Samuel Sewall (; March 28, 1652 – January 1, 1730) was a judge, businessman, and printer in the
Province of Massachusetts Bay
The Province of Massachusetts Bay was a colony in British America which became one of the thirteen original states of the United States. It was chartered on October 7, 1691, by William III and Mary II, the joint monarchs of the kingdoms of ...
, best known for his involvement in the
Salem witch trials
The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. More than 200 people were accused. Thirty people were found guilty, 19 of whom w ...
, for which he later apologized, and his essay ''The Selling of Joseph'' (1700), which criticized slavery.
He served for many years as the chief justice of the
Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) is the highest court in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Although the claim is disputed by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the SJC claims the distinction of being the oldest continuously functi ...
, the province's high court.
Biography
Sewall was born in
Bishopstoke,
Hampshire
Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English cities on its south coast, Southampton and Portsmouth, Hampshire ...
,
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
, on March 28, 1652, the son of
Henry
Henry may refer to:
People
*Henry (given name)
* Henry (surname)
* Henry Lau, Canadian singer and musician who performs under the mononym Henry
Royalty
* Portuguese royalty
** King-Cardinal Henry, King of Portugal
** Henry, Count of Portugal, ...
and Jane (
Dummer) Sewall. His father, son of the mayor of
Coventry
Coventry ( or ) is a city in the West Midlands, England. It is on the River Sherbourne. Coventry has been a large settlement for centuries, although it was not founded and given its city status until the Middle Ages. The city is governed b ...
, had come to the English North American
Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635, where he married Sewall's mother and returned to England in the 1640s.
Following the
Restoration
Restoration is the act of restoring something to its original state and may refer to:
* Conservation and restoration of cultural heritage
** Audio restoration
** Film restoration
** Image restoration
** Textile restoration
* Restoration ecology
...
of
Charles II to the English throne, the Sewalls again crossed the
Atlantic
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe an ...
in 1661, settling in
Newbury, Massachusetts
Newbury is a town in Essex County, Massachusetts, USA. The population was 6,716 at the 2020 census. Newbury includes the villages of Old Town (Newbury Center), Plum Island and Byfield. Each village is a precinct with its own voting district, ...
. It is there the young Samuel "Sam" grew up along the Parker River and Plum Island Sound.
![Nehemiah Hobart poem 1712](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Nehemiah_Hobart_poem_1712.jpg)
Like other local boys, he attended school at
the home
''The Home'' was a high quality Australian quarterly magazine published in Sydney, New South Wales between 1920 and 1942. It became bimonthly from July/August 1924. Then from 1926 onwards it was published monthly until it ceased publication ...
of
James Noyes
Rev. James Noyes (born 1608, Wiltshire, England – died 22 October 1656, Newbury, Massachusetts, Newbury, Massachusetts Bay Colony) was an English clergyman who emigrated to Massachusetts. He was a founder of Newbury, Massachusetts.
Biography
Ja ...
, whose cousin, Reverend
Thomas Parker, was the principal instructor. From Parker, Sewall acquired a lifelong love of
verse, which he wrote in both
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
and
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
. In 1667 Sewall entered
Harvard College
Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher lea ...
, where his classmates included
Edward Taylor
Edward Taylor (1642 – June 29, 1729) was a colonial American poet, pastor and physician of English origin. His work remained unpublished for some 200 years but since then has established him as one of the foremost writers of his time. His poe ...
and
Daniel Gookin
Major-General Danyell “Daniel” Gookin (1612 – 19 March 1687) was a Munster colonist, settler of Virginia and Massachusetts, and a writer on the subject of American Indians.
Early life
He was born, perhaps in County Cork, Ireland, in the ...
, with whom he formed enduring friendships. Sewall received his first degree, a BA, in 1671, and his MA in 1674. In 1674 he served as librarian of Harvard for nine months, the second person to hold that post. That year he began keeping a journal, which he maintained for most of his life; it is one of the major historical documents of the time. In 1679 he became a member of the
Military Company of Massachusetts.
Sewall's involvement in the political affairs of the colony began when he became a
freeman
Freeman, free men, or variant, may refer to:
* a member of the Third Estate in medieval society (commoners), see estates of the realm
* Freeman, an apprentice who has been granted freedom of the company, was a rank within Livery companies
* Free ...
of the colony, giving him the right to vote. In 1681 he was appointed the official printer of the colony. One of the first works he published was
John Bunyan
John Bunyan (; baptised 30 November 162831 August 1688) was an English writer and Puritan preacher best remembered as the author of the Christian allegory ''The Pilgrim's Progress,'' which also became an influential literary model. In addition ...
's ''
The Pilgrim's Progress
''The Pilgrim's Progress from This World, to That Which Is to Come'' is a 1678 Christianity, Christian allegory written by John Bunyan. It is regarded as one of the most significant works of theological fiction in English literature and a prog ...
''. After
John Hull died in 1683, Sewall was elected to replace him on the colony's council of assistants, a body that functioned both as the upper house of the legislature and as a court of appeals. He also became a member of Harvard's Board of Overseers.
Sewall's oral examination for the MA was a public affair and was witnessed by Hannah Hull, daughter of colonial merchant and
mintmaster,
John Hull. She was apparently taken by the young man's charms and pursued him. They were married in February 1676. Her father, whose work as mintmaster had made him quite wealthy, gave the couple £500 in colonial currency as a wedding gift. Biographer Richard Francis notes that the weight of this amount of
specie
Specie may refer to:
* Coins or other metal money in mass circulation
* Bullion coins
* Hard money (policy)
* Commodity money
Commodity money is money whose value comes from a commodity of which it is made. Commodity money consists of objects ...
, , may have approximated the bride's weight, giving rise to
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was an American novelist and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religion.
He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, from a family long associated with that t ...
's legend that the gift was her weight in coins. Sewall moved into his in-laws' mansion in Boston and was soon involved in that family's business and political affairs. He and Hannah had fourteen children before her death in 1717, although only a few survived to adulthood.
He also entered local politics and was elevated to the position of assistant magistrate in the judiciary. In 1692 he was one of the nine judges appointed to the court of Oyer and Terminer in
Salem, charged with trying those from Salem Town and elsewhere who were accused of
witchcraft
Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others. A practitioner is a witch. In medieval and early modern Europe, where the term originated, accused witches were usually women who were believed to have ...
. His diary recounts many of the more famous episodes of the trials, such as the agonizing death under torture of
Giles Corey
Giles Corey ( August 1611 – September 19, 1692) was an English-born American farmer who was accused of witchcraft along with his wife Martha Corey during the Salem witch trials. After being arrested, Corey refused to enter a plea of guilty o ...
, and reflects the growing public unease about the guilt of many of the accused. Sewall's brother Stephen had meanwhile opened up his home to one of the initially afflicted children,
Betty Parris
Elizabeth "Betty" Parris (November 28, 1682 – March 21, 1760) was one of the young girls who accused other people of being witches during the Salem witch trials. The accusations made by Betty (Elizabeth) and her cousin Abigail Williams caused t ...
, daughter of Salem Village's minister,
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 T ...
, and shortly afterward Betty's "afflictions" appear to have subsided.
Sewall was perhaps most remarkable among the justices involved in the trials in that he later regretted his role, going so far as to call for a public day of prayer, fasting, and reparations. Following the dissolution of the court, the Sewall family was blighted by what Sewall thought to be punishments from God. In the five years after the Trials, two of Sewall's daughters and Hannah's mother died, and Hannah gave birth to a stillborn child. What convinced Sewall of his need for public repentance was a recitation of
Matthew 12:7, "If ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless". Not only had Sewall's home life been shaken, but in the years after the Trials, the people of Massachusetts came to see them as the culmination of a generation-long series of setbacks and ordeals, notably the
Navigation Acts
The Navigation Acts, or more broadly the Acts of Trade and Navigation, were a long series of English laws that developed, promoted, and regulated English ships, shipping, trade, and commerce between other countries and with its own colonies. The ...
, the declaration of the
New England Dominion, and
King Philip's War
King Philip's War (sometimes called the First Indian War, Metacom's War, Metacomet's War, Pometacomet's Rebellion, or Metacom's Rebellion) was an armed conflict in 1675–1676 between indigenous inhabitants of New England and New England coloni ...
. He saw this as a sign not that witchcraft did not exist, but that he had ruled on insubstantial evidence. He records in his diary that on 14 January 1697, he stood up in the meeting house he attended while his minister read out his confession of guilt.
In 1693 Sewall was appointed an associate justice of the
Superior Court of Judicature
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) is the court of last resort, highest court in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Although the claim is disputed by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the SJC claims the di ...
, the province's high court, by Governor Sir
William Phips
Sir William Phips (or Phipps; February 2, 1651 – February 18, 1695) was born in Maine in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and was of humble origin, uneducated, and fatherless from a young age but rapidly advanced from shepherd boy, to shipwright, s ...
. In 1717, he was appointed its chief justice by Governor
Samuel Shute
Samuel Shute (January 12, 1662 – April 15, 1742) was an English military officer and royal governor of the provinces of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. After serving in the Nine Years' War and the War of the Spanish Succession, he was appoin ...
.
Sewall died in
Boston, Massachusetts, on January 1, 1730, aged 77, and was interred in the family tomb at Boston's
Granary Burying Ground
The Granary Burying Ground in Massachusetts is the city of Boston's third-oldest cemetery, founded in 1660 and located on Tremont Street. It is the final resting place for many notable Revolutionary War-era patriots, including Paul Revere, the ...
.
Sewall married three times. Hannah Hull, his first wife, died in 1717; two years later, in 1719, Sewall married Abigail (Melyen) Woodmansey Tilley, who died seven months later. In 1722, he married Mary (Shrimpton) Gibbs, who survived him. His nephew,
Stephen
Stephen or Steven is a common English first name. It is particularly significant to Christians, as it belonged to Saint Stephen ( grc-gre, Στέφανος ), an early disciple and deacon who, according to the Book of Acts, was stoned to death; ...
, also served as a Massachusetts Chief Justice, as did his great-grandson
Samuel.
Views and writings
Apart from his involvement in the Salem witch trials, Sewall was liberal in his views for the time. In 1700, he wrote and published ''The Selling of Joseph'', a tract which argued a biblically-based case that slavery was unjustified and sinful. It was the first anti-slavery document ever published in New England and in North America broadly.
Written like a sermon, ''Selling'' argued that "Liberty is in real value next unto Life: None ought to part with it themselves, or deprive others of it, but upon the most mature Consideration." Enslaving people of Black African descent was contrary to God's design for the world because according to scripture, all humankind were "the sons of Adam" and "of One Blood" and had the same right to freedom. Freedom, including for Black Americans, Sewall wrote, should be valued more than profit.
His title referred to the biblical story of
Joseph, son of Israel, whose brothers unjustly sold him into slavery, comparing the enslavement of Black Americans to Joseph's own unjustified bondage.
''Selling'' still propagated a
segregationist
Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into racial or other ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation can amount to the international crime of apartheid and a crime against humanity under the Statute of the Interna ...
perspective, and Sewall claimed that Black Africans could not peacefully live among white New Englanders. Nevertheless, his argument against slavery was a "courageous… public stand".
Sewall had published ''Selling'' in response to learning that Boston judge
John Saffin
John Saffin (baptised 22 November 1626 – 29 July 1710) was a colonial New England merchant, politician, judge, and poet. He is best known for his ''A Brief and Candid Answer'' to Samuel Sewall's ''The Selling of Joseph'', and for a small colle ...
had refused to release a Black indentured servant named Adam and intended to perpetually enslave Adam. After ''Selling'' was released, Saffin issued a rebuttal arguing that social hierarchies were necessary and that enslaving Black Americans was divinely ordained.
Adam was set free after a lengthy trial, but Saffin's rebuttal held greater sway among Bostonians, and chattel slavery persisted in Massachusetts. ''Selling'' was only reprinted twice (one in the 1700s and again in 1863), and it became an obscure document.
Sewall's own nephew, also named Samuel Sewall, rejected his uncle's arguments against chattel slavery and continued participating in it as a business.
His essay ''Talitha Cumi'', first published in 1725, refers to the "right of women." When the
periwig
A wig is a head or hair accessory made from human hair, animal hair, or synthetic fiber. The word wig is short for periwig, which makes its earliest known appearance in the English language in William Shakespeare's ''The Two Gentlemen of Verona' ...
became fashionable in New England, Sewall condemned the fashion vehemently, in contrast to
Cotton Mather, who saw no reason why a Puritan should not wear a wig. Sewall's ''Journal'', kept from 1673 to 1729, describes his life as a Puritan against the changing tide of colonial life as the devoutly religious community of Massachusetts gradually adopted more secular attitudes and emerged as a liberal, cosmopolitan-minded community.
Cultural influence
*
''The Crucible'' (1996 film): Judge Samuel Sewall was played by actor
George Gaynes
George Gaynes (born George Jongejans; May 16, 1917 – February 15, 2016) was a Finnish-born American singer, actor, and voice artist. Born to Dutch and Russian-Finnish parents in the Grand Duchy of Finland of the Russian Empire, he served in the ...
. Notably, he is the first judge to begin doubting the circumstances, and by the end of the film, he is asking his superior, Judge Danforth, to end the trials as he and the townspeople have tired of the deaths and executions brought on by the court.
Bibliography
Works written by Sewall include:
PAL: Samuel Sewall (1652-1730)
/ref>
''The Revolution in New England Justified''
1691
''Phaenomena quaedam Apolyptica'', 1697
online text (PDF version)
* '' The Selling of Joseph'', 1700
''Proposals Touching the Accomplishment of Prophecies''
1713
* ''Diary of Samuel Sewall'', 1674–1729. Edited M. Halsey Thomas in two volumes, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1973.
* ''Talitha Cumi, or Damsel, Arise'', 1725. Reprinted in Eve LaPlante, ''Salem Witch Judge,' ''2007, 2008.
References
Sources
*
*
* Richard Francis, ''Judge Sewall's Apology: The Salem Witch Trials and the Forming of a Conscience'', Fourth Estate, London, 2005; HarperCollins, New York, 2005; HarperPerennial, London & New York, 2006
* Eve LaPlante, ''Salem Witch Judge: The Life and Repentance of Samuel Sewall'', HarperOne, 2007, 2008.
* Ola Elizabeth Winslow, ''Samuel Sewall of Boston'', Macmillan, New York, 1964.
* Mel Yazawa, ''The Diary and Life of Samuel Sewall'', Bedford Books, Boston and New York, 1998.
Archives and records
Samuel Sewall journal
at Baker Library Special Collections, Harvard Business School.
External links
*
*
100 Parish Cemetery
York, Maine. Descendants buried here.
Reading by Eve LaPlante
from her biography of Sewall, courtesy of the Maine Humanities Council
The 'Maine Humanities Council (MHC)
was founded in 1975 as a private nonprofit affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. It is one of 56 humanities councils in the United States and its territories. The MHC is also home of the Harrie ...
The Family of Dummer of British Origin
The Selling of Joseph: A Memorial (1700) essay
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sewall, Samuel
1652 births
1730 deaths
American abolitionists
Burials at Granary Burying Ground
Harvard College alumni
Justices of the Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature
Kingdom of England emigrants to Massachusetts Bay Colony
Members of the colonial Massachusetts Governor's Council
New Latin-language poets
People from Bishopstoke
People from colonial Boston
People of the Salem witch trials
American librarians
Sewall family