Your people are not set dressing. They marry and have children, form friendships and feuds, rise to become town heroes or fall under suspicion, and in time they grow old and die and are buried in the ground you set aside for them.
The Chronicle remembers all of it - every birth and wedding, every reckoning, every death and how it came. It is the town's autobiography, and it is what turns a Salem from a build into a story worth sharing.