Salem’s Colonial History  presented by Emerson W. Baker

Reading

Emerson Baker, “Salem as Frontier Outpost,” in Dane Morrison and Nancy Schultz, eds., Salem: Place, Myth and Memory. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004, 20-41.

Bibliography

Baker, Emerson and James Kences. “Maine, Indian Land Speculation, and the Essex County Witchcraft Outbreak of 1692,” Maine History, 40, no. 3 (2001): 159-189.

Also available at: www.hawthorneinsalem.com/ScholarsForum/MMD1705.html

Boyer, Paul and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed:  The Social Origins of Witchcraft. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974. One of the very best books on Salem witchcraft. 

Gildrie, Richard P.  Salem, Massachusetts, 1626-1683: A Covenanted Community. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1975. A good scholarly overview of Salem in the seventeenth century.

Higginson, Francis. England’s Plantation, or a Short and True Description of the Commodities and Discommodities of that Country (London, 1630). Reprinted in Everett Emerson, ed., Letters from New England: The Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1629-1638 (Amherst, 1976). 29-38. Also available at: www.winthropsociety.org/doc_higgin.php

Norton, Mary Beth. In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002). The most recent treatment of Salem, a detailed analysis of the “frontier interpretation” of witchcraft.

Salisbury, Neal.  Manitou and Providence. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. Although not specifically about Salem, this is an excellent analysis of Anglo-Indian relations in early New England. It also provides a brief overview of Native Americans in the region before the arrival of Europeans.

Vickers, Daniel.  Farmers and Fishermen:  Two Centuries of Work in Essex County, Massachusetts, 1630-1850.  Chapel Hill:  University of North Carolina Press, 1994. This book is an excellent study of the economics of early Essex County, including Salem.

Web sites

Seventeenth-Century Colonial New England, with special emphasis on The Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692.  www.17thc.us  Margo Burns’s web site is a wonderful starting point to explore this topic.

Essex County Registry of Deeds – Historic Records On-Line. www.salemdeeds.com/historic.asp . The first twenty volumes of deeds are viewable on line. Unfortunately, the index is not on line.

Colonial House www.pbs.org/wnet/colonialhouse. This is the site for the PBS reality series set in New England in 1628, which was based in part on the early years of Salem.

Salem Witch Trials http://etext.virginia.edu/salem/witchcraft/. University of Virginia e-text project, this is an amazing web site. It features tons of primary sources on Essex County too!

Salem in History www.saleminhistory.org.  Salem in History is a a content-based, professional development program open to all elementary, middle and high school teachers of American history in the Salem Public School district. It is funded by a Teaching American History grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The site includes curricular materials for different themes in American history, based in local resources.