Page 10 - 2024 Salem Massachusetts Official Event Guide and Map

The Point
Salem Marine Society certificate detail, by Abijiah Northey, 1797. National Park Service Museum Collections, SAMA 2520.
The area known today as The Point was originally home to the Naumkeag band of the Massachusett tribe, a nomadic group who constructed seasonal homes near the South River. They called this area Naumkeag, which translates from Algonquin to “Fishing Place.”
In 1626, Roger Conant and his company arrived and established their own fishing settlement. While fishing remained a priority, the new settlers replaced the name “Naumkeag” with “Salem” (from “shalom,” the Hebrew word for “peace.”)
British colonists used the land to support their fishing economy and referred to the area between South River and Salem Harbor as “Stage Point” for the various fishing “stages” like cleaning and curing catches.
The colonists’ treatment of the Massachusett was unfortunately anything but peaceful. European diseases and the appalling treatment of Indigenous prisoners in
King Philip’s War had a devastating impact on the Naumkeag population by the end
of the 1600s.
In 1775, Salem became the site of the first armed conflict of the Revolutionary War during Leslie’s Retreat. After the war,
Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, who served in the Continental Army under George Washington’s command returned to Salem, where he was feted at Hamilton Hall on Chestnut Street in 1784.
Lafayette visited Salem again in 1824
as part of a grand tour proposed by President Monroe. This time, he was greeted by thousands of schoolchildren wearing “Lafayette ribbons,” and treated to another celebratory dinner at Hamilton Hall. Before the end of this visit, South Street, the main thoroughfare through the Stage Point area, was renamed Lafayette Street.
Pequot Mills c. 1940, photo: Nelson Dionne Salem History Collection, Salem State University Archives and Special Collections, Salem, Massachusetts
10
SALEM.ORG