Chronicles of Old Salem

In Gardner's Beacon, Vol. II, No. 6 (December 2012), we had our first collection of 'annals' entries with respect to the interests of the TGS, Inc. This particular collection went from before 1623/24 to 2009. One purpose was to show references to Thomas and the Cape Ann crew over time. The last entry was 2009 and pointed to John Goff's book about the Witch House in Salem. He included a few details about Thomas and Margaret.

Subsequent issues of Gardner's Beacon had more entries. All of these were obtained from taking notes while reading and putting them in relation by the year. See our Bibliography for some of our readings. Too, early issues had entries in our Sources page.

By August of 2014, we had about eight pages of these entries which we pulled together and collated for our Vol. I, Issue 1 of The Gardner Annals. The name was appropriate. In subsequent issues, we have been publishing research articles and notes. Starting in 2017, we provided a print version of Gardner's Beacon and The Gardner Annals. So far, there have been two printings (see Publications). We can provide details about ordering our print versions.

Earlier this year, we added a presentation on our portal of entries in our 'annals' collection. We started these with only those entries that were of years within the span of Thomas' life (from 1592 to 1674). And, we added in the other years later. All of these reference TGA, Vol. I, No. 1 (August 2014).

Chronicles of Old Salem

We are now going to add in more entries. These will come from Chronicles of Old Salem by Frances Diane Robotti which published 1948. The publisher was Bonanza Books, of New York. In this book are entries in an 'annals' form that cover the early period down to 1948. I first saw this book in the 2012 time frame after we had received it from Ann's sister. She had found the little gem in a used bookstore. Of course, at the time, I didn't know much about Salem.

However, I did appreciate the format. As, Rev. Felt's writings were similar. Also, Felt was not mentioned, except briefly, and Perley seemed to be ignored. There was no reference to Thomas. Joseph, his son, was mentioned, but that was only because of Bradstreet's house which was really Ann Downing Gardner's that she shared with Joseph before he was killed in the King Philip conflict.

The book sat on the shelf for a while, until I opened it a couple of days ago. What a joy. I'll be quoting from this as well as doing posts. Little tidbits stand out. Such as? Well, the 50th of the American Revolution coincided with the 200th of Salem's start.

Yes, from our current position, we see lots of attention on a 400th coming up. I have been suggesting that we look at the 300th (which was celebrated a century ago, where Dr. Frank was involved). Too, we have the 200th (early 1800s, early times that were partly covered by articles in Dr. Frank's "The Massachusetts Magazine"), and the 100th which would have been of the time of Dr. Frank's and of our grandfathers.

Another thing learned was that there had been many fires in Salem that destroyed multiple buildings, except that we think of the Fire of 1914. There are other pieces of information across the whole of the book that are interesting. These will be added to our scroll on the portal.

We'll report as we add in more text items. This is an example from our Portal (to truth). At some point, we will add some more from Felt's look at Salem's History.

We will identify these.

Remarks: Modified: 06/17/2019

06/16/2019 -