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Robert Calef
Robert Calef (baptized 2 November 1648 – 13 April 1719) was a cloth merchant in colonial Boston. He was the author o''More Wonders of the Invisible World'' a book composed throughout the mid-1690s denouncing the recent Salem witch trials of 1692–1693 and particularly examining the influential role played by Cotton Mather. Life and education Robert Calef, son of Joseph Calef, was baptized in Stanstead, Suffolk, England on 2 November 1648. The Calef family of Stanstead was "one of substantial yeoman and clothiers." The majority of what is known about the character of Robert Calef is what can be gleaned from his single book, and it contains almost no details about his own life. His writing displays broad education and it is possible that following grammar school he attended one of England's clandestine dissenting academies as evidenced by Cotton Mather's use of the title "Mr." ("Mr. R.C") and Calef's pride in having no proficiency in Latin. (In contrast to Oxford and Cambridge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samuel Parris
Samuel Parris (1653February 27, 1720) was the Puritan minister in Salem Village, Massachusetts, during the Salem witch trials. He was also the father of one of the afflicted girls, and the uncle of another. Life and career Samuel Parris, son of Thomas Parris, was born in London, England to a family of modest financial success and religious nonconformity. Samuel emigrated to Boston in the early 1660s, where he attended Harvard College at his father's behest. When his father died in 1673, Samuel left Harvard to take up his inheritance in Barbados, where he maintained a sugar plantation. In 1680, after a hurricane hit Barbados, damaging much of his property, Parris sold a little of his land and returned to Boston, where he brought his slave Tituba and married Elizabeth Eldridge. Eldridge was noted by many as being incredibly beautiful, and was said to be one of the most beautiful women in Salem Village. Together they had three children, Thomas Parris, Elizabeth Parris, and Susannah ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boston Athenaeum
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- most populous city in the country. The city boundaries encompass an area of about and a population of 675,647 as of 2020. It is the seat of Suffolk County (although the county government was disbanded on July 1, 1999). The city is the economic and cultural anchor of a substantially larger metropolitan area known as Greater Boston, a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) home to a census-estimated 4.8 million people in 2016 and ranking as the tenth-largest MSA in the country. A broader combined statistical area (CSA), generally corresponding to the commuting area and including Providence, Rhode Island, is home to approximately 8.2 million people, making it the sixth most populous in the United States. Boston is one of the oldest muni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles W
The F/V ''Charles W'', also known as Annie J Larsen, is a historic fishing schooner anchored in Petersburg, Alaska. At the time of its retirement in 2000, it was the oldest fishing vessel in the fishing fleet of Southeast Alaska, and the only known wooden fishing vessel in the entire state still in active service. Launched in 1907, she was first used in the halibut fisheries of Puget Sound and the Bering Sea as the ''Annie J Larsen''. In 1925 she was purchased by the Alaska Glacier Seafood Company, refitted for shrimp trawling, and renamed ''Charles W'' in honor of owner Karl Sifferman's father. The company was one of the pioneers of the local shrimp fishery, a business it began to phase out due to increasing competition in the 1970s. The ''Charles W'' was the last of the company's fleet of ships, which numbered twelve at its height. The boat was acquired in 2002 by the nonprofit Friends of the ''Charles W''. The boat was listed on the National Register of Historic Place ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Josiah Quincy III
Josiah Quincy III (; February 4, 1772 – July 1, 1864) was an American educator and political figure. He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1805–1813), mayor of Boston (1823–1828), and President of Harvard University (1829–1845). The historic Quincy Market in downtown Boston is named in his honor. Life and politics Early life and education Quincy, the son of Josiah Quincy II and Abigail Phillips, was born in Boston, on that part of Washington Street that was then known as Marlborough Street. He was a descendant of the Rev. George Phillips of Watertown, the progenitor of the New England Phillips family in America. Quincy's father had traveled to England in 1774, partly for his health but mainly as an agent of the patriot cause to meet with the friends of the colonists in London. Josiah Quincy II died off the coast of Gloucester on April 26, 1775. His son, young Josiah, was a little over three years old. He entered Phillips Academy, Andover, whe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Hutchinson (governor)
Thomas Hutchinson (9 September 1711 – 3 June 1780) was a businessman, historian, and a prominent Loyalist politician of the Province of Massachusetts Bay in the years before the American Revolution. He has been referred to as "the most important figure on the loyalist side in pre-Revolutionary Massachusetts". He was a successful merchant and politician, and was active at high levels of the Massachusetts government for many years, serving as lieutenant governor and then governor from 1758 to 1774. He was a politically polarizing figure who came to be identified by John Adams and Samuel Adams as a proponent of hated British taxes, despite his initial opposition to Parliamentary tax laws directed at the colonies. He was blamed by Lord North (the British Prime Minister at the time) for being a significant contributor to the tensions that led to the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. Hutchinson's Boston mansion was ransacked in 1765 during protests against the Stamp A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Baxter
Richard Baxter (12 November 1615 – 8 December 1691) was an English Puritan church leader, poet, hymnodist, theologian, and controversialist. Dean Stanley called him "the chief of English Protestant Schoolmen". After some false starts, he made his reputation by his ministry at Kidderminster in Worcestershire, and at around the same time began a long and prolific career as theological writer. After the Restoration he refused preferment, while retaining a non-separatist Presbyterian approach, and became one of the most influential leaders of the Nonconformists, spending time in prison. His views on justification and sanctification are somewhat controversial and unconventional within the Calvinist tradition because his teachings seem, to some, to undermine salvation by faith, in that he emphasizes the necessity of repentance and faithfulness. Early life and education Baxter was born at Rowton, Shropshire, at the house of his maternal grandfather (probably on 12 November 16 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bury St Edmunds Witch Trials
The Bury St Edmunds witch trials were a series of trials conducted intermittently between the years 1599 and 1694 in the town of Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, England. Two specific trials in 1645 and 1662 became historically well known. The 1645 trial "facilitated" by the Witchfinder General saw 18 people executed in one day. The judgment by the future Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Sir Matthew Hale in the 1662 trial acted as a powerful influence on the continuing persecution of witches in England and similar persecutions in the American Colonies. Jurisdiction As well as being the seat of county assizes, Bury St Edmunds had been a site for both piepowder courts and court assizes, the latter since the Abbey was given a Liberty, namely the Liberty of St Edmund. For the purposes of civil government the town and the remainder (or "body") of the county were quite distinct, each providing a separate grand jury to the assizes. Early trials The first recorded account of a wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francis Hutchinson
Francis Hutchinson (2 January 1660 – 1739) was a British minister in Bury St Edmunds when he wrote a famous book debunking witchcraft prosecutions and subsequently was made Bishop of Down and Connor in Ireland. Education Hutchinson was born in Carsington, Wirksworth, Derbyshire, the second son of Mary and Edward Hutchinson or Hitchinson (a family of the lesser landed gentry). He was taught history by his uncle, Francis Tallents, a Puritan clergyman, before beginning his studies at Katharine Hall, Cambridgein 1678. Hutchinson graduated B.A. in 1681 and M.A. in 1684, a year after he was ordained by the bishop of London and was appointed Lecturer at the rectory of Widdington, Essex. This living represented the lowest rung of the career ladder of the Church of England and Hutchinson remained there until appointed vicar of Hoxne, Suffolk in early 1690 by local Whig magnate, William Maynard. Hutchinson received a D.D. from Cambridge in 1698. Bury St Edmunds and ''An Historical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harvard Yard
Harvard Yard, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is the oldest part of the Harvard University campus, its historic center and modern crossroads. It contains most of the freshman dormitories, Harvard's most important libraries, Memorial Church, several classroom and departmental buildings, and the offices of senior University officials including the President of Harvard University. The Yard grew over the centuries around Harvard College's first parcel of land, purchased in 1637. Today it is a grassy area of bounded principally by Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge Street, Broadway, and Quincy Street. Its perimeter fencingprincipally iron, with some stretches of brickhas twenty-seven gates. Subdivisions The center of the Yard, known as Tercentenary Theatre, is a wide grassy area bounded by Widener Library, Memorial Church, University Hall, and Sever Hall. Tercentenary Theatre is the site of annual commencement exercises and other convocations. The western third of Harvard Ya ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Book Burning
Book burning is the deliberate destruction by fire of books or other written materials, usually carried out in a public context. The burning of books represents an element of censorship and usually proceeds from a cultural, religious, or political opposition to the materials in question. Book burning can be an act of contempt for the book's contents or author, intended to draw wider public attention to this opinion, or conceal the information contained in the text from being made public, such as diaries or ledgers. In some cases, the destroyed works are irreplaceable and their burning constitutes a severe loss to cultural heritage. Examples include the burning of books and burying of scholars under China's Qin Dynasty (213–210 BCE), the destruction of the House of Wisdom during the Mongol siege of Baghdad (1258), the destruction of Aztec codices by Itzcoatl (1430s), the burning of Maya codices on the order of bishop Diego de Landa (1562), and the burning of Jaffna Public L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Stoughton (judge)
William Stoughton (1631 – July 7, 1701) was a New England Puritan magistrate and administrator in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. He was in charge of what have come to be known as the Salem Witch Trials, first as the Chief Justice of the Special Court of Oyer and Terminer in 1692, and then as the Chief Justice of the Superior Court of Judicature in 1693. In these trials he controversially accepted spectral evidence (based on supposed demonic visions). Unlike some of the other magistrates, he never admitted to the possibility that his acceptance of such evidence was in error. After graduating from Harvard College in 1650, he continued religious studies in England, where he also preached. Returning to Massachusetts in 1662, he chose to enter politics instead of the ministry. An adept politician, he served in virtually every government through the period of turmoil in Massachusetts that encompassed the revocation of its first charter in 1684 and the introduction of its second ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
