Workshops & talks
Make something, learn something, sit by the fire
Three small, unhurried things we do every week: pour a candle in Dr. Pell's old workroom, walk his replanted garden, and hear the story of the house from the man who knows it best.
Candle-making in the apothecary workroom
Saturdays at 3:00 pm · about 90 minutes · $55 per person
Behind the Apothecary guest room is a narrow brick-floored room with a soapstone sink, a long scrubbed bench and a row of iron hooks in the beams. This was Dr. Ezra Pell's workroom from 1834 to 1871, where he steeped tinctures, rolled pills and, according to his own accounts, made a considerable quantity of cough lozenges. Today it's where we make candles.
It seemed only right. The house is named for a lantern: the one Abigail Crane kept burning in the top window for eleven years after her husband's ship was lost in 1801. We keep a light in that window still. On Saturday afternoons you can make one of your own.
Our instructor (usually Maren, sometimes one of our housekeeping team who learned from her) walks you through the whole process: melting and tempering local beeswax, choosing and priming a cotton wick, pouring into a tin lantern mold, and the slow second pour that keeps the top flat. While the wax sets you'll learn a little about how the house was lit over the centuries, from tallow dips and spermaceti (Salem's whaling neighbors made a fortune in it) to the gas lamps the funeral parlor installed in 1890. You can scent your candle with a few drops of lavender, peppermint or bayberry, or leave it plain to smell of honey.
You'll leave with a beeswax lantern candle about the size of a coffee mug, wrapped in brown paper and string, and a card with care instructions. It burns for roughly forty hours. Tea and shortbread are included.
- Up to 10 people per session; ages 10 and up (under 16 with an adult).
- Wear clothes you don't mind getting a drop of wax on. We provide aprons.
- Hot wax is involved. It's very safe with care, and we take care.
- Private sessions for bridal parties, birthdays and small groups are available on other days. Ask events@cranelantern.example.
The herb garden walk
Saturdays at 10:00 am · about 30 minutes · free for inn guests (public welcome when space allows, $10)
In 2017 Maren went back to Dr. Pell's daybook, which the Fairweathers had found in 1992 inside a false drawer back in the Apothecary. In it is a seed and plant list in Dr. Pell's hand, dated 1847, with notes on where each plant grew in the yard. Over the next few seasons we replanted as many as we could in four raised beds along the south wall of the garden, beside the path to the courts. The beds are small, fragrant, and full of bees from June to September.
The walk is led by Maren or Samuel and meets at the garden gate. We'll show you each plant, read Dr. Pell's notes where he left them, and talk about what a Salem apothecary of the 1840s would have done with it. Bring your coffee from the Lantern Room. In spring and autumn the walk is shorter and there's more mud.
Dr. Pell's plants and their old uses
Please read this first: what follows is history, not medical advice. These are the uses recorded in nineteenth-century apothecary and household practice, many of which were ineffective and some of which were dangerous. Several of these plants are toxic. Please don't pick, taste or brew anything from the garden, and talk to a doctor, not an innkeeper, about your health.
| Plant | Dr. Pell's era: how it was used | Today, in our garden |
|---|---|---|
| Peppermint | Peppermint water and oil for indigestion, colic and nausea; peppermint lozenges were a staple sweet on the apothecary counter. | Grown in a sunken pot so it doesn't take over. Guests say the Apothecary room smells of it. We can't explain that. |
| Lavender | Sachets for linen and moths, lavender water for "nervous headaches," and to sweeten sickrooms. | Also Abigail's scent, and the scones'. Ours is cut for the Lady's Chamber in July. |
| Feverfew | Taken for fevers, as the name says, and for headaches. | A cheerful little daisy. It once grew where the pickleball courts are now. |
| Horehound | Boiled into syrups and hard candies for coughs and colds. | Woolly gray leaves, extremely bitter. Dr. Pell's lozenge recipe used a great deal of sugar. |
| Chamomile | Tea for upset stomachs, teething children and sleeplessness. | Self-seeds everywhere. The Library serves chamomile tea from a supplier, not from this bed. |
| Sage | Gargles for sore throats; also very much a kitchen herb. | Dee raids it for the brown butter. |
| Comfrey | Called "knitbone"; poultices for bruises and sprains. | Now known to be harmful taken internally. Admire it from the path. |
| Tansy | Used against worms and to keep flies off meat. | Toxic. Bright yellow buttons, lovely to look at. |
| Foxglove | The source of digitalis, used by physicians of the period for "dropsy" and weak hearts, in carefully measured doses. | Highly poisonous. Behind a low fence. A good lesson in why dosing is a profession. |
| Rue | The "herb of grace," for eyesight, against plague and, in folklore, against witches. | Can blister skin in sunlight. Please don't touch. |
| Calendula (pot marigold) | Salves for chapped hands and small wounds; petals to color butter and cheese. | Orange all summer, beloved by the bees. |
| Bee balm (bergamot) | A tea; after the Boston Tea Party, a popular patriotic substitute for the taxed kind. | The hummingbirds' favorite bed. |
Dr. Pell's list also mentions sassafras, slippery elm and something he calls simply "the good root," which we have not been able to identify. If you think you know, Samuel would love to hear from you.
The Thursday history talk
Thursdays at 7:00 pm · about an hour · the Library · free, open to all
Samuel Teague has worked at the Crane & Lantern since 2009, five years before the Alcotts bought it. He has read every ledger, deed and day book the house has given up, has corresponded with descendants of three of its families, and has an index-card system in the front office that Theo describes as "load-bearing." On Thursday evenings he sits by the Library fire and tells the house's story, start to finish, with the original documents on the table for you to look at.
The talk covers Captain Josiah Crane and the West Indies trade; Nathaniel and Abigail, the pepper voyages and the widow's walk; Dr. Pell's apothecary; the sailors and mill workers of the boarding-house years; the Hollis & Vane Funeral Parlor and what it tells us about how Americans changed the way they mourned; the long decline into apartments; the near-demolition in 1988; and the Fairweather family's restoration from 1991. Samuel tells it with dates and names, as a history rather than a ghost story, though he'll take ghost questions at the end. He always does. He also takes questions about 1692 with seriousness and care, and will recommend the city's memorials and museums for anyone who wants to learn more about the trials and the people who died.
Seating is in armchairs and on the window benches, about thirty people. No booking needed, but come ten minutes early on summer and autumn Thursdays. The bar will bring drinks through from the Undertaker's Parlor if you ask.
Book a workshop
Candle-making must be booked ahead. The herb garden walk and history talk don't require it, but it helps us plan.