Jonathan Corwin, a Salem merchant born in 1640, purchased the house in 1675. Construction is usually placed sometime between the 1640s and 1675. He lived there for more than forty years. The house stayed in the family into the mid-nineteenth century, later faced demolition during a North Street widening, was saved by local fundraising, and opened as a museum in 1948. It interprets seventeenth-century domestic life and Corwin's connection to 1692.

In the witchcraft crisis Corwin, with John Hathorne, conducted preliminary examinations of the accused. Those examinations are documented at the Salem Village meetinghouse, the town meetinghouse, and taverns. The Salem Witch Museum states there is no evidence they were held in this Essex Street house, despite a long tourist tradition that they were. Corwin also served on the Court of Oyer and Terminer, which sent people to the gallows. He later sat on the Superior Court, showed no public remorse, died in 1718, and is buried at Broad Street Cemetery.

Haunt lore, mostly modern and tourism-fed, includes colonial-dressed figures, shadows, whispers, a child's voice, doors, footsteps, cold spots, and a feeling of being watched. Some tellers assign the figures to executed victims; others to the Corwin household. Neither identification is established. A separate "Corwin curse" story treats later family deaths as supernatural payback. Those deaths can be historical without a curse being historical.