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and connexions there, which he did during the Easter vacation of 1919. At the
Essex Institute, which was well known to him from former sojourns in the
glamorous old town of crumbling Puritan gables and clustered gambrel roofs, he
was very kindly received, and unearthed there a considerable amount of Curwen
data. He found that his ancestor was born in Salem-Village, now Danvers, seven
miles from town, on the eighteenth of February (O.S.) 1662-3; and that he had
run away to sea at the age of fifteen, not appearing again for nine years, when
he returned with the speech, dress, and manners of a native Englishman and
settled in Salem proper. At that time he had little to do with his family, but
spent most of his hours with the curious books he had brought from Europe, and
the strange chemicals which came for him on ships from England, France, and
Holland. Certain trips of his into the country were the objects of much local
inquisitiveness, and were whisperingly associated with vague rumours of fires on
the hills at night.
Curwen's only close friends had been one Edward Hutchinson of Salem-Village and
one Simon Orne of Salem. With these men he was often seen in conference about
the Common, and visits among them were by no means infrequent. Hutchinson had a
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house well out toward the woods, and it was not altogether liked by sensitive
people because of the sounds heard there at night. He was said to entertain
strange visitors, and the lights seen from his windows were not always of the
same colour. The knowledge he displayed concerning long-dead persons and
long-forgotten events was considered distinctly unwholesome, and he disappeared
about the time the witchcraft panic began, never to be heard from again. At that
time Joseph Curwen also departed, but his settlement in Providence was soon
learned of. Simon Orne lived in Salem until 1720, when his failure to grow
visibly old began to excite attention. He thereafter disappeared, though thirty
years later his precise counterpart and self-styled son turned up to claim his
property. The claim was allowed on the strength of documents in Simon Orne's
known hand, and Jedediah Orne continued to dwell in Salem till 1771, when
certain letters from Providence citizens to the Rev. Thomas Barnard and others
brought about his quiet removal to parts unknown.
Certain documents by and about all of the strange characters were available at
teh Essex Institute, the Court House, and the Registry of Deeds, and included
both harmless commonplaces such as land titles and bills of sale, and furtive
fragments of a more provocative nature. There were four or five unmistakable
allusions to them on the witchcraft trial records; as when one Hepzibah Lawson
swore on July 10, 1692, at the Court of Oyer and Terminer under Judge Hathorne,
that: 'fortie Witches and the Blacke Man were wont to meete in the Woodes behind
Mr. Hutchinson's house', and one Amity How declared at a session of August 8th
before Judge Gedney that:'Mr. G. B. (Rev. George Burroughs) on that Nighte putt
ye Divell his Marke upon Bridget S., Jonathan A., Simon O., Deliverance W.,
Joseph C., Susan P., Mehitable C., and Deborah B.'
Then there was a catalogue of Hutchinson's uncanny library as found after his
disappearance, and an unfinished manuscript in his handwriting, couched in a
cipher none could read. Ward had a photostatic copy of this manuscript made, and
began to work casually on the cipher as soon as it was delivered to him. After
the following August his labours on the cipher became intense and feverish, and
there is reason to believe from his speech and conduct that he hit upon the key
before October or November. He never stated, though, whether or not he had
succeeded.
But of greatest immediate interest was the Orne material. It took Ward only a
short time to prove from identity of penmanship a thing he had already
considered established from the text of the letter to Curwen; namely, that Simon
Orne and his supposed son were one and the same person. As Orne had said to his
correspondent, it was hardly safe to live too long in Salem, hence he resorted
to a thirty-year sojourn abroad, and did not return to claim his lands except as
a representative of a new generation. Orne had apparently been careful to
destroy most of his correspondence, but the citizens who took action in 1771
found and preserved a few letters and papers which excited their wonder. There
were cryptic formulae and diagrams in his and other hands which Ward now either
copied with care or had photographed, and one extremely mysterious letter in a
chirography that the searcher recognised from items in the Registry of Deeds as
positively Joseph Curwen's.
This Curwen letter, though undated as to the year, was evidently not the one in
answer to which Orne had written the confiscated missive; and from internal
evidence Ward placed it not much later than 1750. It may not be amiss to give
the text in full, as a sample of the style of one whose history was so dark and
terrible. The recipient is addressed as "Simon", but a line (whether drawn by
Curwen or Orne Ward could not tell) is run through the word.
Providence, 1. May
Brother:-
My honour'd Antient Friende, due Respects and earnest Wishes to Him whom we
serue for yr eternall Power. I am just come upon That which you ought to
knowe, concern'g the Matter of the Laste Extremitie and what to doe regard'g
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