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Updated: June 5, 2025
He found the remains of Conant's company disposed to question the claims of the new-comers, but the dispute was amicably arranged, and in commemoration Naumkeag was given the name of Salem, the Hebrew word for "Peaceful." For nearly a year little is known of the settlers except that in the winter some died of the scurvy and others of an "infectious fever."
The distinction of the Pilgrims at Plymouth is that they relied upon themselves, and developed their own resources. Salem was begun in 1625, and for three years was called Naumkeag. In 1628, John Endicott came from England with one hundred settlers, as Governor for the Massachusetts Colony, extending from the Charles to the Merrimac river.
Of all the wild life that used to throng here, only the Indians still come into the settlement, bringing the skins of beaver and otter, bear and elk, which they sell to Endicott for the wares of England. And there is little John Massey, the son of Jeffrey Massey and first-born of Naumkeag, playing beside his father's threshold, a child of six or seven years old.
As soon as the grant was obtained, John Endicott came out with a company of sixty persons, and took up his abode at Naumkeag, which, being an Indian and therefore a pagan name, he changed to Salem, the Hebrew word for "peace."
In more than one spot, among the trees, an upheaved axe is glittering in the sunshine. Roger Conant, the first settler in Naumkeag, has built his dwelling, months ago, on the border of the forest-path; and at this moment he comes eastward through the vista of woods, with his gun over his shoulder, bringing home the choice portions of a deer.
The Naumkeag leader reported that a man named Morton had opened his settlement at Mount Wollaston, Mass. to all discontented servants and lawless people. He had changed the name to Merrie Mount and there he allowed reckless, dissolute living. Upon hearing of the loss of the cook, he suggested that he might be found among the merrymakers.
What native of Naumkeag, whose recollections go back more than thirty years, does not still shudder at that dark ogre of his infancy, who perhaps had long ceased to have an actual existence, but still lived in his childish belief, in a horrible idea, and in the nurse's threat, as the Tidy Man!
On account of the reckless manner in which the Council for New England granted away its territory, the patent conflicted with several others of an earlier date. In March, 1622, they had granted to John Mason a patent for all the land between Naumkeag and the Merrimac River.
The abandonment, in 1626, of their colony at Cape Ann by the Dorchester adventurers, did not cause connection to be entirely severed either in America or in England. In America, Conant and three of the more industrious settlers remained, but as the fishery was abandoned, they withdrew with the cattle from the exposed promontory at Cape Ann to Naumkeag, afterwards Salem.
The pavements of the Main Street must be laid over the red man's grave. Behold! here is a spectacle which should be ushered in by the peal of trumpets, if Naumkeag had ever yet heard that cheery music, and by the roar of cannon, echoing among the woods.
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