Roger Conant (Salem)

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Statue of Roger Conant, the founder of Salem , Massachusetts .
Conant's home in Salem

Roger Conant (* 1592 ; † 1679 ) is considered the founder ( 1626 ) of the city of Salem in what is now the US state of Massachusetts .

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Roger Conant was on April 9, 1592 East Budleigh ( Devonshire baptized) in England. He was the eighth and youngest child of Richard Conant and Agnes Clark.

He married Sarah Horton in London in 1616 . With his wife and first son he emigrated to America on the ship Anne and to what was then the colony of Plymouth in Massachusetts (then called Naumkeag ). Because the puritanical rigor in the colony bothered him, he moved to what would later become Hull in 1624 (Indian name at the time: Nantasket ).

In the fall of 1624 John White offered him the post of governor over a fishing colony on Cape Ann . But the project failed, whereupon most of the settlers returned to England. However, a smaller group followed him along the coast and founded Salem in 1626. Here he served as the first governor of the new branch until the Massachusetts Bay Company replaced him with John Endicott .

He built the first Salem house on what is now Essex Street, across from the town's central market square. His signature on an agreement on the expansion of the parish hall to become the first Salem church has been preserved in the city archives.

Conant maintained a high reputation throughout his life and held various public offices in the community. After Salem was allowed to set up its own district court, Conant was repeatedly appointed jury for 16 years. He was also regularly entrusted with defining the boundaries of new parishes, including Boston .

In 1636, Conant, along with other pioneer settlers, was appointed to a committee that released private land in Salem from public land. For this work he was given 200 acres of farmland in the neighboring Bass River .

From 1659 he initiated the construction of his own church there, which was completed in 1667. A year later, in 1668, the Bass River settlement became the new independent city of Beverly . Here, too, Conant held public offices.

Conant died in 1679 at the age of 87. His descendants later moved to Ontario .

Since 1913 the city of Salem has been commemorating its founder with a larger than life bronze statue opposite the town hall.

In a 1952 film adaptation by Peter Steffordshire about the founding of Salem, Frank Cagliari played the Conant.

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personal data
SURNAME Conant, Roger
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American pioneer settler, founder of Salem (Massachusetts)
DATE OF BIRTH April 9, 1592
PLACE OF BIRTH East Budleigh , Devonshire , England
DATE OF DEATH 1679
Place of death Beverly , Massachusetts