Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Salem, NJ

Salem is a city in Salem County, New Jersey, and the county seat of the most rural county in the state, within the Philadelphia metropolitan area; it is a different place from Salem, Massachusetts.

Salem was laid out in 1675 by the Quaker John Fenwick, making it the first permanent English settlement in the Delaware Valley and the first Quaker colony in North America, founded seven years before Philadelphia.

Both the city and county take the name Salem from the Hebrew word shalom, meaning "peace."

Salem was incorporated on February 21, 1798, as one of the initial group of 104 townships established by the New Jersey Legislature, and it was reincorporated as Salem City on February 25, 1858.

The 2020 United States census counted 5,296 people in Salem, up from 5,146 in 2010 but well below the city's peak population of 9,050 in 1950.

The 2020 census counted 2,093 households in Salem, a young community with a median age of just 33.3 years.

The Old Salem County Courthouse, built in 1735 of locally made bricks, is the oldest courthouse in New Jersey still in active use and the second-oldest courthouse in continuous use in the United States, and its original bell is still displayed in the courtroom.

According to legend, Salem founder John Fenwick signed a peace treaty with the local Lenni Lenape beneath the Salem Oak in the Friends Burial Ground; the centuries-old tree finally fell on June 6, 2019.

During the Revolutionary War, British forces raided Salem in March 1778, and on March 21, Major John Graves Simcoe's troops killed between 20 and 30 sleeping American militiamen in the Hancock House massacre.

Local legend holds that Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson proved the tomato was safe to eat by eating tomatoes on the courthouse steps in 1820, though the story did not appear in print until 1948 and modern scholars question its accuracy.