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Post by Graveyardbride on Nov 23, 2014 15:13:29 GMT -5
Family relations focus of new book on Salem Witch TrialsSALEM, Mass. – Emerson “Tad” Baker offers a fresh perspective on the 1692 Salem witch hysteria in his new book A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience. Baker is creating a buzz and the book is No. 1 on the Barnes & Noble list of hot Colonial reads. What tempest of dark forces brewed in Salem Village? Baker asserts it was a culmination of climatic events just waiting to unleash its fury. When you mix a smallpox epidemic, crop failure, Indian raids, frontier wars, a government upheaval, Puritan oppression along with three decades of bad blood squalls, you have a perfect storm. According to Baker, these combined threats convinced Puritan authorities that God had frozen them out. By 1692, the chilly atmosphere in Salem was more like a medieval wasteland than a New Jerusalem. The elitist ice den pressed for more frigid conditions hoping to purge evil, but as Baker will show it ended their icy reign.
What makes Baker’s story stand out from the “crowded field” of other scholars is his focus on family relations. Although past authors have dismissed the significance of genealogical research, Baker asserts it is essential. It helps the reader understand the human behavior of the Colonial clans, as well as the actions of the courts. It also outlines the Puritan mindset.
As noted by the editor, Baker will “awaken your primal emotions with the personal accounts.” He probes deep into psyches exposing raw emotions such as fear and jealousy, which helped trigger the hysteria. He also addresses the patterns of friction and tension in the society of the time.
Peg Plummer, a Mayflower descendant, loved the “added complexity of the family connections of the accused, accusers and judges.” Plummer says her interest in genealogy made her “appreciate Baker’s detailing of the close-knit group of the judges and admits it must have been hard to disagree with a colleague if he’s also your brother-in-law, fellow merchant and Governor’s counselor.”
The pedigree profile Baker outlines on each judge will show a collective force of opportunist merchants and ministers entering into strategic marriages. Baker divulges their methods of ferreting out devilish dissenters and provocateur parishioners before and during the trials.
Rev. George Burroughs would be trapped in the turbulence even after a geographical relocation. Was this Harvard-educated minister really contaminating his congregation with Satan’s black arts? Or, was he, like John Alden, possessed by the spirits of the open frontier? Alden was accused of bewitching soldiers and being in league with the enemy pagan Indians.
Baker defines the “perfect witch” as one who had problematic histories due to political, religious and military conflicts. They were “part of Satan’s grand collation bent on destroying Puritan Massachusetts.”
Baker demonstrates how festering feuds among relations, neighbors and court officials would play a part in the witch hunt. The Bradbury line had a long history of strife with those on the bench and pulpit. Additionally, there were Quakers in Mary’s line and her husband had shown public sympathy toward the sect as a court official. Rebecca Nurse stood charged for tormenting a neighbor who was trying to settle a score and also came under suspicion for having harbored Quaker children. Many of the accused would be targeted for Quaker associations. In fact, Baker offers many accounts to show how victims fingered for witchery had relations who suffered the Quaker persecutions. The judges who ordered the gallows executions are the sons of the judges who whipped and branded Quakers.
Jason Starbuck Morley, a direct descendant of Quaker Thomas Maul, was pleased with Baker’s coverage of the Quaker ties to the witch trials. Morley says the book “is an outstanding new addition to the trove of scholarship on the 1692 Salem Witchcraft Hysteria and by far the best account he has read on the subject.”
Heather Wilkinson Rojo, author of the Nutfield Genealogy blog also has several ancestral ties and notes: “As a genealogist, this is fascinating stuff and Baker succeeds in telling the “whole story with all flesh on the bones.” Rojo further adds, “While most of the other accounts just focus on one or two angles of the story, Baker really covers it all – before, during, and after.”
Despite the fact the actual court records were not released to the public until 1979, Baker presents several examples of how “Witch City Salem” is very much alive in memory. His work will offer each “throbbing heart” in the experience and readers will appreciate why generations of their descendants like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson “have dedicated to the proposition it must never happen again.”Source: Melissa Berry, WickedLocalSalem, November 22, 2014.
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Post by Joanna on Feb 4, 2015 1:25:28 GMT -5
Professor Relates Salem Witch Hunt to Indian Raid on Maine VillageYORK, Maine – Economic uncertainty, fueled by a growing disparity between the haves and have-nots. A perceived enemy both far away and close to home whose religious beliefs and very appearance is anathema to you, and who seems to act irrationally or without conscience. A government you find you cannot trust because it has engaged in a wholesale coverup of facts that you need to know. America in the 21st century? Actually, Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692.
There is nothing new under the sun, says Emerson Baker, a Salem State University history professor and York resident who has spent the past 20 years studying the infamous Salem witch trials. “The fact is, the witch trials underscore the dangers of extremism and rushing to judgment,” he says. “We see it repeatedly throughout time and we see it today. If there’s someone who is different and if a problem happens, maybe they’re responsible. Google the word ‘witch hunt.’ You will find every writer, every talking head, every politician left, center and right, drawing analogies to witch hunts.”
Ripped out of today’s headlines, for instance, is a story in Al Jazeera America about the fear of a “witch hunt” against Muslims after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris. All the ingredients for a society taken over by extremism certainly existed in spades during late 17th century Massachusetts, says Emerson – themes he explores in his new book, A Storm of Witchcraft. “The fact is, it was a storm. There were problems with the government. There were problems with war. There were problems with the economy. All these terrible things were happening,” he relates. “The agents of the Pope [the French] were conspiring with the minions of Satan [American Indians] and driving people out of New England. Quakers were settling in Puritan Massachusetts. God is testing us and, quite frankly, the devil is winning because we are not devout enough.”
The story of the Salem witch trials is well-known, at least broadly, to most Americans – reaching a popular audience in the 20th century with the production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.
What began in January 1692 with the strange behavior of two teenage girls, the daughter and niece of Salem Village minister Samuel Parris, spread to a small group of young females who were “afflicted” – many of them poor servant girls who were orphaned. Soon, they began accusing their neighbors of witchcraft – in 17th century Puritan Massachusetts, as for centuries before in Europe, believed to be very real.
‘Satan was winning the war.’ The context, according to Baker, is critical. Many of the initial accusers came from the poorer parts of Salem Village, while many of the accused were “from the more up and coming part of town.” Witchcraft was tied to the economic uncertainty of its time, with crop failures rampant and poverty extensive. Moreover, King William’s War being waged by Indians with help from their French allies at the “frontier” of Maine and New Hampshire created another level of uncertainty. Puritans were being assaulted and killed, certainly a harbinger from God.
The same month Abigail Williams and Betty Parris made their initial accusations, York came under attack. The Candlemas raid on January 24, 1692 – launched from Snowshoe Rock, which is actually near Baker’s Old Scituate Road property today, ended in the deaths or kidnapings of hundreds of settlers. Word of the attack would have soon reached Salem. Among those killed was a Puritan minister.
“The destruction of this prosperous shire town shocked residents of Massachusetts; if York could fall, most towns north of Boston were vulnerable. The death of the first Puritan minister at the hands of Indians was an ominous sign that Satan was winning the war against Massachusetts,” Baker writes.
Whatever caused the initial hysteria and whatever caused its spread among the teenagers, Baker says it didn’t take long before the accusations spread beyond Salem to Andover, Billerica, Haverhill – all in Massachusetts – and the number of the accused began mounting.
Trials began almost immediately and continued throughout much of 1692. The judges were not lawyers, but prosperous merchants and politicians of their time and many were among the closest personal advisers to Gov. William Phips. Moreover, some had land holdings in the “frontier” they had lost and some were military and political leaders who were responsible for the “failed policies” in the frontier war that threatened their way of life. “Their losses, and those of the colony’s, would have left them looking for someone to blame,” Baker writes. “Sad to say, under such circumstances, it is often human nature not to look within but to look outward. The judges did just that, preferring to hold Satan and his minions accountable for their situation.”
In the end, 172 were accused of witchcraft, 19 were executed and a 20th was pressed to death. Several others died in prison. In the months that followed, pamphlets critical of the court’s decisions were published.
Gov. Phips, realizing the government would lose authority if people thought it had wrongly imprisoned more than 100 people, imposed a publications ban. “Curbing the free speech about the witch trials was a key element of what effectively became the first large-scale government cover-up in American history,” says Baker.
The saddest part of this entire chapter of American history, according to Baker, is that those who proclaimed they were witches were freed while those who held steadfast to their innocence were put to death. “Honestly, this is the story of 25 people who lost their lives over this. This is a story that needs to be told, of people who were unwilling to compromise and died for their beliefs. It’s a powerful story.” The witch trials, he insists, remain a cautionary tale for every person.
“Every generation of people around the world is convinced the times in which they live are so much better than the bad old days and we don’t do things like that anymore,” he says. “The fact is that even though we have modern science and technology, it’s your bias that will get you every time. The moral of the story is that there needs to be more understanding of each other and a better understanding of the world before we make our opinions.”
Source: Deborah McDermott, The York Weekly, January 20, 2015.
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