Every fall, tour buses circle Salem's downtown for witch-trial exhibits, dungeon tours, and gift shops selling broomsticks. Twenty minutes north, on a residential street in North Andover, the same 1692 crisis left its own physical trace, and almost nobody built a business around it. The Old Burial Ground on Academy Road holds many of the residents once accused, and for most of the year it sits exactly as it looks: a quiet cemetery on a quiet street.
For sixteen days in September, that changes. Essex Heritage's Trails & Sails, the free heritage-tour series that turns 25 this year, gives North Andover's historical society its one sanctioned window to walk visitors through that ground with an author and a former museum director instead of a headstone map.
"We're thrilled to celebrate 25 years of Essex Heritage's Trails & Sails."
That's how Governor Maura Healey marked the milestone when Essex Heritage kicked off its anniversary season this summer. The program runs across all 34 towns in Essex County from September 12 through 27, 2026, and since it started in 2002 it has drawn more than 175,000 participants, with roughly 30,000 turning out last year alone.
The Accusation Count That Never Got a Museum
Andover, the town that in 1692 still included the land that would become North Andover, saw 45 of its residents accused of witchcraft. Three were hanged. Most of the accused are buried in that Old Burial Ground on Academy Road, the same street where the North Andover Historical Society's headquarters and the Johnson Cottage museum sit today.
Salem turned its version of 1692 into a year-round industry. North Andover never did. The town has no witch museum, no themed storefront, no dungeon tour running every weekend into Halloween. What it has instead is a burial ground most residents drive past without a second look, and one guided walk a year that explains what actually happened on that ground and why the count of accused here was so high in a crisis better known for its Salem address.
This year's walk is led by author Richard Hite alongside Carol Majahad, the historical society's former director, who has spent years working with the site directly. It's the kind of program that only exists because someone local decided the history deserved a better telling than a plaque.
One Trail, Four Centuries, No Entry Fee
Trails & Sails events are free across the county by design, which is worth flagging because it's not how the North Andover Historical Society normally operates. Most of the year, a guided tour or speaker program runs members $5 and non-members $15. During this specific two-week stretch, the fee drops to zero. If you've been meaning to see the inside of the Parson Barnard House without paying for it, September is the month that works in your favor.
The society's 2026 lineup, confirmed on its own events calendar, includes more than the witch-trials walk:
| Stop | What You'll Find | Why It's There |
|---|---|---|
| Old Center, starting at 800 Massachusetts Ave. | Historical society headquarters and gathering point | Home base for the walking tours and the wool-history programs |
| Parson Barnard House, 179 Osgood St. | 1715 house museum built by Rev. Thomas Barnard | One of the town's oldest surviving structures, open seasonally |
| Johnson Cottage, 153 Academy Road | 1790s post-Revolutionary house museum | Run by NAHS to show daily life in the decades after the trials |
| "Of Poetry and Archaeology" walk | Guided tour led by historian David B. and Anne Bradstreet scholar Karen Kline | Covers the search for Bradstreet's original home, which burned in 1666, and ties her poetry to the ground she wrote on |
| Wool history walk and hands-on demonstration | Free walking tour plus a textile production demo | North Andover's lesser-known industrial identity, distinct from the mill towns downstream |
Anne Bradstreet, widely credited as the first published poet in the American colonies, lived on this same stretch of town before her house burned to the ground in 1666. The archaeological dig searching for its foundation is ongoing, and this year's walk includes an update on what's been found so far. That's not a detail you get from a plaque either.
The Trail Continues Past the Historical Society's Boundary
The Trustees of Reservations, which operates the Stevens-Coolidge House & Gardens at 153 Chickering Road, is running its own piece of the 2026 program: a tour built around the estate's Colonial Revival architecture. The 91-acre property, once known as Ashdale Farm, was reshaped in the early 1900s by preservation architect Joseph Everett Chandler into the neo-Georgian estate that stands today.
What connects Stevens-Coolidge to the Old Center isn't just Trails & Sails scheduling. It's an actual physical trail. The Stevens-to-Stevens path runs from the gardens straight to Weir Hill conservation land, tying the town's Colonial-era center to its later estate history and its present-day open space in one uninterrupted walk.
You don't have to wait for September to use it. Friends of North Andover Trails, a volunteer group separate from the historical society and the Trustees, runs its own guided hikes along this same corridor year round. Their version meets at Old Center Common, at the corner of Andover Street and Osgood Street, and walks the same ground the historical society tour covers in September, minus the registration form and the historical narration. It's free, dog-friendly on leash, and open to families, and it runs on its own calendar independent of Trails & Sails entirely.
That's the part most residents miss. The town's oldest ground, the one carrying its Colonial settlement history, its witch-trials record, and its Gilded Age estate architecture, isn't locked behind a single September event. The historical walk is the version with commentary. The FONAT hike is the same physical route, available whenever you want it.
What This Actually Means for a September Weekend
If you've lived in North Andover long enough to stop noticing the Old Burial Ground, this is the year to notice it again. The 25th anniversary of Trails & Sails means Essex Heritage is treating this season as a bigger deal than usual, and North Andover's slate reflects that: a witch-trials walk with an actual author, a poetry-and-archaeology tour tied to an active dig, a wool-history program that has nothing to do with the mills most people associate with this stretch of Massachusetts, and an architectural tour of one of the town's most photographed estates.
None of it requires driving to Salem. None of it costs anything during the window it's offered. And the trail underneath all of it, the one connecting Old Center to Weir Hill, is yours to walk on a random Tuesday in October if September doesn't work out.
Register for the historical society's walks directly through North Andover Historical Society, check the full county schedule at Trails and Sails, and see what the Trustees have planned at Stevens-Coolidge House & Gardens. If you want the same trail without the calendar constraints, Friends of North Andover Trails runs it year round.
North Andover's history doesn't need a museum built around it to be worth walking. It needs someone to point you toward Academy Road at the right time of year. For more on what makes this stretch of town worth paying attention to the other eleven and a half months, our North Andover neighborhood guide is a good next stop, and if a walk through the Old Center ever turns into a conversation about what it would take to actually live on one of these streets, DiPietro Group Real Estate is glad to schedule a free buyer or seller consultation whenever you're ready.
