| Late 1700s |
Judith Sargeant Murray helped establish the first Universalist Society in Salem |
| 1790 - 1830 |
Second Great Awakening |
| 1797 |
Captain Jonathan Carnes of Salem, Massachusetts returns from Sumatra with first large pepper cargo and puts United States in world spice trade. |
| 1800 |
Thomas Jefferson defeated John Adams for the presidency |
| 1790 - 1807 |
Salem's "Golden Age"-a time of expanding trade and profit |
| 1801 |
Salem Female Charitable Society formed |
| 1802 |
Nathaniel Bowditch published New American Practical Navigator, being an epitome of navigation and nautical astronomy |
| 1802 |
Minerva, ship owned by Clifford Crowninshield and Nathaniel West, returned from China |
| 1803 |
Louisiana Purchase |
| 1804 |
Thomas Jefferson re-elected over Federalist Charles C. Pinckney |
| 1804 |
July 4, Nathaniel Hawthorne, author, born |
| 1804 |
Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, publisher and educator who opened the nation's first kindergarten, born |
| 1805 |
Hamilton Hall built by Salem architect, Samuel McIntire |
| 1805 |
Nathaniel Bowditch House built |
| 1807 |
Trade Embargo of 1807, which forbids U.S. ships to sail for foreign ports, in full effect; approximately 25 of Salem's ocean going vessels were idle |
| 1808 |
Republican James Madison defeats Federalist Charles C. Pinckney for presidency |
| 1809 |
March 7, Embargo repealed |
| 1810 |
the Salem Athenaeum incorporated |
| 1810 |
Active sailed from Salem on the first trading voyage to the Fiji Islands |
| 1810 - 1812 |
Benjamin W. Crowninshield House built |
| 1811 |
Town meeting decided "an unjust and ruinous war is impolitic, unnecessary and disastrous to Salem shipping." |
| 1811 |
Salem's first Roman Catholic Church organized |
| 1812 - 1815 |
War of 1812; United States at war with Britain |
| 1812 |
Anna Hasseltine Judson and her husband, Adoniram, were commissioned from Tabernacle Church to travel to Burma |
| 1814 |
Benjamin Crowinshield of Salem became Secretary of the Navy |
| 1814 |
Hartford Convention, New England states discussed secession |
| 1816 |
James Monroe elected president in landslide; "Era of Good Feeling" |
| 1816 |
Massachusetts Steam Navigation Co., incorporated |
| 1817 |
July 8, President James Monroe visited Salem and was entertained at Secretary Crowinshield's home |
| 1817 |
Salem's craftsmen formed the Salem Charitable Mechanics Association |
| 1818/1819 |
Andrew Safford House built by John Andrew |
| 1818/1819 |
Derby Wharf Custom House built by order of Congress |
| 1820 |
Missouri Compromise |
| 1822 |
Candy maker, "Mrs. Spencer," invented Gibraltars |
| 1823 |
Seaman's Society formed |
| 1824 |
House of Representatives selects John Quincy Adams as new president |
| 1824 |
August 31, the Marquis de Lafayette entertained at Hamilton Hall |
| 1825 |
Nathaniel Hawthorne graduated from Bowdoin College |
| 1825 |
October 14, President John Quincy Adams dedicated the East India Marine Hall |
| 1826 |
200th anniversary of the founding of Salem |
| 1826 |
Temperance movement gained hold in Salem |
| 1827 |
Spy was the first ship to enter Salem Harbor from Zanzibar |
| 1828 |
Andrew Jackson elected president |
| 1828 |
Nathaniel Hawthorne anonymously published Fanshawe, a tale |
| 1829 |
March 31, Dr. Edward Augustus Holyoke, first president of the Philosophical Society, the Salem Athenaeum, and the Essex Historical Society, died |
| 1829 |
Joseph Dixon opens the first lead pencil factory in the United States in Salem |
| 1830 |
American Colonization Society established Liberia on the west coast of Africa to resettle free blacks |
| 1830 |
Invention of the steam press |
| 1830 |
Salem's famous White Murder Trial |
| 1830 |
Salem Lyceum Society organized |
| 1831 |
an anti-Masonry party in Salem |
| 1832 |
U.S. House of Representatives instituted a gag rule that covered all future discussion of slavery |
| 1833 |
June 26, President Andrew Jackson stayed at the home of merchant Nathaniel West |
| 1833 |
Seamen's Widow and Orphan Association of Salem formed |
| 1833 |
Essex County Natural History Society first met |
| 1834 |
Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society formed; members included Charlotte Forten and Sarah Parker Remond |
| 1835 |
October 29, an anti-slavery riot in Salem |
| 1835 |
Record of a School published anonymously by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody about the school run by Bronson Alcott, whose educational theories helped inspire the Transcendentalists |
| 1836 |
Democrat Martin Van Buren elected over candidate of new Whig Party |
| 1836 |
Salem was incorporated as a city and chose Leverett Saltonstall as its first mayor |
| 1837 |
Panic of 1837 |
| 1837 |
Salem's City Hall was built with funds from the federal government |
| 1837 |
First Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women meets in Philadelphia |
| 1838 |
Nathaniel Bowditch died |
| 1838 |
August 27, the Eastern Railroad began to offer service from Salem to Boston |
| 1839 |
Naumkeag Steam Cotton Company incorporated |
| 1839 |
Seamen's Orphan and Children's Friend Society organized |
| 1830s-1840s |
Susan Burley held evening salons and organized the Salem Book Club |
| 1840 |
Whig William Henry Harrison elected president over Democrat Van Buren; Harrison died one month after taking office and replaced by ex-Democrat John Tyler |
| 1842 |
Horace Mann, educator who was instrumental in the establishment of Salem Normal School and brother-in-law of Nathaniel Hawthorne, officiated at the opening of a new school |
| 1842 |
Sophia Amelia Peabody married Nathaniel Hawthorne |
| 1842 |
A Mormon Church was formed in Salem |
| 1843 |
Benjamin Pickman, merchant and representative to Congress in 1809, died |
| 1843 |
Salem native S.B. Ives develops "The Mansion of Happiness," the first board game in the United States. |
| 1843 |
Mary Peabody married Horace Mann |
| 1844 |
Democrat James K. Polk defeats Whig Henry Clay |
| 1844 |
Joseph Peabody died; Salem's Indies trade virtually ceased, and Salem was no longer an important port |
| 1844 |
Ladies Seamen Friend Society organized |
| 1845 |
Irish potato famine; 1.75 million Irish leave Ireland for US and Canada |
| 1846 - 1848 |
War with Mexico |
| 1847 |
President James Knox Polk passed through Salem |
| 1847 |
The Naumkeag Steam Cotton Company's first mill began production |
| 1848 |
Mexican War Hero General Zachary Taylor, a Whig, defeats General Lewis Cass for presidency |
| 1848 |
Dr. William Bentley, Salem scholar and diarist, died |
| 1848 |
first woman's rights convention held in Seneca Falls, NY |
| 1848 |
California Gold Rush |
| 1849 |
Sculptor Louisa Lander, granddaughter of Elias Hasket Derby, moved to Salem |
| 1850 |
President Taylor died; Millard Fillmore became president |
| 1850 |
Compromise of 1850 |
| 1850 |
Salem stores were lighted with gas for the first time as the Salem Gas Light Company commenced operation |
| 1850 - 1851 |
John Tucker Daland House built by noted Boston architect Gridley J. F. Bryant for the prosperous Salem merchant John Tucker Daland |
| 1851 |
Lucy Stone, suffragist and anti-slavery advocated, lectured for the Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society |
| 1851 |
Alexander Burton, a free black barber of Salem, arrested as a suspect in the rescue of Shadrach Minkins from federal marshals |
| 1852 |
Democrat Franklin Pierce elected president; death of the Whig Party |
| 1852 |
Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom's Cabin |
| 1854 |
Salem Normal School opened |
| 1854 |
the anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic Know-Nothing Party active in Salem |
| 1854 |
Kansas-Nebraska Bill nullified Missouri Compromise |
| 1856 |
Democrat James Buchanan elected president over Know-Nothing Millard Fillmore and Republican John C. Fremont |
| 1856 |
The Woman Suffrage Club of Salem hosted the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association's annual convention at Lyceum Hall |
| 1856/1857 |
Caroline Plummer, philanthropist, donated funds to construct Plummer Hall to house the Salem Athenaeum and Essex Institute |
| 1857 |
US experienced economic slump |
| 1857 |
US Supreme Court's proslavery Dred Scott decision |
| 1858 |
the Young Men's Christian Association organized |
| 1859 |
John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry |
| 1860 |
Republican Abraham Lincoln defeated Northern Democrat Stephen Douglas, Southern Democrat John C. Breckenridge, and Constitutional Unionist John Bell |
| 1860 |
South Carolina seceded from the Union |
| 1860s |
Salem saw an influx of French-Canadian immigrants |
| 1861 |
Association for the Relief of Aged and Destitute Women of Salem created |
| 1861 |
Salem Female Employment Society founded |
| 1861 |
War declared |
| 1861 - 1865 |
over 3,000 men from Salem served in the Army and Navy |
