The New Student's Reference Work/Salem, Mass.

Salem, Mass., city, settled 1626, chief county-seat of Essex County, on the Boston and Maine Railroad, Eastern Division, 17 miles by rail northeast of Boston. Its harbor, an arm of Massachusetts Bay, is well-sheltered and commodious, but of insufficient depth for the largest vessels. The city is a popular resort for people interested in early American settlements, possessing many historic localities and buildings. Essex Institute contains a large collection of relics and portraits and a library of 82,850 volumes and 285,922 pamphlets and serials, many of which treat of historic subjects. East India Marine Museum has a rare exhibit of ethnological value and many other objects of varied interest. The Athenæum contains 25,000 volumes, and the free public library has upward of 40,000. Besides a well-sustained system of public schools, it has three parochial schools and is the seat of a flourishing state normal school. It has 21 churches, a Y. M. C. A. organization, with a fine, large building, an endowed institution for work among boys, known as Salem Fraternity, and a well-equipped and well-endowed hospital, which accommodates 100 patients. The city has been unjustly identified with the witchcraft delusion of 1692 from the fact that the courts sat here at which the accused were tried. The recovery from this delusion was earlier here than in other parts of this country or in England, (See Mather, Cotton, and Witchcraft). The city formerly enjoyed a large and extensive foreign commerce. This has become superseded by an extensive coasting-trade, of which the reception of coal for distribution by rail and the shipment of ice form the chief items. Population 43,697.