Atlas of New Jerusalem 1911 - Annotated

"Hekeziah Massey has often been encountered, either when she was alive or perhaps her ghost after her disappearance, in the area of Orne's Gangway behind 780 S French Hill Street. So too has her supposed familiar been seen in the same location. This area also has been said to be the location of a secret cache of books, hidden somewhere here by Captain Jeremiah Orne - see pg. 120."

Overview

Old New England towns creep and grow organically from the straight streets laid out by their founders. The outlines of old farms and millponds are slowly obliterated by spreading urbanity; big old houses are torn down to make way for more modern neighborhoods and blocks of flats; cemeteries are overgrown, walled off and forgotten in strange spaces. So it was with New Jerusalem.
In 1908, Jacob Salthorpe began an ambitious historical and geographical study of New Jerusalem, Massachusetts. He spent as much time walking the twisting lanes and speaking with sewer workers and men stringing up the new electric lines as he did researching old maps and records at Town Hall, Missituk University, and in the quaint, crumbling bookshelves of old New Jerusalem families. The result was the Atlas of New Jerusalem 1911, published by the local Manuxet River Press and available from most regional booksellers for two dollars in the 1920s and 1930s. The book was quickly recognized as one of the standard texts on New Jerusalem and would remain in print in various revised editions for over thirty years.
Among the many copies in existence, however, is a single annotated edition. The printer in preparing this part of the print run had cut the paper a little wide, leaving an extra half inch on the margins, and some previous owner or peruser of an eccentric and occult bent took advantage of the space to add lengthy notes, corrections, and amendments to the text—even going so far as to make some alterations to the many maps that Salthorpe had drafted or copied by hand from old city plans and originals.

Physical Descriptions:

The original issue of Atlas of New Jerusalem 1911 was a hardback bound in blue cloth but without dustjacket. It ran to 264 pages, including twenty-six black illustrated and photographic plates and a large, fold-out map of the city in the rear of the book. The annotated edition is marked with red and green ink in a small, crabbed but steady hand, mostly in the margins but also sometimes running on the header and footer or between lines of text. Changes, notes, and markings on maps are primarily done in red ink. The most elaborate changes are on the fold-out map, where the entire blank back has been used to trace a primordial landscape labeled “New Jerusalem as it was in the time of Atlantis and Thebes.” The only indication of the note-maker’s identity is the legend “From Wilhelmina Spence, 288 Lich Street, 1913” on the inside cover and an accompanying clipping from the New Jerusalem Advertiser pasted inside for “Spence & Kale, Tutors in Geography, Latin, & Mathematics, 288 Lich Street.”

Contents

Salthorpe’s text begins with a concise geographical history of New Jerusalem, starting with the latest scientific ponderings of the last ice age and proceeding to Indian times and then the Colonial period. This gives way to the atlas proper, discussing the geological features of the town—the Missituk River system, the strata of Hangman’s Hill and French Hill—and then the layout of streets and neighborhoods, supplemented by maps and occasional diagrams of street-level strata and the layout of the sewer and burgeoning electrical systems. Particularly noteworthy landmarks, buildings, and features are given their cultural, scientific, and historical contexts, such as Christ church and Missituk University, the original site of the Mayor’s Mansion before the events of 1836, and Freemason’s Hall.
The annotations expand on Salthorpe by addressing the occult, criminal, and hidden history of New Jerusalem. Each house of each suspected witch hanged, pressed, or burned during The New Jerusalem Witch Trials of 1692 is marked and briefly discussed, from Abigail Prinn to Hekeziah Massey. The maps of the waterfront and sewer and storm drain systems are marked to indicate hidden smugglers’ tunnels, some of them dating back to the Revolution or possibly before—for the book places much emphasis on old Indian legends, marking out where certain stones were located on the hills and where eroded grave-mounds may yet linger unmolested in Christchurch Cemetery. Even the geological history is not neglected, being amended with notes of a strange, inhuman settlement made along what would be the banks of the Missituk river in some vastly distant, primordial age.

Research:

Those seeking additional information about this particular work can uncover the following:
Wilhelmina Spence and Jenna Kale lived in a 'Boston marriage' on Lich Street for six years, tutoring out of Spence’s considerable library. The partnership ended bloodily in 1913. The details are fodder for the town gossips: Kale had married the rake John Wheatley Bishop and moved to Boston, then returned and quarreled with Spence over selling the library; an altercation with a knife left both women dead and Bishop claiming their shared property. The more adventurous gossips talk of how both women were found naked in a circle of blood after they died, though the newspapers said nothing of this, and how Bishop returned to 288 Lich Street several times over the following years, claiming that some rare works of geography were missing from the library.

Availability:

The annotated Atlas of New Jerusalem is essentially a map of supernatural activity in the city. It can be used as a reference to uncover something of the hidden history of various sites in and around New Jerusalem and as a jumping-off guide to the seedy occult underbelly of the town. It might be found anywhere—on the shelf of a library, in a private home, in a used book store, or even in the lobby of a doctor’s office. It is superficially identical to regular copies of this standard work—except for the paper being slightly wider, which isn’t obvious unless you take the book off the shelf.

Type

Map, Atlas

Medium

Paper

Authoring Date

1913