55. Salem Ancestry Days in the frame

 

Image credit: www.salemancestry.org

A copy of ‘Blessed are the Peacemakers’, the acclaimed painting by Budleigh Salterton artist John Washington which shows a famous episode in the life of East Budleigh’s Roger Conant, is certain to be a talking-point at the above event this weekend. It is taking place in the American city of Salem which Roger founded centuries ago.   

Before Conant’s arrival in the 1620s the area was home to the Naumkeag band of the Massachusett tribe, and Naumkeag was the original name of the coastal settlement which eventually became known as Salem.  

 

In John Wingate Thornton’s 1854 work The Landing at Cape Anne, we find a description of how ‘Governor Conant and his associates, in the fall of the year 1626, removed to Naumkeag, and there erected houses, cleared the forests, and prepared the ground for the cultivation of maize, tobacco, and the products congenial to the soil’. This account was apparently based on the testimony from the Ipswich-born American clergyman and historian William Hubbard, who is likely to have met and conversed with Conant. 

Thornton’s account continues: ‘In after years, one of the planters in his story of the first days of the colony, said, "when we settled, the Indians never then molested us, but shewed themselves very glad of our company and came and planted by us, and often times came to us for shelter, saying they were afraid of their enemy Indians up in the country, and we did shelter them when they fled to us, and we had their free leave to build and plant where we have taken up lands."

Roger Conant and his small band of English settlers, most of them from the West Country and known as the ‘Old Planters’, were followed by thousands more arrivals from further afield.

 

Scene along the Salem waterfront, c. 1770–1780. Image credit: Wikipedia

For centuries, the port of Salem has been a destination for emigrants and families wishing to make a new life for themselves in America. Last year saw the celebration of the first-ever Salem Ancestry Days celebration, intended to be a gathering point for descendants of Salem’s families as well as a research opportunity for people who want to learn more about their family history, explained Kate Fox, Executive Director of the organisation Destination Salem. 

No, not the ancient English All Saints’ Church in East Budleigh but the American First Church at Salem, built in 1836 in the Gothic Revivalist style. Image credit: Wikipedia

The second Ancestry Days event runs from 29 April to 2 May, one of its locations being the First Church at Salem, an institution which boasts of being one of the oldest continuing Protestant churches in North America. Both Roger Conant and his wife were among the original members, as listed in a document dated 1639.

 

‘Blessed are the Peacemakers’ commemorates the events of 1625 when Roger Conant intervened in the dispute between Cape Ann fishermen and Myles Standish, military officer of the Plymouth Pilgrims. 

‘Visitors will be streaming through our church,’ says Diane Smith, Chair of its Archives committee. She tells me that displaying a copy of John Washington’s painting during the 2022 Ancestry Days event will work nicely with the genealogy chart that she has for the Conant family.

Members of many other families apart from Conants will be celebrating their ancestral and immigrant connections to Salem at this 2022 event. ‘The weekend will feature lectures, tours, research opportunities, and information on the people who connect us all to Salem,’ say the organisers. But the descendants of Roger Conant will be particularly interested in the First Church display.

When Frederick Odell Conant published his History and genealogy of the Conant family in England and America in 1887 4,300 of them were listed in the book. There must be many more than that number today. I’m sure that they will be fascinated by John Washington’s portrayal of their distinguished ancestor if they are able to attend the Salem Ancestry Days event.