BMW, “New Broom”

As we have mentioned here before, Pioneer Village has served as location for several movies, television series and documentaries. Add to that list web commercial. Below is a link for the director's cut of BMW web commercial made for the Halloween season. It was written and Directed by Chad Carlberg, a Salem resident, and also stars several familiar faces from Salem.
 http://vimeo.com/51223103

2012 Season Concludes

The regular tourist and post-season school tours at Pioneer Village have ended, and the Village is closed for the winter. The Village officially closed on November 16 and will re-open in the spring.

Labor Day Weekend Potluck

Friday September 31st marked the occasion of the first Pioneer Village/History Alive! staff potluck.
 Administrators, directors, historical interpreters and their families and friends all gathered for an evening of period food, drink and music. There were several 17th-century Puritan delicacies to be enjoyed including a cucumber sallet, sweet chicken stew, beans and sausages, pumpkin pie, and roasted pork.

Village blacksmith Mr. Snitch (Kevin Sternweiss) and Director of Museum Studies and Scholar-in-Residence with the Institute for Public History, David Goss, provided period sea-chantys on the guitar.

The event was organized by Pioneer Village site director, Marc Ewart. Hopefully this will become an annual tradition!

New England Pirate Faire Draws Record Crowds

The New England Pirate Faire which ran last weekend (August 11-12), drew some of the largest crowds in the park's 82-year history with well over 1,000 people in attendance over the two-day weekend, according to David Goss, Director of Museum Studies and Scholar-in-Residence with the Institute for Public History at Gordon College. This in spite of the somewhat dodgy weather forecasts for both days.
Crowds of people, many of them families with young children, came from as far away as New Jersey to celebrate all things piratical. The combination of scripted scenario, variety acts, merchants and food vendors, plus the historical setting of Pioneer Village itself, helped to make the weekend a success.
Talks are already underway for a 2013 show.

A Primer for the NEPF!

 The New England Pirate Faire Facebook page has been getting hit with a lot of questions from people who have never been to this kind of show before, so as a public service to their patrons, Pastimes presents an overview of the faire and what to expect. The blog page is here:
http://pastimesentertainment.blogspot.com/2012/08/nepf-primer-for-first-timers.html

Work at the Village

The weeds take over in the early spring

If you've ever been to Pioneer Village for a tour, you may be saying to yourself, "that doesn't look so tough, wearing a costume, giving tours..." However, when the historical interpreters are not actually giving tours, they are don't just sit around the fire chatting, oh no. Like the times that we portray, there is always some chore that needs to be done at the village. There is constant sweeping, gathering debris and brush, cutting and splitting firewood, building fires, raking leaves, and cutting the grass, shrubs and weeds that threaten to overtake the village on an almost daily basis.
The village is in a constant war of attrition with the surrounding forest. There is constant encroachment by weeds, flowers, vines and shrubs. The elements, including wind rain and salt air, constantly wear on the unfinished wood, roof thatching and daub. There is also an abundance of small critters on the site, birds, rats, mice, gophers, squirrels and insects, not to mention the wear and tear of people walking on, sitting on, and touching furniture, doors, and artifacts, as well as the occasional acts of vandalism by local youths. When you are a tour guide at the village, in many small ways, you actually experience the hardships encountered by our ancestors. The main difference is that at the end of the day, we get to journey back to the 21st century.

After a season of hard work

Pirates Come to Pioneer Village!

Pioneer Village and Gordon College's Institute for Public History proudly present the return of The New England Pirate Faire at Pioneer Village: Salem 1630, Forest River Park, Salem, MA. The village will be the host for an entire weekend of pirate mayhem. 
Produced by Revere-based Pastimes Entertainment, the faire will run August 11-12, 2012 from 10 am till 5 pm. Tickets are $12 for adults, $8 for children(4-11) and Kids 3 and under are free. There will be games, music, swordfighting, pirate musket fire demonstrations, hand crafted goods in our merchant village. The faire will be held rain or shine! Like us on Facebook!(new england pirate faire). For more information visit us at www.pastimesentertainment.com.

Anne Bradstreet Promo Shoot

On the shoot at Pioneer Village

A promotional movie for the play "From the Author to My Dear and Loving Husband"
written to celebrate the 400th birthday of America's first published poet, Anne Bradstreet was shot at Pioneer Village and other Salem locations last week.
The play, written by Kristina Wacom-Stevick, was recently performed at Pioneer Village, and will be performed again September 15th, 16th, 2012 at Pioneer Village .
A portable show with 4 actors and minimal set, it is hoped that the play can be performed at schools, festivals and other venues.

Amelia Haas plays the young Anne Bradstreet

In an effort to raise awareness of the piece, a well as Anne Bradstreet's 400th birthday, Kristina, who works for Gordon College's Institute for Public History, History Alive! and Paul Van Ness of Van Ness Creative, and Cinema Salem worked together to shoot the piece.Van Ness and History Alive! have collaborated before on the film, The True 1692. Using local actors, the movie will flesh out more details of the life of Anne Bradstreet who arrived in Salem in 1630 at the age of 18. The film will also be shown at Cinema Salem.

Erik Rodenhiser and Mark Stevick

Anne Bradstreet play at Pioneer Village

Portraying Anne Bradstreet at different stages of her life are.(from L-R)
Kim Lamoureaux, Emily Cox, Amy Courage, Amelia Haas

"From the Author to My Dear and Loving Husband"
--a play to celebrate the 400th birthday of America's first published poet, Anne Bradstreet is being performed at Pioneer Village.
In 1630, eighteen-year-old Anne Bradstreet was heartsick about exchanging her genteel English life for the perils of New England. In the years to follow, Anne would surmount an abundance of hardships to become America’s first published poet. How did this physically challenged mother of eight find the time and inspiration to write her popular collection of poems known as The Tenth Muse, Lately Sprung Up in America? “From the Author to My Dear and Loving Husband” makes a guess by way of four Annes at different stages of her life. 

June 30th, July 1st and September 15th, 16th, 2012 at Pioneer Village .
School and other group performances may be privately arranged.
Suitable for audiences high school age and up.
Tickets will be available at BrownPaperTickets.com or at the door on a first come, first serve basis. Space will be limited.

For more information call 978.867.4767, email historyalivegordon.edu .

Pioneer Village Officially Opens for the Season!

Pioneer Village 1630. All cleaned up and ready to open!

Pioneer Village opens this Friday, June 22! In celebration of our 2012 season, for THIS WEEKEND ONLY, all Salem residents receive FREE admission! (valid identification required) Come for the first time, or for the hundreth!

Start of the Pre-Season

 

Although Pioneer Village won't officially be opening to the public for another month, the old place has been busy the last few weeks with pre-season tours. Pioneer Village, in addition to being open to the general public, conducts private, scheduled tours for school groups and other organizations during both the pre and post season. These group tours start in mid-May for the pre-season, and continue on until mid-November in the post season. The tours can be any size, from 10-75 people. Contact Marc Ewart, site manager, at 508-631-9514, for details.

The Size of Cod

On a recent trip to the Portsmouth, N.H. visitor center, I came across a display which handily illustrates something I refer to frequently on my tours of Pioneer Village; The size of codfish in the 17th century.
Fish, and particularly codfish, were the main reason Europeans including English Puritans first started coming to this continent. Economic, not religious reasons drove men to risk life and limb in a new land. The rich fishing grounds off of George's and Stellwagen banks were the home to many types of valuable fish, but none were more plentiful, or profitable as the codfish.
On my tour I often make the claim that codfish grew as big as the some of the people on my tour. This is generally greeted with some skepticism. However, there were many instances of the "king" cod, an enourmous fish that reached sizes of 120lbs or more. Here is the proof. The skull of one of those monster cod.

My lovely wife is standing next to it for scale. As you can see, it's skull is bigger than my wife's head.
Here is a detail of the skull.

This fish formed the cornerstone of the early colonial economy. The fish were caught, dried, salted, packed into barrels, and sold in Europe and the Caribbean. The depressing thing is that the cod stocks that fueled the settling and expansion of the New England colonies, are now seriously depleted to the point that cod no longer grow to this size. In fact , the average size of the codfish has shrunk as the size of the catch has decreased. In other words, the fishing grounds of New England are so overfished, that the cod themselves have become smaller. They just don't get a chance to grow to the enormous size they once did. This is illustrated by the display below.

The fish on the left is the average size of a cod in the mid-1600's. It is three feet long and weighs approximately 22 lbs. Compare that with the modern codfish, which only weighs about 6 lbs, and is about two-thirds the length. Although still a large fish, it is nowhere near the size and abundance that greeted our ancestors. Will we ever see another "King" cod again?

A Brief History of Pioneer Village

 

Pioneer Village has a long and interesting history. Built at Forest River Park in 1930 for the tercentennial celebration of Salem's founding in 1630, it was host to a day-long reenactment of the arrival of Governor John Winthrop, which included a replica of his ship the Arbella (seen in an old postcard below) arriving in the harbor. The re-enactment showed the Governor's arrival, the transfer of authority from Roger Conant to Winthrop and the pageantry of daily activities in a Puritan village. 

Originally built like a stage set (the reason the cottages and Governor's house have no windows on their backside) the village was scheduled to be torn down after the pageant, however a Salem commission decided that it might serve well as a permanent attraction. 

Pioneer Village was the first living history museum in America, and served as a model for other museums such as Plymouth plantation, which it preceded by almost 20 years. The village has been in almost continuous use since June 1930. 

Very popular until the 1960's, the village started falling into disrepair in the 1970's for various reasons including declining attendance, a fire, and escalating costs.

 By 1985, the City of Salem Park Commission voted to raze the village. However within the year the Commission signed a contract with Pioneer Village Associates, headed by Peter LaChapelle of the Salem Maritime National Historic Site and David Goss of the House of the Seven Gables, to restore and manage the once-popular site. Through their fundraising and restoration efforts the Village was refurbished and re-opened in 1988. A grand reopening of Pioneer Village was held in June, 1990.

The museum underwent another renovation under the supervision of Salem Preservation, Inc. from 2003 until Spring 2008 when Gordon College  took over its management along with the Old Town Hall. The Gordon College Institute for Public History and their theater group History Alive! stages performances of their popular re-enactment of the Salem Witch Trials Cry Innocent at the Old Town Hall and manages the village's use as a set for hire for special events, festivals, television shows and movies.

2012 Season

Things kick-off at Pioneer Village this year with a clean up of the grounds and replanting of the gardens, which will take place the last Friday of March (weather permitting) in preparation for re-opening  in late May/early June. The actual date will be posted here once that has been decided.  Unlike previous years, the Village will be open on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, closed the rest of the week. There will also be several special events planned for the summer months including a performance of a new play celebrating the 400th birthday of America's first poet, Anne Bradstreet in June, as well as a Pirate Faire in early August. We look forward to seeing you!

The 2011 Season

A picture of the Pioneer Village crew. Taken November 18, 2011, last day of the 2011tour season. Present (from left-right) back row; Marc Ewart, Lisa White, George Courage front row; Carol Smolinsky, Christine Tremblay, Jasmine Myers. Thank you to everyone for a wonderful season!