Meredith Allard

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My Top Ten Favorite Places in Salem, Massachusetts

One of my favorite parts of research is traveling to the places I’m writing about. When I wrote the first book in The Loving Husband Trilogy, Her Dear & Loving Husband, I didn’t have a chance to visit Salem, Massachusetts. Thank goodness for the Internet. I was able to find detailed maps, and Google Earth helped a lot, but when I sat down to write Book Two, Her Loving Husband’s Curse, I felt as if I had used up everything I learned from my website travels. I was able to visit Salem, and here are the places I enjoyed most:

1. The House of the Seven Gables

Yes, this is the house that inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne to write his fabled novel. I loved the house itself. I loved the grounds and the gardens. I loved that the house Hawthorne had been born in was moved onto the land. I loved that it was so close to the seashore.  I can see how the mystery of the house inspired a literary masterpiece.

2. The Salem Witch Museum

This is probably one of the most visited places in Salem. I love the building it’s in—a church-style structure. The museum itself is small, but it gives a good overview of the witch hunt hysteria that overtook Salem in 1692.

3. Pickering Wharf

Pickering Wharf really does exist!  It’s a seaside village of shops and restaurants and I enjoyed my afternoon there eating lunch at Capn’s. There were several shops there owned by psychics, so I knew I had picked just the place for my character, the witch Olivia, to have her own psychic shop, The Witches Lair.

4. The Red Trolley Car

There’s a red trolley car for tourists that takes you all over Salem, showing the points of interest and explaining them. It’s a relaxing way to get to see the town and learn some tidbits of Salem information.

5. Salem State University

Readers of The Loving Husband Trilogy know that my two main characters work at the university.  James Wentworth as a professor of English (of course, since he’s a vampire he needs to teach night classes), and his wife Sarah works there as a librarian. I loved visiting the campus. I loved seeing the students on their way to classes. It was great to see that everything was where I thought it would be.

6. The Burying Point

I’m not usually a fan of graveyards, but the burying point was interesting because it’s the burying place of some of the judges of the Salem Witch Trials, including Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ancestor John Hathorne (author Hawthorne added the w to his name because he didn’t want to be too closely connected to his witch-hanging ancestor Hathorne).

7. The John Ward House

The John Ward House is part of the Peabody Essex Museum. It’s a replica of a house from the 1600s, and what do you know—it looks just like James’s house! It was an incredible feeling to be walking around Salem and see a house from my imagination standing there plain as day. I felt like Sarah did when she saw the house for the first time. If there are ever movies made of the Loving Husband Trilogy, I know where they can find James’s house!

8. Forest River Park/Pioneer Village

Pioneer Village is the closest you can come to time travel in Salem. The docents dress in costumes from the 1600s, and there are replicas of the types of homes you would have seen in the area in the days of the earliest European settlements.  Pioneer Village is located within Forest River Park, which is a beach with rocky shores and a grassy area for picnics. It was a wonderful way to pass the afternoon.

9. Rebecca Nurse Homestead

For readers familiar with the events of the Salem Witch Trials in 1692, you know that Rebecca Nurse was a key player in the tragic events. Though known to be a good person, she was hung for witchcraft. It was remarkable standing on the land her family owned for many years. It’s located in what is now Danvers, Massachusetts, though during the hysteria it was known as Salem Village, which was the center of the witch hunts.

10. Boston

Okay, I know Boston is not Salem, but Boston is only twenty minutes from Salem by train, and I couldn’t be so close and not visit. I absolutely loved Boston and wished I had more than a day to spend there. I will definitely go back.

Please read more about this book including my review here.  Come back on Wednesday evening for an amazing giveaway of this book.

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