History
Timeline: 1748 to today
The short version, one date at a time. For the long version, with the people in it, read the house's story, or come to Samuel's history talk in the Library on Thursdays at 7 pm.
The Crane years
- 1692
The witch trials in Salem Village and the surrounding towns. Twenty people are executed. The Crane & Lantern House does not yet exist and will not for another fifty-six years. We include this entry only because everyone asks.
- 1748
Captain Josiah Crane, twenty-six and master of a schooner in the West Indies trade, builds a center-chimney Georgian house on what is then Crane's Lane. The account book begins in March with timber, brick "for the chimnies" and sash glass from Boston.
- 1751
Josiah marries Mercy Pickworth. They will have five children, three of whom survive to adulthood.
- 1758
Nathaniel Crane is born in the front room, now the Captain's Quarters.
- 1777
Josiah holds shares in Revolutionary privateers. One brig takes "a prize of rum & dry goods"; another never returns. Teenage Nathaniel sails as a ship's boy.
- 1789
Josiah Crane dies at sixty-seven. Nathaniel, now master of his own ship in the new East Indies trade, inherits the house.
- 1790
Nathaniel marries Abigail Derrin, daughter of a Salem ropewalk owner.
- 1794
After profitable voyages to India and Canton, Nathaniel adds the Federal-style rear wing, a fanlight over the front door, and the railed walk on the roof. Crane's Lane is renamed Mercy Lane around this time, for his mother.
- 1800
In December, Nathaniel sails for Sumatra as master of the ship Hannah Crane on a pepper voyage.
- 1801
His last letter arrives from the Isle of France in May. That autumn the ship is lost with all hands in a storm off the Sumatran coast. Word of the loss reaches Salem in December, and Abigail begins keeping a lantern lit in the top window every night.
- 1807
The Embargo empties Salem's wharves. Abigail lets two rooms and sells a parcel of the garden to keep the house.
- 1812
Abigail Crane dies in the Lady's Chamber, aged forty-eight, after eleven years of the lantern. The house is let to tenants. Lavender and candle smoke on the main stair are reported, on and off, from about this point forward.
Apothecary, boarders and undertakers
- 1834
Hannah Crane sells the house to Dr. Ezra Pell, physician and apothecary, for $2,100. He opens his shop in the west front room and plants a physic garden behind the house.
- 1871
Dr. Pell dies after thirty-seven years on Mercy Lane. His wall of drawers stays behind.
- 1872
Mrs. Honora Keane buys the house and opens a boarding house for sailors and mill workers, with meals at a long table in the front parlor.
- 1879
"M. Farrell & boy Tom" take the third-floor back room, now the Nursery. They stay until 1881.
- 1889
Undertakers Silas Hollis and Edmund Vane buy the house. The east front room becomes their viewing parlor (today the Undertaker's Parlor bar).
- 1893
Hollis & Vane build the chapel wing. The chapel is now the Great Hall; its front room is now The Ledger.
- 1946
Hollis & Vane closes. The house is divided into seven apartments and the widow's walk is roofed over.
Decline, rescue and the inn
- 1988
The empty house is nearly demolished for a waterfront parking lot. Neighbors and preservationists fight the permit through a year of hearings.
- 1990
The developer withdraws and sells to the Fairweather family.
- 1994
Two hundred years after Nathaniel built it, the widow's walk is reopened and its balustrade rebuilt from a photograph of 1890.
- 1995
Eleven coats of paint are stripped in the front rooms to find Josiah's original blue-green paneling. A child's leather shoe is found sealed beside the kitchen chimney.
- 1997
Clay and glass marbles are found behind a third-floor baseboard. In May the house opens as a six-room bed and breakfast.
- 2009
Samuel Teague joins the front desk. He has not left.
- 2014
Maren and Theo Alcott buy the house, along with, they were told, "the usual residents." Ledger the cat arrives the same autumn.
- 2015
The Ledger restaurant opens in the chapel wing, and the bar opens in the old viewing parlor.
- 2016
The first wedding in the garden. It rains. The Great Hall is pressed into service and a rain plan is born.
- 2017
Dr. Pell's herb garden is replanted from the list in his daybook.
- 2019
Chef Dolores "Dee" Okafor takes over the kitchens. The brown-butter johnnycakes appear on the breakfast menu within the month.
- 2021
The garret bath is renovated, and the walls give up a few more surprises.
- 2024
Two pickleball courts open in May on the old kitchen-garden lot behind the carriage house.
- Today
Nine rooms, a restaurant, a bar, a garden, two courts, three ghosts and a cat. A lantern is lit in the top window every night at dusk.