Author brings Hope Cemetery to new book

STAFF REPORT

SALEM — “The best way to tell history,” according to local historian Dale E. Shaffer, “is to tell a story.”

And the latest story the former educator has told is contained in his new book, “Hope Cemetery: A Storied History.”

It is his 27th book on Salem.

David Stratton, director of the Salem Historical Society & Museum, helped with the project by organizing the layout and photographs.

Stratton said he had been keeping track of Shaffer’s output of books on Salem, thinking there were about 25.

“After 15 [books], he thought he was done,” Stratton said.

In a feature story in 2002, Shaffer told The Vindicator, that he began writing about Salem back in the 1980s, when he was asked to write an article on the history of the Fourth Street School here, which Shaffer attended as a child.

He’s been writing about his hometown since then.

Shaffer, 79, has earned a bachelor’s degree, a master’s of business administration degree and later a degree in library science.

He became an economics teacher and taught at Bethany College, and he later worked in a library at Glenville State College, both in West Virginia.

He eventually returned to Salem and began writing newspaper articles about local history during The Jubilee, a community celebration.

Shaffer said he kept the material, eventually turned it into a book, “and I never stopped. I just kept on writing and taking photographs.”

Shaffer said he wrote his latest book because, “We need a place to say goodbye to our loved ones.”

Hope Cemetery, on North Lincoln Avenue, was established in 1833. It’s Salem’s oldest operating cemetery and the resting place of both the rich and the poor.

Hope was called the “Rhododendron Cemetery” for its scented greenery, he said, and people would picnic at the cemetery.

Shaffer wrote, “Rather than thinking of it as a sad place of death, we should view the cemetery in a grateful manner as a museum filled with the living heritage of our ancestors.”

And Shaffer knows Salem’s heritage.

Some stories are well-known, such as that of Strotter Brown, an escaped slave who befriended a Union soldier from Salem in Virginia during the Civil War.

Brown came to Salem after the war and made a living making baskets and raising tobacco and vegetables.

When Brown died at the age of 100, his friends provided a monument for him at Hope. The city recently renamed a street in Brown’s honor.

Marius Robinson, an anti-slavery speaker who was tarred and feathered on June 4, 1837, in Berlin Center, also is buried at Hope. He suffered from the injuries he received in the attack for the rest of his life, but he was not bitter, Shaffer wrote.

The book has photographs of Robinson, his monument at Hope, and his home in Salem, which remains today.

Stratton said Shaffer was, “very meticulous in his writing. He wanted to be sure the facts were right. We’re very fortunate to have a historian like Dale.”

Stratton said that many of Shaffer’s books are out of print, but copies can be found on the Internet at Amazon.com.

Among his other works are “Salem: A Quaker City History,” and “Yesterday in Salem: A Collection of Nostalgic Articles.”