cede the disputed right of every native born citizen of Es- 

 sex County to maintain against the world that this is the 

 most historic county in America ; meanwhile I will per- 

 sonally endorse the claim to the extent of declaring that 

 old Essex County is historic. 



The traditions of this county reach far back into the 

 period when the Indian tribes, the Pennacooks, the Pen- 

 tuckets, the Narragansetts and Naumkeags, were the al- 

 most undisputed possessors of its lakes, streams and 

 forests. Onr acquaintance with the Indians of this region 

 is legendary, and is still receding into the realm of myth 

 and fable. Indian legends have become the shadowy back- 

 ground of all our American history. We have traditions 

 also of such European pioneers as John Endicott, John 

 Winthrop, Sir Harry Vane and Roger Williams ; these 

 make Essex County the associate of Suffolk and Plymouth 

 counties in stirring annals of explorers and founders. We 

 have also our witchcraft history. More than two hundred- 

 years ago, the previously undisputed belief in demoniac 

 possessions here came into collision with Yankee common 

 sense ; and the belief in the reality of demoniac possessions 

 was then dissipated for the world and forever. The nine- 

 teen martyrs who were hung on Gallows Hill for refusing 

 to falsely confess themselves witches or Avizards, were as 

 real martyrs as any men in the ages who have preferred 

 death to the loss of personal integrity. Essex County has 

 also its own store of revolutionary memories. On its soil 

 at North Bridge, Salem, the New Englanders first said 

 from behind a wall of bayonets to Old Englanders, " Thus 

 far, but no farther." And from farms of Essex County 

 volunteers sprang to tlie front at the first promise of Amer- 

 ican independence. Scarcely more than a stone's throw 

 from this place stands a monument commemorating the 

 names of Essex County men who marched to Lexington on 

 the 19th of April, 1775, — the names of some who did not 

 live to return from that first skirmish of the Pevolution. 



