Witchcraft Links & Resources
As a 17th century historian and archaeologist working in Salem, you can't help but get caught up in the Salem witchcraft trials. Here are some of my personal projects related to witchraft and magic in early New England, as well as some recommended web sites. Thanks to Donna Vinson and Lance Eaton for their help in putting this page together. -- Emerson W. Baker
- Richard Chamberlain, "Lithobolia, or the Stone Throwing Devil" (1698). I am currently writing a book on this fascinating case of a haunted tavern and cross accusations of witchcraft, set in Portsmouth New Hampshire in 1682. Here is the most detailed contemporary account of those events which I have scanned from George Burr's "Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases."
- Increase Mather, "An Essay for Recording of Illustrious Providences" (1684). The last part of this work provides the other contemporary account of Lithobolia. This web page is part of the Hanover College Historical Texts project. They have also taken their text from George Burr.
- The Humphrey and Lucy Chadbourne Archaeology Project - The on-going excavations of a 17th century homestead in South Berwick, Maine, provides insights into life at the time of the Salem witch trials. I direct this project.
- Emerson Baker and James Kences, "Maine, Indian Land Speculation, and the Essex County Witchcraft Outbreak of 1692," on-line version of the article published in Maine History volume 40, number 3, Fall 2001 (pp. 159-189).
- Read a review of my most recent book, The New England Knight, a biography of Sir William Phips, governor of Massachusetts Bay during the Salem Witch trials
- Syllabus for my graduate seminar on Witchcraft and Magic in Early New England. I last taught this course in the spring of 2006.
- The Elizabeth & Mary -Web page for the excavations of a 1690 Massachusetts warship, excavated by Parks Canada and the Province of Quebec as featured in the August 2000 issue of National Geographic. A great reference for material culture of late seventeenth century. I am a consultant for this project.
Recommended Websites Related to Witchcraft
Warning - there are a huge number of web sites related to witchcraft. Some are excellent, others are not. Be sure to use critical judgement when evaluating these, or any other web sites for that matter!
- European Witchcraft - Documents and Bibliographies On-Line
- European Witchcraft - Other Links
- New England Witchcraft - Documents and Bibliographies On-Line
- New England Witchcraft - Other sites
European Witchcraft - Documents and Bibliographies On-Line
- Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads - To access several key witchcraft tracts at the Bodleain Library, Oxford. '
- The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) by Reginald Scot: excerpts at Rutgers University
- Internet Medieval Sourcebook sources on Witchcraft
- Malleus Maleficarum On Line - Unabridged online republication of the 1928 edition, including translation notes, and two introductions by Montague Summers.
- Rare Books Online: Witchcraft in Europe and America - A substantial part of Conrell Unviersity's famous witchcraft collection available on-line. A subscription fee is charged.
- Thomas Middleton, The Witch (ca. 1613) - An interesting play, written in the wake of Dr. Faustus and MacBeth
- Witchcraft Bibliography Project - This is the definitive bibiliographic source for the history of witchcraft
European Witchcraft - Other Links
- Best Witches - A site that has many excellent links for the study of witchcraft
- Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies - At the University of Toronto for background and links.
- Furness Shakespeare Library at the University of Pennsylvania: For Shakespeare and English Renaissance e-texts
- Public Execution in Early Modern England - Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text & Image at the University of Pennsylvania: two sixteenth-century witchcraft tracts in Latin
- Tyburn Tree: Public Execution in Early Modern England
- The Witching Hours - A site geared for a popular audience, with many useful links
New England Witchcraft - Documents and Bibliographies On-Line
- 1692 Salem Witchcraft Papers - Full text, indexed, on-line from the Danvers Archival Center and UVA
- The Avalon Project at the Yale Law School - Pre 18th Century Documents - Includes a number of seventeenth-century Massachusetts documents
- Books On Line - A source for many early books in full-text
- A briefe account of a strange & unusuall Providence of God befallen to Elizabeth Knap of Groton by Samuel Willard - A witchcraft case in Groton, Massachusetts, from Hanover College
- Burr's Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases, 1648-1706 - Full text on-line from the Danvers Archival Center and UVA
- Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits by Increase Mather (1693) - Full text, on-line from the Danvers Archival Center and UVA
- Lithobolia, or the Stone-Throwing Devil by Richard Chamberlain (1698) - An account of a 1682 haunting of a tavern in Portsmouth, New Hampshire
- Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcraft and Possessions by Cotton Mather (1689) - An important pre-1692 text on witchcraft, from the UMKC site
- Salem, As Observed by Samuel Drake in 1875 and 1910. - An early historian of witchcraft visits Salem
- The Salem Witchcraft Papers - Danvers Archival Center's Site, done in conjunction with The University of Virginia's Electronic Text Center. This site is "one stop shopping" for the events of 1692. It includes whole text documents of Salem and other New England cases, maps of Salem Village then and now, historical sites in Danvers, and other information on the trials
- The Salem Witchcraft Trials - A source for many witchcraft documents. The site belongs to Douglas Linder at UMKC School of Law.
- Some Miscellany Observations On Our Present Debates In a Dialogue Between S. & B. by Samuel Willard (1692) - Full text, on-line from the Danvers Archival Center and UVA
New England Witchcraft - Other sites
- Seventeenth-Century Colonial New England, with Special Emphasis on the Salem Trials - Margo Burn's website is one of the most inclusive ones out there for witchcraft in early New England. It includes many materials on the Crucible, as well as information designed for students in grades K-8
- Witch City - A site for the video on how the events of 1692 are portrayed in Salem today
- Essex County Registry of Deeds - The first 20 books of the Essex Deeds are available here on line. Unfortunately, the indexes are not on-line, but they are available at the court house. Also note that the "pages" referred to on-line are numbered pages, while the index at the court house refers to "folios" (consisting of one piece of paper, front and back) So the on-line page numbers are roughly double the number of the folio given in the index.
- Family Search - On-Line Searching for genealogical data on people world-wide, from the extensive collections of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day saints. An incredible resource.
- The Plymouth Colony Archive - James Deetz's web site at the University of Viriginia, with many sources and links for seventeenth-century Plymouth Colony.
- Plimoth Plantation - A good web site for seventeenth-century Massachusetts