Home of Susan Burley
56 Federal Street
(building no longer standing)
Susan Burley (1792-1850) was one of the most active and important
culturally oriented citizens in mid-nineteenth-century Salem, holding
Saturday evening salons in the home she shared with her sister and
brother-in-law, Elizabeth Howes and Frederick Howes. Among those
who attended her cultural gatherings were Elizabeth, Sophia, and
Mary Peabody (see S13), the Transcendentalist
poet Jones Very, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Susan Burley was particularly
helpful to Hawthorne who referred to her gatherings as “Hurley-Burleys.”
She financed the publication of a special edition of his tale The
Gentle Boy and gave him a membership to the Boston Athenæum
when Hawthorne moved to Boston to work at that city’s custom
house in 1838. In addition to the salons, Susan conducted parties
where children and their mothers would listen to “conversations”
or lectures. According to Caroline King in her book When I Lived
in Salem, Susan Burley also organized the Salem Book Club and
acquired books for its members to share and read. The club lasted
from 1848 to 1965, when it merged with the Salem Athenæum
(see S26).44
Notes
44. Caroline King, When I Lived in Salem (Brattleboro, Vt.,
1937), 167-68.
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