The winter of 1691 arrived early in Essex County. By mid-November, the roads between Salem Village and Salem Town had turned to frozen ruts, and the outlying farms were effectively cut off from the market. For the families who had settled the village's western reaches — the Putnams, the Nurses, the Proctors — the season was a test of everything they had built.
A typical Salem Village household kept a woodpile that would seem enormous by modern standards: cords stacked against the north wall of the barn, split and seasoned through the summer. Even so, the great fireplaces of the period were notoriously inefficient. Benjamin Franklin would not invent his stove for another half-century, and the open hearth that dominated every colonial kitchen drew as much warm air up the chimney as it radiated into the room.
The cold was not merely a physical fact. It was a theological one — a reminder that the world was fallen, that comfort was not promised, and that endurance was itself a form of faith.
Food preservation was the other great labor of the season. Root cellars dug into the hillsides behind the farmhouses held turnips, parsnips, and dried beans. Smoked and salted pork hung from the rafters of the keeping room. Barrels of cider, pressed in October, were carefully monitored — too warm and they would ferment into vinegar; too cold and they would freeze and burst their staves.
The children of Salem Village spent the winter months in a world that was simultaneously confined and demanding. Older children were expected to help with the endless labor of keeping the household alive: hauling water from the well before it froze, feeding the livestock, carding wool by firelight in the evenings. Younger children were kept close to the hearth, wrapped in layers of wool and linen, their education proceeding through the catechism and the hornbook.
