that happened in these tunnels; sometimes for the good, but more often not.

The Man Behind the Curtain…

Stephen White was head of the Massachusetts Whig Party who ran John Quincy Adams and Daniel Webster for failed Presidential campaigns. Adams spoke at the opening at the East India Marine Hall that White had built. White was one of the major shareholders of the 666 shares of what is now East Boston he had developed. He also was an advisor to the Governor and on the Penitentiary Board. White headed the Committee Against Thieves and Robbers. He was business partners with Thomas H. Perkins who founded the Forbes empire. He became the head of the Second Corp of Cadets after Elias Hasket Derby Jr. left town. Him and his brother-in-law Joseph Story added new curbs and brick sidewalks to Salem. He was also the father of Daniel Webster’s son’s wife and Webster’s brother-in-law’s wife. White was Webster’s banker who pulled his strings. Webster was the Great Expander on the Constitution and Joseph Story interpreted the Constitution to its current understanding. These are the tunnels under his home off the Common.

What is nefarious?

Stephen White was behind the election of William Harrison along with Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. Clay and Webster were two of the most powerful senators in the country during their life leading up to the Civil War. The three of them planned Harrison’s assassination by typhoid poisoning when Harrison proved to be unreliable even after the unexpected death of his son before his inauguration.

The East India Marine Hall has 4 sub basements which hides  parts of the PEM’s collection and other secret private collections. The hall is also attached to the tunnels in town. The most famous home attached to the tunnels is the Hodges House which was owned by the founders of the museum.

Why would anyone offer 666 shares in anything?

White was head of the Penitentiary Board and head of the Committee Against Thieves and Robbers and he was smuggling goods through town without paying duties and planned the murder of a president. His business partner Thomas Perkins was the only slave trader besides his uncle. They both were opium dealers, but White made a lot of money by clubbing baby seals. Perkins controlled the largest opium empire in the world, controlled part of the Bank of England through Baring Brothers Bank which his nephews owned. Both of them took bribes from Barings to create The Second Bank of the united States to hand our treasury to the British. They both became directors in the bank. White was at odds with President Jackson who visited his house who didn’t renew the charter of the bank early. Soon after leaving White’s house, Jackson would soon survive an assassin’s bullet and future president James Knox Polk, who supported Jackson as Speaker of the House, survived the first Typhoid poisoning. Polk would die from Typhoid later, 3 months after leaving the White House.

White became the head of the Second Corp of Cadets. The Cadets actually were responsible under Elias Hasket Derby Jr. for expanding the tunnels in town. White took them over after Derby moved to Londonderry NH. White and Superior Court Justice Joseph Story added brick sidewalks throughout town to hide the purchase of bricks needed to further extend the tunnels in town.

White controlled Daniel Webster and Joseph Story to protect The Second Bank of the United States which he was a major investor in and the other two were directors of. Webster and Story protected the bank against all in the Supreme Court. Daniel Webster, White hired to hang innocent men in the murder of his uncle he had paid for under his dying uncle’s wishes to get revenge on some business partners’ sons. This murder will be the basis for the Parker Brothers game Clue. The Parker Brothers had a relation who was suppose to be the judge in the murder, who dies the night before he can preside on the case.

Stephen White dies probably a few month after Harrison due to complications from poisoning; why, Daniel Webster had a bigger bank pulling his purse strings. Baring Brothers was paying more than White could ever. Webster and Clay would go on and assassinate Polk 3 months after he leaves office and the only other Whig President, Zachary Taylor, 16 months into office without White.

For more read Salem Secret Underground: The History of the Tunnels in the City and its sequel Sub Rosa by Chris Dowgin published by Salem House Press. Available at Barnes & Noble, Remember Salem, The Witch House, Jolie Tea, and Amazon.com.

I AM CHIEF JUSTICE ISAAC PARKER

Welcome to tales of Nineteenth-Century Salem. A time in which Salem was the richest city and the most influential in shaping our young country. In our posts you will learn how Salem has shaped American history from the profits she made by the smuggling that happened in her tunnels by the most wealthy and powerful in their day; sometimes for the good, but more often not. So join us every Monday for new tales!

Isaac Parker Salem Ma

Isaac Parker: The Judge in the Murder that Influenced the Game Clue

I was the Chief Justice of Massachusetts and one of the original High Federalists. I died 3 days after I said I never felt better and never missed a day on the bench. I was to preside over the murder case that inspired the American version of Clue by Parker Brothers. The murder happened 3 months earlier in 1830 and 3 days after Daniel Webster supposedly came to Salem to prosecute the case. Previously, I was the judge accusing him of being a traitor in the 1812 War. The Parker Brothers were the grandson of my cousin William Parker.

To read more about how Salem shaped American history read Sub Rosa by Chris Dowgin published by Salem House Press.

I am Daniel Webster

Sam the Eagle was Inspired by Me

Daniel Webster photo

I shaped the Constitution, I was one of the three most powerful senators, director of two branches of the Second Bank of the United States, prosecutor of the real murder Clue is based on, the real Sam the Eagle from the Muppets, a traitor at the Hartford Convention, agent of Barings/ Bank of England, and I assassinated 3 presidents. Senator Henry Clay helped, but along the way we killed off members of each other’s family…

For more info read Sub Rosa by Christopher Jon Luke Dowgin!

I am Chief Justice Isaac Parker

I Never Missed a Day on the Bench Till..

Isaac Parker painting

I was the Chief Justice of Massachusetts and one of the original High Federalist. I died 3 days after I said I never felt better and never missed a day on the bench. I was to preside over the murder case that inspired the American version of Clue by Parker Brothers. The murder happened 3 months earlier in 1830 and 3 days after Daniel Webster supposedly came to Salem to prosecute the case. Previously I was the judge accusing him of been a traitor in the 1812 War. The Parker Brothers were the grandson of my cousin William Parker.

To read more about how Salem shaped American history read Sub Rosa by Chris Dowgin published by Salem House Press.

I am President James Knox Polk

Independent Treasury?

President James Knox Polk photo

I suffered typhoid poisoning as Speaker of the House defending Andrew Jackson’s Bank War after he visited Stephen White of Salem. White was the banker behind Senator Daniel Webster who was Secretary of State for President Harrison who died one month into office of typhoid. In my presidency I was against a third national bank and created an Independent Treasury governed by Congress. For this I will be assassinated 3 months after leaving the presidency by typhoid by Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. A doctor who was at the death of Harrison of typhoid was on the river boat where I caught my own dose.

To read more about how Salem shaped American history read Sub Rosa by Chris Dowgin published by Salem House Press.