Salem is a bustling seaport—the sixth largest in the country—and known as a center for privateering

Salem is incorporated as a city

Salem adopts the motto “Divitis Insiae usque as ultimum sinum”, Latin for “To the farthest port of the rich East”

Nathaniel Hawthorne is overseer of the Salem port

Four hundred homes are destroyed when fire tears through Salem

Arthur Miller writes The Crucible, a play that depicts the events that led to the Salem witch trials