Irish immigrants built home on Salem Street around 1857
In the 1840's, The Essex Company , the corporation that had built the Great Dam, leased its land on the south bank of the Merrimack River to its employees so they could build shanties. The family who built at 18 Dover Street ( as Salem St. was then called) were Michael and Mary Donovan and their children from Skibereen, Ireland. Their sons helped built the dam and worked in the mills. In 1856 Michael Donovan paid The Essex Co. $186. for this lot. He built this house, which was valued in the 1860 census at $800.
What he built is a house similar to those his neighbors were building up and down the street. Today standing on Salem Street, one can still pick out those early houses by their shapes - little boxes with their gables facing the street, steep roofs set on low second floor walls, the front door on one side, the windows balanced. The wide roof overhang is generous as are the frieze and corner boards. The effect is simple and pleasing. These houses lack the glamor of later Victorian buildings, but their proportions make them charming.
We know about 274 Salem Street because the Donovans' descendants still live here; and the because we can find them in The Essex Co. records and city directories now housed at the Immigrant City Archives. Seven generations of Donovans have been born here. Family members immigrating from Ireland stopped here first.
At one point a barn at the rear of the lot housed two horses. The bay window on the side with tis carved brackets was added in the 1880's, and the 1890 tornado that whipped through South Lawrence came right through the kitchen.
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