Salem
(chapter excerpt)
The Osoma Valley is fertile land with a high water table. The first settlers came from Pelham, Massachusetts, in 1761, led by James Turner and Joshua Conkey. They called their little settlement “White Creek” because of the white quartz pebbles in the stream. Irish immigrants under the leadership of the Reverend Dr. Thomas Clark arrived here in 1764 and decided the place should be called “New Perth.” Each group had its own separate Presbyterian church and its own name for the town. United by their common opposition to the British during the American Revolution, the two groups managed to agree to call the town Salem, meaning “peace,” in 1788.
The principal streets, Broadway and Main, are lined with fine, old houses, mostly from the 1800s. Two severe fires in 1840 and one in 1870 took away many of the earlier buildings. These disasters led to the improvement of the fire brigade, and the Union Engine House, built in 1866, is still in use. A grand, brick house on East Broadway, built about 1810, was the home of the daughter-in-law and grandchildren of the renowned ornithologist John James Audubon. Like many of the elegant houses along this tree-shaded street, it has lovely grounds with well-planted flower gardens. The former Washington County courthouse at the end of Broadway is still in the process of restoration. It has the severe look of a public building, complemented by a grim jail in back with thick, steel bars painted an institutional gray. The empty cells are unguarded.
Covered Bridge
2007; gouache on canvas; 9 x 12 in.
Located just outside of Salem in a small hamlet called Eagleville, this covered bridge is still in use today. I took my children there once
to swim just below the bridge in the Battenkill River and to swing out on the rope as the two boys were doing the day I visited.