The house at 48 Chestnut Street in Salem was built in 1909 for Caroline O. Emmerton, the philanthropist who had the year before purchased the House of the Seven Gables and would oversee its restoration as a museum. Designed by architect William G. Rantoul and modeled on the Derby House in Salem, the house on Chestnut Street was quickly sold to Francis A. Seamans, who lived there for over twenty years.
Located on a proprty of 25 acres of fields, pasture and woods at 149 Pine Street in Danvers is the Rebecca Nurse Homestead. The house was mostly likely built in 1678, when Francis Nurse, a skilled maker of wooden household items, began renting the property from owner James Allen. Nurse would eventually purchase the house, where he lived with his wife Rebecca and eight children. In 1692, during the Salem Witch Trials, the 71-year-old Rebecca Nurse was accused of practicing witchcraft. Initially found not guilty at her trial, her young accusers went into convulsive fits which led the jury to return with a guilty verdict. Rebecca Nurse was hanged and her family secretly buried her on the Homestead land. In 1885, the family dedicated a granite memorial in her honor in the Nurse family graveyard. The monument is inscribed with a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier. Francis Nurse died in 1695 and the Homestead remained in the Nurse family into the eighteenth century. Rebecca’s great-grandson, Francis, lived in the house and, as a sergeant in the Danvers Alarm Company, responded to the Lexington Alarm in 1775. The Homestead was owned by the Putnam family from 1784 to 1908. Purchased and restored by the Rebecca Nurse Memorial Asociation, the property was given to the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities in 1926 and, since 1981, has been a museum owned by the Danvers Alarm List Company.
The Judge Samuel Holten House in Danvers was built in 1670 by Benjamin Holten in what was then known as Salem Village. In the house resided Sarah Holten, who testified against Rebecca Nurse during the Salem Witchcraft Hysteria of 1692. From a much smaller initial core, the house, which served as a tavern, was expanded six different times over the years, making it a prime example of the development in stages of a Colonial house. In the later eighteenth century, Judge Samuel Holten lived in the house. He was a physician and statesman who served as a member of the Continental Congress from 1778 to 1780 and again from 1782 to 1787. In 1778, he was a signer of the Articles of Confederation. Since 1921, the house been owned and restored by the General Israel Putnam Chapter of the Daughter of the American Revolution.
Built for merchant Pickering Dodge around 1802, the Federal-style Dodge-Barstow-West House, at 25 Chestnut Street in Salem, was later owned by the Barstow family and was purchased in 1895 by George S. West. A photograph by Frank Cousins of the house’s doorway was featured in The Architectural Record (vol. XLII, no. V, 1917), with the following description by Phil M. Riley:
The half-oval porch of the George West house, 25 Chestnut street, presents a distinctly pleasing type for modern adaptation. The proportions are excellent, the detail simple and carefully spaced. The paneled door with its graceful welcoming sidelights and fanlight is broad and typical of the best in Salem. The steps are of granite, with an extremely fine wrought-iron railing.
The Bliss-Colton House, at 1077 Longmeadow Street in Longmeadow, was built in 1790 for Aaron Bliss (1730-1810), who married Miriam Colton in 1754. One of their sons, Aaron Bliss, Jr., was in Capt. David Burt’s company of minutemen from Longmeadow who marched to Boston on April 20, 1775. Aaron Bliss, Jr. died during the Revolutionary War, on June 25, 1776. The house was later owned by Alvah Colton.
Marblehead’s first meeting house was built in 1648, when the town was still part of Salem. In 1684, the church in Marblehead became separate from the First Church in Salem. In 1695, the original wood meeting house on Old Burial Hill was replaced by a new building on Franklin Street. A lot was purchased on Washington Street in 1821 and the current stone church building was constructed in 1824-1825. It is known as Old North Congregational Church because a separate second congregation was later formed to the south. The church originally had brown ashlar walls on all four sides, but the granite front facade was added later. The church has a golden cod weather vane. In 1969, the church’s silver, including a baptismal bowl made by Paul Revere, was stolen and eventually returned upon payment of ransom money.
The Charles H. Odell House is a Queen Anne residence at 24 ½ Winter Street in Salem. This Charles H. Odell, described as an auctioneer and real estate insurance agent, may or may not be the same Capt. Charles H. Odell who was Collector at the Salem Custom House (1873-1875) and later Mayor of Beverly in 1896.