seminar

so while I was writing my paper proposal I realized that basically all of my prime (not primary but the ones that I have found useful so far) are about Samuel Sewall so it appears as if I am doing a biography on his life and only his perspective of the Salem WItch trials. I know that there are the diaries and letters of Cotten Matters in the Simpson library that I plan on checking out as of now, but does anyone know of any other primary sources (or good secondary sources) that I can use to get a more balanced account of the entire event?

After going through some of the great websites I found (I will list a couple below), I have decided to chance the focus on my paper, mainly because trying to do pretty much two research papers in one (psychology and history) was going to drive me absolutely bonkers. I came across a statistic that caught my attention, and I think (as of now of course) that I want to run with it. Most of the people accussed of witchcraft were women 40 years of age or older, and the older that one was the greater likelihood of them being convicted (I plan on looking farther into this to confirm that it is true but that was startling to me). Also, the women that were accusessed were not no-bodies in the community. They were fairly important people, some of them actually owned land, which was pretty rare in those days. The men who were accussed were related to women who where accused, and the means of getting a confussion were brutal and cruel, even for a younger person it probably would have been enough to garnish a false confession, let alone for some one who was not young, especially back then because life expectancy was not very long. So pretty much I think that I want to look at social class and compare the accussers to the accused and see if there is a correlation among classes.

ONe of the problems that I have realized that I am going to run into is that, in the seventeenth century, people who acted abnormally or in a way that society would now associate with a mental illness, the popular and accepted reasoning for these behaviors was possession by an evil spirit or witchcraft. So for their day, with the knowledge that the people in Salem had in terms of physiolgical and biological research into why people behave as they do, the notion that it was the work of the devil is not that far off, meaning that there is not enirely much written on the subject of mental illness since that term did not exist during that time period.

I really like reading about early American history, and scandals are always very interesting to investigate, and they can occasionally shed light on mondern day policies. So with this is mind I decided that the Salem Witch Trials of the late 1600s would be a perfect match for me. I am also taking an abnormal psychology class which also got my interest, suppose there was a a connection between what happened in Salem and (what in this era) is deemed “metal illness”? That would shed new light on the subject. So at the moment I believe that is what I would like to research.

Ever since I was in grade school I have been interested in history. My dad absolutley loves the subject so some of our first family vacations were to Jamestown, Williamsburg, and other historical sites. As I got older I realized that I also enjoyed learning about the past. I love the idea that history is about people who actually lived, it is not just a jumble of numbers or formulas that one has to memorize and whose understanding is based on the knowledge of these formulas. One can understand, at least to an extent, history simply by understanding the human condition. It is comforting to know that other people lived and that we are not the center of the universe.

Of course I took my time in deciding upon being a history major. I attempted to study economics, but it turned out to be all together too dry and with more emphasis on math than I was comfortable. It is so nice to be back in a setting that is enjoyable and one that I actually love to be a part.

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