ABSTRACT
The Hidden Town initiative seeks to research and present history in the face of relatively little remaining material culture. The non-profit organisation Old Salem Museums & Gardens has around 440,000 annual visitors and hosts over 45,000 school children per year to experience more than twenty interpreted original and reconstructed historic buildings, brought to life by its costumed staff. Hidden Town began in 2016 as a research project aiming to investigate and reveal the history of the community of enslaved Africans, free Africans, and African Americans who once lived in Salem. The Hidden Town Project has revealed that in the town of Salem, the white Moravian enslavers, while happy to have the enslaved individuals convert to the Moravian form of Christianity, strongly opposed the use of any African spiritual practices that would result in hybrid “Afro-Moravian” religious activity.
