The Witches of Salem MA and Nathaniel Hawthorne

Another fun day trip we took was out to Salem, MA where we took a tour of the Salem Witch Museum. I'm sure we're all familiar with the Witch trials in Salem in the late 1600s. The museum was interesting but didn't hold a candle to the House of Seven Gables. We also took a tour there and learned that Nathaniel Hawthorne never lived in that house and, in fact, the house did not even have seven gables during his lifetime. When he wrote the book he was going by the memory of stories that he had been told by his cousin who did live there. Nathaniel Hawthorne was actually born a few blocks away in a house that we also toured. The house of seven gables started out as a small home which was added onto and added onto and then some of the additions were removed which is when Hawthorne was alive. It wasn't until a woman purchased the home in the early 1900s that the house was reconstructed and used as a settlement for immigrant families settling in Salem, MA. She sold tours of the property to fund the settlement which is how the museum got its start.