‘Witch house’ near Salem rising from near ruin

A years-long effort is nearing an end to restore the ramshackle Massachusetts homestead where a woman accused of witchcraft during the 1692 Salem witch trials resettled after escaping the hangman’s noose.

A US$1.5-million renovation project at the Peter and Sarah Clayes House in Framingham is expected to be completed in the spring.

“This is an amazing piece of history, and it was just falling apart,” said Annie Murphy, executive director of the Framingham History Center and a member of the Sarah Clayes House Trust, formed to save the structure. In addition to its connection to the witch trials, the house is thought to have been a stop on the Underground Railroad and once housed Secret Service agents assigned to protect U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt’s son when he lived nearby.

The home on Salem End Road was privately owned until it was essentially abandoned after a foreclosure around 2000.

It fell into disrepair. Vandals smashed the windows and defaced the interior. The paint peeled and woodwork rotted. Local kids who used it as a party spot called it the “witch house.”

Sarah Clayes, whose last name is sometimes spelled Cloyce, was jailed during the witch trials, which claimed the lives of 20 people, including her sisters Rebecca Nurse and Mary Easty.

She was freed in 1693 when the government realized the lunacy of killing innocents over unsubstantiated accusations.

Sarah and Peter Clayes, as well as about 50 members of their extended family, got out of town.

“They wanted to get away from Salem, clearly, as a lot of people did,” said Emerson Baker, a Salem State University history professor and witch trials expert who’s not involved with the effort to preserve the house.

One of the judges during the trials was Thomas Danforth, a former deputy governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who owned land about 55 kilometres southwest of Salem.

“We assume Danforth took pity on Peter and Sarah and offered them the land,” Baker said.

Many of the Salem refugees became pillars of the town that in 1700 was incorporated as Framingham. The Associated Press