01-14 TABLE of CONTENTS: The Witch Trials DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS QUOTE by Emily Hahn. Excerpt from Demeter's Daughters       Event 01-14-1697: The Massachusetts colony held a day of fasting. In the churches the men who had sat in judgment of the witches or testified against them examined their consciences. One of the judges Samuel Sewall stood with bowed head as a minister read aloud his wish to take "the blame and the shame."       Selma R. Williams wrote about the witch hysteria:       "Most women were not witches. But everywhere and always, most accused witches were women. "The continent of Europe had begun to find witches in its midst in the 1300's and by 1700 had put perhaps nine million to death.       "Britain, isolated across the Channel, remained free of the scourge until the 1560's. Then... Scotland, affected and infected by its alliance with France, began to hunt witches, torturing and burning... Elizabeth I's successor, King James I of Scotland, was a firm believer in witchcraft and told of his constant wonder that the devil invariably chose hags as his agents.       "Between 1580 and 1660, England hanged more than 30,000 witches in the Puritan counties of Suffolk, Norfolk, and Essex...precisely the place and exactly the time to give future New England colonists at least one full generation of living with and witnessing the phenomenon firsthand... hanging witches, rather than... burning them, was considered a hallmark of English humanitarianism (and) carefully transmitted to America.       "... Women accounted for something like 70% of those executed and around 75% of those accused in Europe...the court at Salem ordered 20 humans (six males, 14 female) and two dogs (sex unknown) put to death in six frenzied months between March and September, 1692."       "The so-called victims of the supposed witches were mostly young, unmarried girls in their teens, the supporting witnesses were 75% men, usually married.       "Most of those brought to trial as witches were married or widowed women, aged 41 to 60. When young people were accused, they usually turned out to be children of alleged witches. This follows the assumption of the time that witchcraft was transmitted through family lines or close relationships. Men accused of witchcraft were mostly husbands of supposed witches or were put on trial after denouncing the whole idea of witch-hunting.       "One witch was Dorcas Good, a six-year-old girl who was starved, imprisoned, and finally driven mad for the rest of her life."             -- Excerpted from Demeter's Daughters, the Women Who Founded America, 1587-1787 by Selma R. Williams. It includes biographical sketches together with old engravings and paintings. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | 01-14 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS B. 01-14-1273, Joan I, Queen consort of France (from 1285) and queen of Navarre (as Joan I, from 1274), mother of three French kings - Louis X, Philip V, and Charles IV. Event 01-14-1697: The Massachusetts colony held a day of fasting, and in the churches men who had sat in judgment of the witches or testified against them examined their consciences. Much has been written about the fasting and how one of the judges, Samuel Sewall stood with bowed head as a minister read aloud his wish to take "the blame and the shame." A little publicized fact is that the trials in Salem came to an end because of a law suit against the enforcers and accusers, and not religious changes. Most of the witches were women, of course, and the tribunals from prosecutor to judges to juries were men. B. 01-14-1841, Berthe Morisot, French impressionist painter who used natural colors to capture fleeting moments, usually of women's lives. Influenced Manet who was her brother-in-law. During her lifetime she outsold both Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. B. 01-14-1878, Isabel Stewart established the nursing department at Columbia University. Died 01-14-1887 Abigail Kelley Foster, American crusader for women's suffrage and abolition. One of the first women to deliver speeches before sexually mixed audiences in the U.S. B. 01-14-1905, Emily Hahn, American feminist and author of 54 books and more than 200 articles that were published in The New Yorker. Her unusual life ranged from being the first woman to earn a mining engineering degree at the University of Wisconsin, to befriending the leaders of China to having a daughter without a marriage certificate in 1940 and proudly proclaiming it. She loved life right to her end at 92. B. 01-14-1913, Tillie Olsen, American writer. Her 1974 novel Yonnondio: From the Thirties (1974) which took forty years to complete is considered one of the most illuminating indictments of the crushing effects of poverty. Her subsequent work also focused on the working poor. B. 01-14-1919, Shirley Jackson, American novelist and short story writer. Most famous story "The Lottery" (1949). B. 01-14-1935, Loretta Lynn, very popular American singer, won Country Music Association Female Vocalist of the Year 1967, 1972, and 1973. Fictionalized life portrayed in the movie Coal Miner's Daughter (1977). B. 01-14-1941, Faye Dunaway, film stage actress, winner of 1976 Academy Award for her work in Network. B. 01-14-1943, Shannon W. Lucid (Ph.D.), American astronaut who has spent more time in space than any other American astronaut, or any woman, almost two-thirds of a year in all in five space flights/events. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | QUOTES DU JOUR HAHN, EMILY:       "My younger daughter once rebuked me for not being the kind of mother one reads about. I asked her what kind that was, and she said, the kind who sits home and bakes cakes. I told her to go and find anybody who sits at home and bakes cakes."             -- Emily Hahn | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE |