Curiously, it is his name, but it is a complicated story.

We do not know when Peter Salem was born. We know that he was born in Framingham, Massachusetts as an enslaved person, whose enslaver was Captain Jeremiah Belknap who later sold Peter to Major Lawson Buckminster. He served in various Patriot units during the War of Independence, from a militia company responding to the Lexington and Concord alarm to regular Provincian and Continental Army regiments, seeing action at Bunker Hill (where it was claimed that he shot and killed Maj. Pitcairn), White Plains, Saratoga, and Monmouth. Sometime before or after the end of the war, Peter Salem was freed and lived the rest of his life as a free African American, dying on August 16, 1816.

So, what about his name? The claim that he might be a Muslim seems to stem from Amir Mohammed, who according to Albert B. Southwick, is "a researcher in the role of Muslims in early American history, has raised the possibility that Mr. Salem was a Muslim. When he was freed, he dropped the name of Buckminster, the name of his master, and took the name of Salem. Salem, sometimes spelled “Saleem,” is an Arabic word for peace."

Yet there are several issues with this argument. Peter Salem did not drop the name of Buckminster after he was freed. He was already known as Peter Salem or just "Salem" in 1775, noted as such in a company return. In fact, Peter Salem also occasionally went by the name of "Salem Middlesex". When he married his wife Katy Benson in 1783, he did so under the name Salem Middlesex. In addition to this, his marriage to Miss Benson and his own Christian baptism in 1760, do point towards Peter being a Christian rather than a Muslim, although one can not discount the notion of him being converted (forcibly or not).

Yet at the same time, the name "Salem" is not exclusively Arabic or always used in that context. Salem, beyond being the name of that famous witch trials town, is a biblical place name that in one biblical passage seemingly uses the name as an alternative name for Jerusalem. The Hebrew word Shalem can also be translated into meaning 'peace' or 'peaceful'. It is just as possible that Peter drew the name Salem from Christianity, or for having some association with Salem, MA, or just because he liked the name. The fact that Peter did not hesitate to use names related to places, such as his use of Middlesex as a name (Framingham was in Middlesex county, and he also served in the Middlesex County militia) points to a different possibility than that which Amir Mohammed make.

Beyond the use of the name "Salem", there is nothing else that would allude to the notion that Peter Salem was Muslim. For the majority of his life, he lived as a Christian and took several names, none of which were explicitly related to Islam. It is therefore only speculation on behalf of Amir Mohammed that subsequent authors and even the National Museum of African American History has chosen to follow.