| 1663 |
Joseph Curwen is born in Salem, Massachusetts. |
| 1678 to 1687 |
Curwen travels abroad, living for a time in England and making at least two voyages to the Orient. |
| 1690 |
Curwen’s associate Edward Hutchinson, of Salem-Village, is already using the “essential saltes”, according to Simon Orne’s letter of 1928, and was known for his unwholesome knowledge concerning the long-deceased. |
| 1692 |
March: Curwen leaves Salem at the beginning of the witch trials, to settle in Providence where he soon becomes a freeman. He buys a lot on Olney Street and builds a house. Hutchinson disappears at the same time, and later correspondence indicates he has settled in Transylvania, while his associate Simon Orne remains in Salem. |
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July 10th: Hepzibah Lawson testifies at the Court of Oyer and Terminer that coven meetings were held behind Mr. Hutchinson’s house.
August 8th: Amity How testifies that “Mr. G. B. (Rev. George Burroughs) putte ye Divell his Marke” upon “Simon O.” and “Joseph C.” among others. |
| 1713 |
Curwen helps finance the rebuilding of Providence’s Great Bridge. |
| 1720 |
Simon Orne disappears from Salem when his visible failure to grow old begins to excite attention. |
| 1723 |
Curwen participates in the founding of the Congregational Church of Providence. |
| 1738 |
Winter: Famous wit Dr. Checkley, who moved from Boston to Providence to be rector of King’s Church, pays Joseph Curwen a visit, but leaves abruptly because of “a sinister undercurrent in the host’s discourse”. |
| 1742 |
Fifty years have passed since Curwen’s arrival in Providence, and yet he remains largely unaffected by the ageing process. As a result, he is shunned by townsfolk. |
| 1743 |
Curwen went with the Whitefield adherents to Deacon Snow’s church, “though his zeal and attendance soon abated”. |
| 1746 |
The English gentleman Mr. Merrit visits Curwen’s Pawtuxet Road farm. In the library, he notices Borellus’ account -- heavily underlined -- of calling up “any dead Ancestour from the Dust whereinto his Bodie has been incinerated”. |
| 1750 |
Jedediah Orne arrives in Salem to claim his father Simon’s property on William’s Lane. He appears physically identical to his father, who disappeared thirty years earlier. |
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According to Curwen’s letter of May 1st to “Simon” (Jedediah) Orne, he has now successfully raised Yog-Sothoth, which has indicated the texts that explain how to propagate a metaphysical entity that will draw a descendant “who shal looke Backe, tho’ know’g not what he seekes.” |
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Curwen is aware that success requires him to (1) have an heir, (2) leave his remains or “salts” ready for his descendant and (3) have an entity persist in “ye Outside Spheres” to draw the descendant to his legacy.
Curwen reveals he has not yet found the process of preparing the salts, and has used a great many specimens (sailors from the Indes) trying. |
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Finally, the letter reveals that Simon Orne has now returned to Salem. |
| 1754 |
Curwen’s journal indicates the trouble he has in succeeding in the process of preparing and calling up from essential salts, a process Hutchinson had long ago mastered:
“I must heare more from Mr. H. in Transylvania, tho’ it is Harde reach’g him and exceeding strange he can not give me the Use of What he hath so well us’d these hundred Yeares.”
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The journal reveals that Curwen is continuing to observe the rites and rituals necessary for “ye Thing ... breed’g Outside ye Spheres”:
“It will drawe One who is to Come, if I can make sure he shal Bee, and he shal think on Past Thinges and look back thro’ all ye Yeares, against ye Which I must have ready ye Saltes or That to make ’em with.”
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| 1758 |
March and April: suspicions are aroused when Redcoats go missing from Royal regiments quartered in Providence. They are last seen talking to Joseph Curwen.
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| 1760 |
Joseph Curwen is now entirely shunned in Providence, though his commercial activities continue to prosper. |
| 1761 |
The disappearance of his sailors (sacrifices?) ceases, but his import of slaves (“live specimens”), who are transferred to the windowless outbuilding on his farm, continues. The rate of food consumption and cattle purchases remains abnormally high. |
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Curwen replaces his house on Olney Court (Stampers’ Hill) with a larger house on the same site. He burns the timbers of the old building. |
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There are fewer sounds and manoeuvres at the Pawtuxet Road farm. Curwen is no longer seen in the vicinity of graveyards. |
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This year marks the emergence of Joseph Curwen’s civic spirit. He helps rebuild the Great Bridge, funds the restocking of the public library and buys heavily into the public lottery to pave the footwalk. He also “cultivates piety” once more. |
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He helps Daniel Jenckes found his bookshop, and thereafter is his best customer. |
| 1763 |
Curwen extends aid to the struggling Gazette. |
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March 7th: he marries Eliza Tillinghast in the Baptist Church, after coercing her father into granting her hand. |
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Eliza’s betrothed, Ezra Wheeden, seeks revenge, and begins his surveillance of Curwen’s farmhouse and shipping operations. |
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Eliza finds the new Olney Court house free of “disturbing manifestations”. Curwen spends increasing amounts of time at the Pawtuxet Road farm, to which he transfers his library on chemistry and alchemy. |
| 1765 |
Curwen delivers an eloquent speech at Hatcher’s Hall against the setting off of North Providence as a separate town. |
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May 7th: his only child Ann is born. |
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Curwen sits for a portrait by Cosmo Alexander of Newport, the likeness executed on a wall-panel of the library of the house in Olney Court. |
| 1766 |
Curwen abandons the slave trade. Prior to 1766, the sounds from his farm’s stone outbuilding were “mumblings and negro whisperings and frenzied screams, coupled with curious chants or invocations”. After 1766, they were “dronings of dull acquiescence and explosions of frantic pain or fury, rumblings of conversations and whines of entreaty”. Wheeden, spying on Curwen’s activities, hears the voices of Curwen, the guards and the captives. Curwen has now succeeded in raising the dead from the essential salts, and is extracting information from his specimens. |
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Curwen spends every spare moment at the farmhouse. He is now seen in the vicinity of graveyards, and astonishes people with information which could only have come from their long-dead ancestors. |
| 1767 |
Coffins, rather than slaves, are now delivered directly to Curwen’s stone outbuilding. |
| 1769 |
Following heavy rains, Wheeden and his accomplice Smith, “kept a sharp eye on the steep river-bank to see if any subterrene secrets might be washed to light, and were rewarded by the sight of a profusion of both human and animal bones in places where deep gullies had been worn in the banks.” |
| 1770 |
January: The royal armed schooner Cygne pursues the snow Fortaleza, intercepting its cargo of Egyptian mummies and causing its detour beyond Rhode Island. |
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Spring: heavy rains cause a cave-in at the Pawtuxet river bank. The resulting floods send still-living remains floating down river. |
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Autumn: Weeden reveals his discoveries concerning Curwen’s operations to select townsfolk. |
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December: A committee of “serious citizens” is formed and debate the co-ordinated action to be taken against Curwen. |
| 1771 |
January: A man resembling a long-deceased local blacksmith is pursued by a band from Curwen’s farmhouse, who use hounds to track him. They desist upon drawing the attention of townfolk, and their quarry is discovered the next morning frozen in the snow. Wheeden finds the blacksmith’s grave is empty. |
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The committee acquires a letter intercepted from Jedediah Orne (ostensibly Simon Orne’s son) to Curwen. |
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Friday April 12th: A raiding party of about a hundred men meet at 10pm in Thurleston’s Tavern. Armed with “firelocks, fowling-pieces, or whaling harpoons”, they march toward the Pawtuxet Road, before separating into divisions. The raid results in Joseph Curwen’s death and the end of activities at the farm and its catacombes. Curwen is buried in a leaden coffin taken from the scene. The raid is claimed to result from conflicts over Curwen's involvement with customs officials. |
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The same year Jedediah Orne of Salem “is removed to parts unknown”. |
| 1772 |
Curwen’s widow reverts to the use of her maiden name Tillinghast. She sells the house Olney Court and resides with her father until her death in 1817. |
| 1780 |
Only the stone and brickwork of the Pawtuxet Road farm remain; by 1800 these had “fallen to shapeless heaps”.
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