Carriage House Suite
Our other room with no real stairs: one low step, a king bed, a patio and room for the dog.
See the suiteDr. Pell's shop
After Abigail Crane died in 1812 her daughter Hannah went to live with relations in Marblehead and the house was let to tenants. In 1834 Hannah, by then married, sold it to Dr. Ezra Pell, who opened an apothecary in the west front room on the ground floor. In the 1830s an apothecary was part pharmacist, part grocer and part family doctor, and Dr. Pell seems to have been all three. Salem's great shipping days were fading, the mills were coming, and the people who came through his door wanted cough syrup, castor oil, quinine for a fever, peppermint water for a baby with colic, and, inevitably, laudanum, which was sold freely to anyone who asked until long after his death.
He had a joiner build him a wall of drawers, eight across and eight high, each with a small brass pull and a painted label in abbreviated Latin: RAD. RHEI for rhubarb root, FOL. SENNAE for senna leaves, CORT. CINCH. for cinchona bark, and, third row from the bottom, FOL. MENTH. PIP., peppermint leaf. When the funeral parlor took over the house in 1889 the room became an office, and later an apartment kitchen, and the drawers were painted over a few times. The Fairweathers stripped them in 1992, took every one out, cleaned it and looked behind it, and found a few dried leaves still in the corners. Some of the labels are original; some were repainted by a sign painter from Marblehead, who matched the lettering so well that we've lost track of which.
Dr. Pell died in 1871 and the shop closed. He also planted a garden of medicinal herbs behind the house, which we have replanted along the south side of the house, by the Lantern Room porch. The free herb garden walk on Saturdays at 10 am starts at the garden gate.
