Elizabeth Knapp sat perched on a small three- legged stool in front of a roaring fire in the hall of her family's home as the last late October light faded through the yellowish oilpaper windows. The wind had already picked up a taste of the winter bite that the early Massachusetts Bay colonists had grown to despise, and tonight it whipped down the chimney of the eight foot wide fireplace with a shrill, devilish whistle, causing the shadows projected by the bayberry wax candles to shimmy and waver against the rough hewn rafters. Elizabeth drew her red knit hood tighter down over her head and huddled towards the hearth.
Her mother, also named Elizabeth, watched her from farther back in darkness of the hall, where she was mending a pair of breeches. By December, she knew, the wind whipping down the chimney could cause the sap emerging from the burning logs to freeze solid. The temperatures would make many a grown man in town wish to curl up and sleep away the winter until rising temperatures and longer days made Groton, just hewn from the Massachusetts wilderness a few decades ago, hospitable once again.
Despite the gathering winter she felt relieved to see that her sixteen- year old daughter, now her only child after the early death of her son James, was acting normal again. For the past fortnight the younger Elizabeth had been carrying herself in a strange manner. While walking along normally she would sometimes cry out. Last week she had shrieked at extremely inappropriate time in Sunday dinner and that day in church she had been overcome with irreverent laughter. She was always quick to offer a reasonable excuse to spare the swift punishment usually dispensed to children at the time, but the extravagance and immodes...
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...essen the symptoms. Bearers invariably die 10 to 25 years after the onset. Chorics have been dubbed everything for saints (the Catholic church recognizes four) to witches since the sixteenth century.
References:
Butler, Caleb. History of the Town of Groton. Boston, 1848.
Dow, George F. Everyday life in the Massachussetts Bay Colony, Soc. for Preservation of N.E. Antiques, 1935.
Earle, Allice M. Customs and fashions in old New England. Scribner and Son, New York 1893.
Greene, Samuel A., Groton in the Witchcraft Times, University Press, Cambridge, MA 1883, 29pp.
Greene, Samuel A., ed. Early Records of the Town of Groton 1662- 1707, University Press, Cambridge, MA 1883, 186pp.
May, Virginia, Groton Houses. Groton Historical Society, 1978.
Okun, Michael S., The history of adult onset Chorea, at www.medinfo.ufl.edu/histmed/okun/slide1.html
Escaping Salem: The Other Witch Hunt of 1692 by Richard Godbeer. This book was published in 2005 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Richard Godbeer examines the witch trials in the seventeenth century. When a young girl Katherine Branch of Stamford, Connecticut is stricken with unexplainable convulsions, her master and mistress begin to think it is caused by something supernatural. Godbeer follows the incident without any bias and looks into how the accusations and trials are handled by the townspeople and the people in charge of handling the trails. Godbeer’s purpose of writing this book is to prove that Salem was not the norm. Godbeer’s approach of only one using one case, slightly weakens his effectiveness that Salem was not the norm.
Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft is a concise, 231 page informational text by Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum. Published in 1974, it explores the economic and social conditions present in the Salem village during the 1600s that led to the hysteria surrounding witchcraft. Multiple graphs and illustrations are present, as well as an average sized font, an abundance of footnotes typically on the left page, and a prominent voice from the authors. The book was written to serve as a more comprehensive informational piece on the Salem witch trials due to the authors finding other pieces written about the same topic to be inaccurate. Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum wanted to create something that utilized
The Norton Anthology: American Literature, Volume A: Beginning to 1820. New York City: Norton & Comany, 2007.
The story starts off as we meet the man called Hannibal Lecter for the very first time.
6 American Bee Journal July 1921, ‘Incidents in Massachusetts Colony Prior to 1654’ by George W. Adams
Witchcraft in the 17th Century Witchcraft in Europe during the 17th century was common. It mainly took place in Germany, but also took place in England. Witches were associated with evil; it was believed witches inherited magical powers from Satan in exchange for the witch’s soul. Some of these magical powers included outrageous claims such as flying, being able to transform and cursing bad luck on others. It was extremely dangerous to be accused of being a witch as the most common punishment was death, often by beheading or even being burnt at the stake.
Hartog, Hendrik. "The Public law of a County Court: Judicial Government in Eighteenth Century Massachusetts." American Journal of Legal History, XX (1976), 282-329
The film stars Hopkins as elegant cannibal Hannibal Lecter. When he's not disemboweling or dining on his hapless victims, he engages in a transatlantic cat-and-mouse game with FBI agent Clarice Starling, played by Julianne Moore. Jodie Foster played Starling in "Lambs," but opted not to return, reportedly because of the new film's violence. Ridley Scott ("Gladiator") directed. The original was directed by Jonathan Demme.
Anthony Hopkins, as Hannibal raises a few interesting ideas about reality, identity and our perception of the serial killer. First of all, the movie would have never been made if Hopkins, had not agreed to do the sequel (Sterritt). Second, even though Hopkins, has taken on numerous roles, his memorable roles (besides as Hannibal Lecter) are not so villainous such as his characters in "Remains of the Day or "Shadowlands. In relation to this ethnography of the audience viewing the film, Hannibal's ethos is directly tied to Hopkins, ethos and it shows in audience reactions.
Hannibal Rising. Dir. Peter Webber. Screenplay by Thomas Harris. By Thomas Harris. Perf. Gaspard Ulliel, Gong Li, Rhys Ifans, and Dominic West. The Weinstein Company. 2007 DVD
These skeptical interpretations of possession coexisted in New England society alongside the official Puritan view. Sometimes the possessed were not encouraged to name the witches responsible for their afflictions (not even by their own ministers); any names voluntarily offered by them were not taken seriously, and no one was formally accused. Other times, most notably during outbreaks, the possessed became important— if not the most important— sources of witch identifications. At all times, however, as we shall see, the possessed provided the most visible support for the clergy’s argument that the greatest danger of witchcraft lay in the power of witches to enlist others in the Devil’s
In order to understand the outbreak of the witchcraft hysteria in Salem, Massachusetts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, authors of Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft, explore the social and economic divisions and tensions within Salem and the surrounding communities. Both Boyer and Nissenbaum have a strong background in history. Paul Boyer (1935-2012) was the Merle Curti Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as well as a cultural and intellectual historian who authored several other books. Stephen Nissenbaum was a Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst who authored several other books as well. In Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of
The author of A Storm of Witchcraft, Emerson W. Baker is a well known historian, archaeologist, and professor at Salem State University. In addition to receiving a Ph.D. in History from the College of William and Mary, an M.A. in History from University of Maine, and a B.A. in History from Bates College, Baker has also received many commendations and awards for his work. Among those awards, he has earned a membership in the Colonial Society of Massachusetts and was honored with the Maine Historical Society’s Neil Allen Award. Baker has also been the Chairman of Salem State University’s Archaeological Advisory Committee since 1990, and he has been the Chair for Maine Cultural Affairs Council since 2000. Baker has also written four other books, Devil of Great Island, New England Knight, American Beginnings, and Clarke & Lake Co.
Kupperman, Karen Ordahl. “Thomas Morton, Historian”. The New England Quarterly, Vol. 50, No.4 (Dec., 1977), pp. 660-664. The New England Quarterly, Inc. .
In “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson,” Mary Rowlandson, a Puritan mother from Lancaster, Massachusetts, recounts the invasion of her town by Indians in 1676 during “King Philip’s War,” when the Indians attempted to regain their tribal lands. She describes the period of time where she is held under captivity by the Indians, and the dire circumstances under which she lives. During these terrible weeks, Mary Rowlandson deals with the death of her youngest child, the absence of her Christian family and friends, the terrible conditions that she must survive, and her struggle to maintain her faith in God. She also learns how to cope with the Indians amongst whom she lives, which causes her attitude towards them to undergo several changes. At first, she is utterly appalled by their lifestyle and actions, but as time passes she grows dependent upon them, and by the end of her captivity, she almost admires their ability to survive the harshest times with a very minimal amount of possessions and resources. Despite her growing awe of the Indian lifestyle, her attitude towards them always maintains a view that they are the “enemy.”