by Allison Farrell and Heather Mah
Joseph Pope, who arrived from England in 1634 owned the most land in the area, 70 acres. Mr. Pope operated a saw mill on Crystal Lake, which is now a city-owned conservation area in West Peabody. Pope's saw mill was first mentioned in records in 1681. Twenty-one years later, it was referred to as the "old mill". The street now named Russell Street was laid out by a jury in 1741. From 1870 to 1882, the street was called "Paper Mills Road", after the saw mill. In 1882, the street was named Russell Street after the Russell family. Joseph Pope, Jr. married Abiah Folger, the aunt of Benjamin Franklin, and they purchased 70 acres of farmland from Lieutenant Thomas Gardner in 1698. The Burke School is situated on 15 acres of this land. (Sources: Burke School 30th Reunion Program; John Wells, The Peabody Story.)
History of Witchcraft Haunts Old Saw Mill (Appendix 1)
The Upton family also lived in West Peabody. John Upton was born in Scotland. He was married to Eleanor Stuart who was also a Scot. John was sent to New England and sold upon arrival to a local woman. He was an indentured servant and later bought his freedom. In 1658, John bought 200 acres of land from Mr. Bullock. John Upton built a house in 1660 on Lowell Street near Birch Street.. The house became the Upton Tavern, which was also an inn where people could stay. Mary Upton Ferrin (Appendix 2) was born in this house in 1810. She was the earliest Massachusetts pioneer of woman suffrage. Many of the Uptons are buried in the Upton Cemetery on Birch Street and the Upton Tavern, now a private residence, is still standing on Lowell Street. (Sources: John Wells, The Peabody Story; S.M. Smoller, Mary Upton Ferrin.)
by Allison Farrell and Heather Mah
John E. Burke was born on December 26, 1893* in South Natick, Massachusetts. He graduated from Boston High School in the class of 1912. He went on to graduate from Boston College, where he also graduated from Graduate school in 1918.
He was married to Alice M. McKinnon and began his career as an educator in Gloucester. While there, he was a high sol teacher and coach.
Mr. Burke came to Peabody Public Schools in 1923 and later became the head of the Science department and the Director of Athletics. In 1934, he coached a golf team that he took to play against a New York high school.
In 1951, he was involved in managing the Flattery fund to award the Jimmy Flattery Golf trophy for the outstanding student of the year.
He remained in Peabody schools until his sudden death on May 12, 1955.
After his death, on August 11, 1964, Mr. Fleming, a member of the school committee, moved that the new "Birch Street School" be named the John E. Burke School in memory of "an educator and a gentleman". At the meeting, Mr. Donovan stated that the school should be named for someone who gave his life to the service (of educating).
There is a painting of John E. Burke outside the main office at the school. He had brown hair, blue eyes and wore glasses. His shoulders were very broad. The painting is by "Gainsboro".
For more information, see his obituary (Appendix 3) and a letter of tribute printed in the Peabody Times.
*The school department's personnel records indicate that John Burke was born in 1893; however, the program published for the school's 30th reunion lists his birth year at 1894.
Memories of the opening of the John E. Burke School.
Two current teachers at the John E. Burke School, Claudette Poor and Barbara Lamoureux, began their careers at the school when it opened in 1964.
"We arrived here a couple of days before and we were told we really couldn't come in yet because the floors weren't done and the desks weren't ready. The day before school opened, we did come in and were able to put up one bulleting board each. We looked around and discovered that we had no desks, no pencils, no paper and Mrs. Lamoureux, the front of her floor wasn't finished. So, the night before, the principal, Greg Theokas, and Stewey Bell, the custodian, were here putting desks together so we could have desks on opening day. Mrs. Lamoureux and I went to J.J. Newberry's and bought crayons, coloring books and pencils….We didn't know what we were going to do. At that time we had 33 students in a class. I think it took three days and at the end of three days, we had everything we needed. We were first year teachers. We had just graduated (from) college. This was a brand new school and every teacher but one in the school was new. We had not experience. Mr. Theokas had never been a principal before. It was the blind leading the blind. We really had a good time. We all learned together." [Source: Interview with Claudette Poor, 3/98]
"We had missing tiles. We had no materials. As well as the school being new, we were new. The only thing I know about this area, when we first started, Bow Street was a two way street between Lowell and Russell Street." [Source: Interview with Barbara Lamoureux, March 1998]
What are the unqiue features and programs of the John E. Burke School?
by Allison Farrell and Heather Mah
The following information was provided by Mrs. Maxine Edmunds, Principal, during our interview with her in March, 1998.
Currently at the John E. Burke Elementary School there is a brand new curriculum, as well as the Peabody Child Center, BASE program and the Accelerated Reader program.
There is now a Peabody Child Center, a preschool, at the Burke School. It's a preschool for the entire city of Peabody, not just West Peabody. It's designed to be able to work into parents' work schedules so that the students have a place to be after kindergarten class.
The BASE (Burke After School Education) program is available for the school children after school. The faculty is planning a golf outing, which would be a nice tribute to the school's namesake, John E. Burke, who was an avid golfer.
The accelerated reader program is for children also. They read as many books as they can from their grade level list. After they finish each book, they take a test on it. They earn as many points as they can with the tests they take. At the beginning of each month, they receive a certificate. Most of the children compete with their classmates.
The design of the John E. Burke School was repeated when the McCarthy Memorial and William A. Welch, Sr. schools were built. "All of the improvements or suggestions that they got after people had lived in this building for awhile, those changed have been made. To give you an example, if you go to the McCarthy or Welch, you'll notice that there is a foyer," said Mrs. Edmunds.
At the Burke, when cold air comes in the school foyer during the winter, it's a big problem. There are carpets lying along the front entrance doors to collect the dirt caused by the erosion of the property. Everyone tracks more soil into the school and that's one way of containing it.
Journal of Memories - 30th Anniversary Celebration Program (Appendix 4)
History of Witchcraft Haunts Old Saw Mill
Peabody-Lynnfield Weekly News, October 26, 1995, p. 1
by S.M. Smoller
PEABODY - Was it witchcraft that stopped the steady rhythm of the waterwheel at Pope's saw mill on Norris Brook in West Peabody? That's what the miller told the court during the witch hunt of 1692, when the area around Crystal Lake was owned by two families intimately involved in the witch hysteria - one, an accuser, and the other, the accused.
"The miller here in 1692 was afflicted by the prevailing witchcraft," wrote John Wells in The Peabody Story. The millter testified that his mill wheel was "unaccountably stopped and would not go, and no reason could be assigned except the demonical malice and power of some witch."
The haunted mill may have been owned by the family of one of the persons who claimed to have been afflicted by witchcraft, 42-year old Bathshua Pope. She married Joseph Pope, Jr. in 1649 and was living with her widowed mother-in-law, Gertrude Pope, within the immediate vicinity of the farm of victims and martyrs, Martha and Giles Corey.
Bathshua Pope, a member of the Folger family from Nantucket, was the aunt of American patriot Benjamin Franklin. She and Joseph had eight children. According to the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, when Joseph died in1712, he named all his children in his will, except for the first two, "and notes that the eldest daughter was infrimof mind, as probably had been her mother; at least, she was much afflicted in the witchcraft days."
The localized witchcraft outbreak took on hysterical proportions by the fall of 1692, with more than 150 people examined and sent to prison. Nearly 50 people falsely confessed to being witches who had made a covenant with the devil to assist in assaulting people in the area. Nineteen persons who maintained their innocence, including the three accused by Bathshua Pope, were tried, found guilty and hanged.
"Mrs. Pope" accused Martha Corey, as well as Rebecca Nurse and John Proctor, of inflicting pain upon her body through witchcraft. At the trial of Martha Corey in March 2693, she joined with other afflicted women in calling Martha "a gospel witch".
Marion Starkey, author of The Devil in Massachusetts, wrote, "Even while Martha proclaimed her innocence her devils had not been able to resist devising new tortures for the girls. What Martha did, now they all did. If she bit her lips, they yelled that she had bitten theirs, and came running up to the magistrates to show how they bled."
The following month Rebecca Nurse was arrested and tried. During the examination, several afflicted persons reported seeing "a black man" whispering in Nurse's ear. The judge stated, "What a sad thing it is that a church member here and now…should be thus accused and charged." At which point, "Mrs. Pope fell into a grievous fit and cryed out a sad thing sure enough; And then many more fell into lamentable fits."
Also in April, Elizabeth Proctor, the pregnant wife of John was accused. At her trial, John Proctor's specter attacking Mrs. Pope. Chadwick Hansen in Witchcraft in Salem reported that "immediately Goodwife Pope fell into a fit."
Earlier in this century, two postcards depciting the "haunted mill" were published. A color postcard prepared by D.F. Bresnahan of Peabody shows two wood-frame structures, 2 1/2 stories each, located on either side of a 10- to 12-foot-wide stream with a catwalk bridge connecting the two buildings.
One card also includes the following statement, "Site of Giles Coveys [sic] Mill who was pressed to death for refusing to plead in his trial for Witchcraft in1692." Today at Crystal Lake, a conservation area, there are two stones which were placed in remembrance of Martha and Giles Corey during the witchcraft hysteria tercentenary in1992.
City planner Judy Otto researched the history of Crystal Lake. She does not think the Pope sawmill was the haunted mill. She wrote, "At the head of Crystal Lake, at Goodale Street, on the west side, lived Captain Thomas Flint. The house was contained on the farm of Giles Corey, according to boundaries shown on the map. Giles himself lived further away on the other side of the property, on what is now Johnson Street, near Oak Grove cemetery. These two (Flint and Pope) were the only dwellings shown in the vicinity of Crystal Lake.
Flint's mill was built after the Pope mill by Thomas Flint on the opposite side of Lowell Street and closer to the pond. This mill, which existed until the 20th century, is the mill Otto believes is the haunted mill pictured in the black-and-white post card that was printed by the Peabody Historical Society in 1905. It is titled "Haunted Mill near Phelps Station, Lowell Street, West Peabody, Mass." Interestingly, Joseph Pope Jr.'s sister Gertrude married Eben Flint, a son of Thomas Flint.
From the National Citizen and Ballot Box, Edited by Matilda Joslyn Gage, August, 1881
Mary Upton Ferrin (1810 - 1881)
Mary Upton Ferrin, of Salem, Mass., an old-time woman-suffragist, died at Marblehead, in April, of pneumonia. Mrs. Ferrin was the first woman in Massachusetts to petition the Legislature for redress of the grievances of her sex, beginning to circulate petitions in the spring of 1848 and continuing the work in successive years. Her address to the Judiciary Committee in 1850 was printed by that body; it will be found in the chapter upon Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage History. Mrs. Ferrin petitioned the Constitutional Convention of 1853, and although by that time other workers had risen, she knew nothing of them, but as theretofore, supposed herself working single-handed and alone, against the despotism of the ages.
During the six years from 1848 to 1854 that Mrs. Ferrin circulated petitions, she traveled six hundred miles, most of the distance on foot, expending much money as well as devoting her time, and her name should be remembered as that of the earliest persecution, even to incarceration in a lunatic asylum while sane. During much correspondence with her for a period of year, the editor of the National Citizen found her a woman of advanced thought, and one of the anticipated pleasures of the Boston Convention was that of meeting Mary Upton Ferrin face to face; but, she has passed on making the sixth prominent woman suffragist of the United States who has died within the past six months.
From the Peabody Times, May 12, 1965
John E. Burke Died Suddenly This Morning
The city was stunned this morning when word spread
that Athletic Director John E. Burke, associated with athletics at Peabody
High School for the past 32-years, died suddenly as he was preparing to
attend classes at the high school. The well-known athletic director, who
was in school as usual this week, was one of the most prominent sports
officials in the state and only recently had been assigned the job of organizing
a state association for athletic directors.
Athletic director Burke resided at 7 Englewood Road, this city. He was born in Natick, the sone of the late Willia J. and Nora (Drianey) Burke. He was married to the former Alice N. McKinnon. He leaves one daughter, Mrs. Henry L. Hayes, Jr., of this city; a son, Lt. John E. Burke, Jr. of the United States Air Force in Mission, Texas; a brother, M. Henry Burke of Boston, and two grandchildren.
The noted sports figure was also the head of the science department at Peabody High School, was a member of several organizations, chief among them the Gridiron Club of Boston and S.A.S. club of this city.
Director Burke was an athletic coach at Gloucester High School prior to his coming to Peabody. First named faculty manager of athletics at the local school, he was appointed athletic director at the school a few years ago when former coach Bill Seeglitz retired. He was perhaps best known as "the Master of Schoolboy Golf" in this state, having taken the lead to make the sport a major one in high school athletic programs. He was the founder of the Massachusetts Interscholastic Golf Association.
Director Burke was preparing to attend the 40th reunion of his class at Boston College next week.
Funeral services will be held on Saturday morning from
his late home, 7 Englewood Road, at 9 o'clock, followed by a requiem high
mass at St. Thomas the Apostle Church at ten o'clock. It is requested that
no flowers be sent. P.M. Cahill & Son will be in charge of the funeral
arrangements.
Many Fine Tributes Paid to "Jack" Burke
Typical of the many fine letters received by the family
of the late Athletic Director John E. Burke since his sudden death is the
following from Paul Wallace at Middlebury College:
His letter to Mrs. Burke,
"It was only a few hours ago that I learned of Jack's death. Only with sincere sorrow do I sit down to express my sympathy to you, John and Ann.
"By this time, many eulogies have been presented concerning Jack and many articles have been written about his contributions to the welfare of underprivileged boys of all ages.
"Therefore, there is little I can add. But I have always been more than thankful for his unhesitating aid which was extended to me when I sought his advice. Certainly God did not overlook his many efforts to aid anyone who came to him with a problem when he called him from our presence.
"Once again, I extend my most sincere sympathy to you and the others of your family."
Paul Wallace
Thirty years brings the Burke School Family (students, staff and parents), the school department and community to a point in history to "pause" and remember the past as we look forward to the future. The Burke School continues to hold a high standard towards excellence in education while promoting many opportunities for individual growth and development.
We pause today to remember and to extend our appreciation to former/current staff, students, parents, school administration and members of the community who have supported the "Burke" over the past thirty years. Your genuine interest, enthusiastic spirit and willingness to give your best….have made a difference in the quality of educational experiences of those thousands of students who attended the Burke School (1965-1995).
A simple "THANK YOU" says it best!
Maxine H. Edmunds
John E. Burke 1894-1955
John E. Burke was a graduate of Boston College High School, class of 1912 and Boston College class of 1916. He attended Graduate School at Boston College graduating in 1918. He began his career in education in Gloucester as a high school teacher and coach. John E. Burke came to Peabody Public Schools in 1923 later to become head of the Science Department and Director of Athletics. He remained in these positions until his death, May 12, 1955. John E. Burke, for thirty-two years, ably guided thousands of Peabody students in the classroom and in athletics.
One of his greatest achievement is said to the be the Interschool Golf League. He is hailed as "the father of schoolboy golf". When he introduced golf in the schools in 1934 only twenty-five were represented. On his retirement, as president of the Massachusetts Golf Association, there were seventy-nine schools taking part.
In 1965, the Peabody School Committee named the new 24 room elementary school in West Peabody after him…The John E. Burke School.
In August of 1995, the Peabody High Hall of Fame inducted John E. Burke in the Hall of Fame.
..and so today, September 30, 1995, the Burke School Family remembers our past as we look forward to the future.