148 



East of Washington street and next the North River 

 the earliest houses were those of Reuben Guppy, John 

 Smith, Wm. Comins and John Symonds. South of that 

 was the homestead of Gov. Endicott (see Essex List. 

 Proceedings, Vol. V, p. 131) . Where Dr. Gate lives now 

 was the house of Thomas Oliver, whose wife, Mary, 

 was a noted character in the earliest Colonial history. 

 Thomas Oliver's second wife, Bridget, who afterwards 

 married Edward Bishop, was the first victim of the 

 Witchcraft delusion of 1692. 



On the north corner of Essex and Washington streets 

 lived Walter Price ; and next east lived John Woodbury* 

 one of the Old Planters. He died in 1641, leaving a 

 widow, Ann, as appears by our County Court records, 

 who, in 1660, conveyed the house to Capt. George Cor- 

 win. It stood just east of Browne's Block. Next east 

 of this, where Hon. Richard S. Rogers lives, was a house 

 and half acre of land, in which lived Thomas Weeks be- 

 fore 1655. For reasons which' will be stated hereafter, 

 we believe that this was originally the house of Roger 

 Conant, who, as he himself said, erected the first house 

 in Salem. 



Where the Mansion House lately stood, was the Ship 

 Tavern, kept for many years by John Gedney. And be- 

 tween that and St. Peter street, was the homestead of 

 Peter Palfrey, another of the Old Planters. After his 

 removal to Reading, about the year 1648, this estate 

 came into the possession of Wm. Browne. 



From St. Peter street to the Common, and between 

 Essex street and Brown street was all, in 1640, the 

 homestead of Emanuel Downing. His house was after- 

 wards the home of Joseph Gardner who married his 



* Wrongly conjectured in a former article (Hist. Coll. Vol. 8, p. 253) to be Nicho- 

 las Woodbury, whose Will, dated 1685, we find is on the Suffolk Records. 



