Trading Places: City eyes Pioneer Village, Camp Naumkeag swap

 A link to a recent article in the Salem News about the possible switching of the location of Pioneer Village, with Camp Naumkeag.

http://www.salemnews.com/news/local_news/trading-places/article_9ab3eaee-688e-57a8-b7c2-22f24b52a62a.html

A Sad State of Affairs

After a 5-year-long hiatus from blogging about Pioneer Village, I felt compelled to make one last, follow-up entry. I recently made a trip to the village, to see how it was doing. After Gordon College gave up managing the village, management fell back to the city of Salem. They appointed Elizabeth Peterson, manager of the Jonathan Corwin House (Witch House) to oversee it's continuing operation and maintenance. She did a pretty good job of it considering the city gave her very little money to work with, and the place was in dire need of some very expensive capital repairs. They did some events there, such as the Salem Spice Festival which were moderately successful, and it continued to be a venue for film companies and other activities. But, lacking any major funding, the property itself continued to languish, which brings me to the latest.

A city engineering project that is supposed to resolve major flooding issues plaguing Canal Street is doing so by redirecting the water through the area of Forest River Park, and specifically, right through Pioneer Village.

These images were taken on February 23rd of this year.  As you can see, the fence which surrounded the Village has been taken down. There is some kind of dam-like structure where the entry path used to be. The main structures are visibly run-down and need of repair. the back field (which held the dugouts), appears to have been completely dug up and the structures removed or destroyed. Frankly it all looks a bit sad.

It is not clear when this construction will be completed, or what the village will look like when it is.
With the threat of rising sea levels and recent storm surges, I have to wonder if the Village will ever re-open. There has been some rumors of relocating the Village somewhere else in Salem, but this has so far been talk-only.
The Village has always had the potential to be a major tourist attraction, showcasing early Puritan colonial history, but it has been plagued by neglect, lack of promotion, uneven management, and poor-to-nonexistent  funding. Salem seems to have a love-hate relationship with the village; they seem to like having it, but don't want to pay for it, or know what to do with it.

Unless the City of Salem gets serious about saving Pioneer Village, and most importantly, commits to securing funds to support it's restoration and ongoing maintenance, this could be the end. It would be a shame if this is the end of Pioneer Village after 88 years as a Salem attraction.

The New England Pirate Faire and Pioneer Village: Salem 1630 Bid Farewell to Gordon College

 















Pastimes’ beloved family-friendly show returns to Salem June 29 & 30

Pastimes Entertainment of Revere returns to Pioneer Village: Salem 1630 for the New England Pirate Faire, the most popular event in the historical attraction’s 83-year history.

Families traveled from across New England to attend the 2012 Pirate Faire, a swashbuckling adventure that took place within the charming recreation of a 17th Century Salem settlement and became the most successful event for Gordon College’s Department of Public History, which this month ends its stewardship of the site.

“We want to send Gordon College off in grand style,” said David Stickney, executive producer of Pastimes Entertainment of Revere. The department’s management of the village ends on June 30, and on July 1 the City of Salem assumes management duties.

Pastimes will present the original adventure, “Felicity Dane and the Diamond in the Rough.” In this family-friendly interactive adventure, a plucky young girl finds herself an unlikely ally to Captain Anne Bonney as she searches for the legendary Windjammer Diamond. Unfortunately for them both, several other pirates are also hunting for the lost treasure -- among them, none other than Blackbeard himself.

In addition to the thrilling story, the day will feature interactive scenes that will make the audience part of the adventure, black powder and cannon demonstrations, pirate games, the unique merchants that make up the Tortuga Marketplace, food and refreshments, and live music.

The New England Pirate Faire will be held on Saturday, June 29 and Sunday, June 30 from 10 AM to 6 PM both days. General admission is $14 ages 12 and up, youth admission is $10 for children ages 4 to 11, and children 3 and under are free. Members of the military and seniors receive a $2 discount at the box office with proper ID. Free on-site parking is available.

End of the Road?

The 2013 season at Pioneer Village may be the last one and this may be my last post for this blog. Below is an article that appeared in the Salem Evening News this week.

Ken Yuszkus/Staff photo Cheri and Alexei Grishin and their 10-year-old daughter, Natalia, walk among the buildings at Salem Pioneer Village, a living history museum that has been maintained and run by Gordon College for the past four years. The school has announced that it will not renew its agreement with the city to manage the site.

May 13, 2013

Back to the drawing board

Gordon College will no longer
manage Salem Pioneer Village

By Bethany Bray STAFF WRITER

SALEM — The future of Salem Pioneer Village is up in the air as Gordon College announced this month that it will not renew its agreement to manage the city-owned living history site.
The Wenham college will continue programming and school tours at the village through June.
Mayor Kim Driscoll said she has begun to “explore options” for Salem Pioneer Village — both to keep the site open through the remainder of the summer season and to maintain it long-term.
“I’d hate to see it move backwards, because (Gordon College) has done so much work there,” Driscoll said. “I wouldn’t say anything is off the table. I’m trying to understand what all our options are right now.”
The 5-acre Salem Pioneer Village, off West Avenue, was built in 1930 as a stage set for a city-organized pageant to mark the 300th anniversary of the arrival of Gov. John Winthrop to Massachusetts’ shores. With a blacksmith’s shop, wigwam and thatched-roof cottages, the site is meant to depict Salem as it would have appeared to settlers arriving in the 1630s.
Gordon College has managed the pioneer village and Salem’s Old Town Hall on Essex Street since 2008.
The college will drop Salem Pioneer Village this year in order to focus its efforts and resources on Old Town Hall, said David Goss, professor of public history and director of Gordon’s Institute for Public History.
“We had to sit down and say, ‘We only have so many resources, so many people. Where can we do our best job?’ ” Goss said. “It was a very difficult decision because I love the village. From a realistic point of view, we can only spread ourselves so thin.”
Making the village work, financially, has always been a struggle and has even caused the site to close in the past, Driscoll said. It’s located outside of downtown and is not within walking distance of the city’s other tourist attractions.
“(Gordon) was terrific in terms of bringing it back to life, but it’s really hard financially to make it work for them,” Driscoll said. “We’re glad to be keeping them at Old Town Hall.”
“We’re not in any way divorcing ourselves from our commitment to the city of Salem. We’re just trying to have a more realistic and doable agenda,” Goss said. “Running two historic sites was a pretty ambitious undertaking. It finally reached a point where we had to decide where to place our greatest effort.”
Despite its location, attendance at the village has risen steadily in recent years, Goss said. The village saw 12,000 visitors last year — half of whom came during the Halloween season.
Since 2008, Gordon College opened the village to the public on weekends through the summer and fall; ran living history programs and special events, such as a pirate-themed day; and did educational programming for school, Scout and other youth groups.
Gordon College had signed a “memorandum of understanding” with the city, Driscoll said — the city did not pay Gordon to manage the property or receive any revenue from its operation.
Last week, upon learning of the college’s decision, Driscoll said her “initial reaction” is that the city would not run the village itself.
“We’d like to find a way to make it work,” Driscoll said. “It would be great to have another nonprofit running it, managing it. Initially, our priority is short-term, something for the summer.”
“My preference is to keep it open this summer, but it’s not lost on me how hard that is,” she said.
Any long-term contract to run the village would have to go out to bid, she said. The issue will be discussed at a meeting of the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission later this month.
Salem Pioneer Village is an extension of Forest River Park.
Numerous improvements have been made at Salem Pioneer Village during Gordon College’s tenure, including replacing broken windows, re-thatching roofs, reconstructing the fences around the property, building bridges over two brooks at the site and replanting gardens.
The wigwam has been rebuilt from the ground up, and the blacksmith’s forge has been restored and is once again functional, Goss said.
Gordon College ran the village with a staff of six, plus volunteers, he said. The site has 12 buildings, including five Colonial houses, two dugout structures with log roofs, the wigwam and the blacksmith’s shop.
“I’m very hopeful there will be a successor that will step in and continue these programs,” Goss said. “...The village is in pretty good shape and whoever takes it over will benefit from that.”
At Old Town Hall, the college will continue to run its first-floor museum devoted to Salem history and the “Cry Innocent” seasonal drama production.
The Salem Museum saw 30,000 visitors last year, Goss said.
They’re repainting Old Town Hall’s interior this month and opening a new exhibit this spring on Parker Brothers games, he said.
“We’re very committed to trying to tell the story of Salem,” Goss said. “(The decision to leave Salem Pioneer Village) is not a turning away from Salem, or in any way lessening our commitment to Salem.”
Bethany Bray can be reached at bbray@salemnews.com and on Twitter @SalemNewsBB.

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 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 .

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!

Halloween Craziness

October was a very busy month at Pioneer Village. The Village was not only the site of numerous tours this October, but several special events, including a Pirate Day, trick or treating Halloween weekend, and a "Haunted Village" attraction that ran the last two weekends of October. There were storytellers, witches, and a demon blacksmith. All told the Village had several hundred visitors. To all those who worked at the Village in all kinds of weather, Thank You. For those patrons who attended, Thank You as well.

Pioneer Village is now officially closed to the public, although private school group tours will continue until November 20th. The Village will re-open in may of 2012.

Pioneer Village: Movie Set?

If you have visited the Salem visitor center, watched PBS or the National Geographic Channel you may have caught glimpses of Pioneer Village, and not even realized it. Over the years Pioneer Village has been used for filming several productions about 17th-century life, Salem and the Salem Witch Trials.
Some recent productions shot at Pioneer Village have been:
We Shall Remain,  a five-part, 7.5 hour documentary series about the history of Native Americans spanning from the 1600s to the 1900s. The first segment of that series entiltled After the Mayflower which tells to story of  Wamanoag leader Massasoit. In that segment, Pioneer Village doubled for the Plymouth settlement.

Witch Trial Conspiracy a documentary hosted by Jon Briggs and published by National Geographic in 2011, which presents a new theory about the Salem Witch Trials implicating that the Reverend Paris played a much more active role in inciting the hysteria than was previously believed.

The latest film to be shot there is: The True 1692  a 3D film which tells the true story of the Salem Witchcraft Hysteria of 1692. Produced locally in a collaborative effort between CinemaSalem and History Alive! the film is, according to the Cinema Salem website;
"Historically-accurate, suspenseful, and emotionally-captivating, this new film immerses the audience in the dangerous realities of life in Salem Village at the end of the 17th Century and dramatically reveals the odd coincidence of forces, external and internal, which set in motion the tragedy of the witch trials". The film has its public premiere at Cinema Salem in October of 2011.