Caroline Emmerton

[2] With a fortune inherited from her grandfather, maritime trader John Bertram, Emmerton carried on her family's tradition of endowing and supporting charitable good works, including the Bertram Home for Aged Men, the Salem public library, the Seaman's Widow and Orphan Society, the Family Service Association, the Salem Fraternity Boys Club and the city's Public Welfare Society, as well as the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (now Historic New England), of which she was a founding member.

[3] By the age of 28 she was a board of director for the Charter St. Home, now the North Shore Medical Center/Salem Hospital.

[4] In 1907, she joined with a group of women to explore forming a settlement house in Salem and to do "experimental work".

Like many American settlement house founders and workers, Emmerton saw exposure to historic environments and stories as a way for new immigrants to absorb democratic values and practices.

"[8] Over time, Emmerton continued to expand and reorganize the compound, eventually moving four additional colonial-era buildings to the site and working with the colonial revival architect Joseph Everett Chandler to restore them.