Founded by a ‘witch,’ Salem’s oldest Anglican church tells its unique history

[Episcopal News Service] Every October, more than a million people visit Salem, Massachusetts, known as the “Witch City,” for its monthlong Haunted Happenings festival. They celebrate “spooky season” with haunted houses, psychic readings, séances, tarot classes and much more, all while in the location of the infamous Salem witch trials that led to the executions of at least 25 people between February 1692 and May 1693.

Walking tours to trolley rides are especially popular in this northeast Boston suburb. Many of Salem’s most famous buildings – including the Jonathan Corwin “Witch House,” the Peabody Essex Museum, the House of the Seven Gables, the Salem Witch Trials Memorial and the Salem Maritime National Historic Site – are less than a mile from each other. In between these historic places lies St. Peter’s-San Pedro Episcopal Church, Salem’s oldest Anglican church founded in 1733 by Philip English, who along with his wife, Mary English, was one of more than 200 people who were accused of witchcraft during the witch trials.

“Philip English was a person who was maligned because of his foreignness, a French-speaking Anglican among the Puritans, with immense wealth,” the Rev. Nathan Ives, rector of St. Peter’s, told Episcopal News Service.

Philip English, born Philippe d’Anglois in 1651, was a wealthy merchant of French Huguenot descent from Jersey, a British Crown Dependency that is the largest of the Channel Islands located off France’s Normandy coast. In 1670, d’Anglois immigrated to Salem and changed his name to Philip English. He became Salem’s richest merchant, owning multiple properties, and lived a cosmopolitan lifestyle that clashed with the Puritan community. He also earned ill will for not fully paying taxes and for his involvement with local politics. Despite attending Puritan church services to fit in, English’s unpopularity led to him and Mary being accused of witchcraft in April 1692. With their wealth and help from connections in Boston, the Englishes were able to escape to New York City, where they remained until the witch trials came to an end.

When Philip and Mary returned to Salem the following year, they learned that their belongings had been confiscated and their home had been looted. Philip English spent the rest of his life suing all involved parties, dying in 1736 with £200 to his name. Before he died, English in 1733 donated the land to build St. Peter’s, which houses the oldest church bell in the United States.

“It was an act of defiance against the Puritans, who treated him so poorly all his working life, and nearly took his life and the life of his wife,” Ives said. “It was in its way an act of social justice, albeit for white men at the time, right from the get-go. The church’s mission today is anchored to that history even though it’s weighted down with its complicity in slavery.”

Jill Christiansen is assistant director of education at the Salem Witch Museum, a history museum that presents the story of the witch trials as they truly were – a tragedy that ruined many lives. Christiansen, a parishioner of St. Peter’s, told ENS that there’s no known evidence of English’s direct involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, but he did trade lumber and low-quality fish to slaveholders in Barbados. The “refuse fish” was used to feed enslaved people in the eastern Caribbean island. Enslaved people also built St. Peter’s first building, and documents show that the church’s first two rectors were slaveholders. Black parishioners had to worship upstairs.

Many factors contributed to the witch hysteria in Salem, including unknown mental and physical illnesses, coincidental misfortune after interacting with someone, economic stress and political tension. Some women were tried for witchcraft for being “mouthy.” But others, like Philip English, “just weren’t liked,” Christiansen told ENS. “Race was also a factor, and at least three enslaved people of color were also accused of witchcraft.”

St. Peter’s, a bilingual congregation whose membership is increasingly Latino, is working to share its story of past complicity in slavery and restore its current building – built in the 1930s – to use it as a tool for reparations with a $250,000 matching grant from the National Fund for Sacred Space. The church’s leadership is in early conversations with the NAACP to figure out how to best serve Salem’s Black community.

Serious archival research of St. Peter’s began in 2023, when Ives and the congregation wanted to look critically at the church’s history and share the truth with the public. Much of the research went towards developing “The Making of a Witch,” a one-act play that depicts Philip English reflecting on his life and how he became branded a witch, while the narrator, a historian, questions his actions and motivations. Written by Rory O’Brien and produced by Christiansen, the play launched in spring 2024 and continues through November. The church plans to run the play again next year. Proceeds from the play fund the church’s ministries, including a diaper ministry, Laundry Love and financial assistance to anyone in crisis.

Ives said two other plays are in the works based on ongoing archival research, one focusing on the church’s complicity in slavery and another focusing on the church’s role in the American Revolution. St. Peter’s plans to use proceeds made from the play about slavery to fund reparations. The church is also working with Black scholars to ensure the story is told accurately.

“It’s our call as Christians, as faithful disciples of Christ, to look inward and look back, not with nostalgia, but with a critical eye towards what actually happened here,” Ives said. “Salem is a beautiful place with a rich history that is both amazing and tragic, so we are focused on telling the truth.”

St. Peter’s also offers educational tours to the public, which Ives said is especially surprising to tourists participating in seasonal occult-themed city tours. They leave, he said, “amazed” by learning the real, un-sanitized, non-whitewashed history. This includes dispelling rumors that St. Peter’s is haunted because its current building lies on top of its original graveyard, where Philip English was buried, and many of the headstones were relocated to the front of the church.

“On these tours, we remind people that we’re a real and active church. We can’t lie, and we don’t manufacture goblin stories,” said Jim Sweet, one of several tour guides for the church. Sweet, a parishioner of St. Peter’s since 1956, has lived most of his life in Salem and graduated from Salem High School, whose athletics teams are called the Witches. “The real history’s much more interesting than ‘Hocus Pocus.’”

“The commercialized tour guides will tell their tall tales, but we at St. Peter’s will continue sharing the authentic history as we continue to learn more,” said Ana Nuncio, a former senior warden of St. Peter’s, told ENS. “We have a long way to go to continue peeling back the layers and layers of history.”

-Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.