![House of the Seven Gables (1915)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/House_of_the_Seven_Gables_%281915%29.jpg)
Caroline Osgood Emmerton (1866–1942) was a wealthy philanthropist from
Salem, Massachusetts
Salem ( ) is a historic coastal city in Essex County, Massachusetts, located on the North Shore of Greater Boston. Continuous settlement by Europeans began in 1626 with English colonists. Salem would become one of the most significant seaports tr ...
, USA, who established The
House of the Seven Gables
The House of the Seven Gables (also known as the Turner House or Turner-Ingersoll Mansion) is a 1668 colonial mansion in Salem, Massachusetts, named for its gables. It was made famous by Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1851 novel ''The House of the Seven ...
as a house museum also known as the Turner-Ingersoll mansion in 1908.
With a fortune inherited from her grandfather, maritime trader John Bertram, Emmerton carried on her family's tradition of endowing and supporting charitable good works, including the Bertram Home for Aged Men, the Salem public library, the Seaman's Widow and Orphan Society, the Family Service Association, the Salem Fraternity Boys Club and the city's Public Welfare Society, as well as the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (now
Historic New England
Historic New England, previously known as the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA), is a charitable, non-profit, historic preservation organization headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. It is focused on New England ...
), of which she was a founding member. By the age of 28 she was a board of director for the Charter St. Home, now the North Shore Medical Center/Salem Hospital. In 1907, she joined with a group of women to explore forming a
settlement house
The settlement movement was a reformist social movement that began in the 1880s and peaked around the 1920s in United Kingdom and the United States. Its goal was to bring the rich and the poor of society together in both physical proximity and s ...
in Salem and to do "experimental work". By the following year, these women had begun to offer classes in sewing and other crafts and activities in an old Seaman's Bethel next to the historic Turner-Ingersoll Mansion, which was also known as the house that
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was an American novelist and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religion.
He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, from a family long associated with that t ...
had written about in his novel ''
The House of the Seven Gables
''The House of the Seven Gables: A Romance'' is a Gothic novel written beginning in mid-1850 by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne and published in April 1851 by Ticknor and Fields of Boston. The novel follows a New England family and their anc ...
''. In 1908, she bought the Turner-Ingersoll house, and in 1910 the organization opened in its hybrid form. She hired Joseph Everett Chandler as the architect. The Uptons sold the property after they moved to the Salem Willows neighborhood & what is today the
Salem Willows Historic District.
Like many American settlement house founders and workers, Emmerton saw exposure to historic environments and stories as a way for new immigrants to absorb democratic values and practices. "If, as is generally conceded, the settlements do the best Americanization work," she wrote, "should not this settlement excel whose home is the ancient House of Seven Gables, the foundations of which were laid by the first immigrants who came here long ago, strangers in a strange land?" Over time, Emmerton continued to expand and reorganize the compound, eventually moving four additional colonial-era buildings to the site and working with the colonial revival architect
Joseph Everett Chandler to restore them.
[Stevenson, Edward M. 1979. ''The History of the House of Seven Gables and Summary of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Novel''. Southborough, MA: Yankee Colour Corp]
Footnotes
External links
The House of the Seven Gablesbiography of Caroline Emmerton
{{DEFAULTSORT:Emmerton, Caroline
Historical preservationists
People from Salem, Massachusetts
1866 births
1942 deaths
Burials at Harmony Grove Cemetery