The Rebecca Nurse Homestead

About Us:

The Rebecca Nurse Homestead sits on 25+ acres of an original 300 acres occupied by Rebecca Nurse and her family from 1678-1798. The property holds the traditional Salt-box home lived in by the Nurse Family. This is the only home of a person executed during the trials open to the public.

Another unique feature is a reproduction of the 1672 Salem Village Meeting House where many of the early hearings surrounding the Salem Witchcraft Hysteria took place.

Located on the grounds is the Nurse Family Cemetery. It has been a longstanding family tradition that Rebecca's son and husband retrieved her body after her execution and secretly buried it here. A monument with a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier was erected years later to commemorate this. Recently another victim of the Hysteria, George Jacobs, was buried here after being found in the middle of the last century on his former property in a lone unmarked grave. This is the only known burial site of anyone convicted of witchcraft during the Salem trials.

The Rebecca Nurse Homestead is a private non-profit museum owned by the Danvers Alarm List Coy. It is an entirely volunteer group of 18th century living history reeanactors that portray the militia, minute and alarm companies of Danvers and surrounding communities, as they existed in the 1774-1775 timeframe. The Alarm List Coy. presents its impression to the public through demonstrations, exhibitions, parades, living history encampments and battle reenactments. We clothe and accouter ourselves with reproductions of the period, according to research done by the members and use the drill manual created in 1775 by Col. Tomothy Pickering of Salem, "An Easy Plan of Discipline for a Militia."