DANVERS — The town of Danvers and the Danvers Alarm List Company announced a partnership this week to preserve the 26-acre Rebecca Nurse Homestead property in perpetuity.
The Alarm List, a local organization dedicated to preserving the history and memory of the Salem Village Witchcraft Hysteria of 1692 has, in cooperation with Historic New England, owned and operated the Rebecca Nurse Homestead for many years.
Nurse, a 71-year-old Salem Village woman, was tried and hanged for witchcraft in 1692.
The 26-acre site is largely open space except for a 3-acre envelope containing the homestead and barn, which was previously subject to a Historic New England preservation restriction.
Over the years, the town and Alarm List Co. had discussed permanently protecting the entire homestead site and, in 2019, the organization approached the town to rekindle the conversation.
After several years of dialogue, Historic New England, the Alarm List Co. and the town agreed on a tripartite settlement in which Historic New England will convey legal ownership of the open space acreage to the Alarm List. The town agreed to pay $750,000 to the Alarm List in exchange for a conservation restriction to be held by the state and the Danvers Conservation Commission.
The town will fund the project through bond authorizations approved in 1986 and 1999 for protecting parcels deemed as worthy of protection in the Danvers Open Space Plan.
“This exciting partnership represents many decades of effort by many dozens of local stakeholders,” Town Manager Steve Bartha said while acknowledging “the role of former Assistant Planning & Human Services Director Susan Fletcher, whose vision and persistence kept this plan alive, and former (Danvers Alarm List) President Jackson Tingle who, in 2019 helped to rekindle dialogue after the 2010 attempt ultimately stalled out.”
“The Danvers Alarm List Company is pleased that our historic landscape will be protected in perpetuity, remaining as it was from the founding of Danvers, and providing an authentic setting for our nationally important historic site,” President Kathryn Rutkowski said.
Nurse, a 71-year-old devout Christian and mother of eight grown children, lived with her husband on what was, at the time, a 300-acre farm in Danvers, then known as Salem Village.
In the spring of 1692, she was accused of being a witch by a neighbor Ann Putnam Sr. and her daughter Ann Jr., who were known to be jealous of the Nurses’ larger farm.
After multiple hearings during which Ann Sr. and daughter testified repeatedly against her, she was declared to be a witch in early July and was hanged on July 19, 1692.
Nineteen years later, on Oct. 17, 1711, she and the 19 others executed after being convicted of witchcraft were exonerated and found not guilty.
All of those who testified against them are believed to have done so out of envy, grievances or jealousy.