The Anatomy of Correction: Additions, Cancellations, and Changes in the Documents of the Salem Witchcraft Trials1
2007; Routledge; Volume: 79; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/00393270701287439
ISSN1651-2308
Autores Tópico(s)Cultural History and Identity Formation
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. The research for this article was made possible by a grant from Borgrättsfonderna (managed by the Office of the Marshal of the Realm, Sweden) provided by the Sweden‐America Foundation. This grant enabled me to spend the academic year 2004–2005 at the English Department, University of Notre Dame. I am grateful to Bernard Rosenthal, Matti Peikola, Erik Smitterberg, and Molly Zahn for reading and commenting upon an earlier draft of the article. Naturally, any mistakes are entirely my own. I am grateful to the Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA (for citing records from the court of Oyer and Terminer, 1692, property of the Supreme Judicial Court, Division of Archives and Records Preservation, on deposit at the Peabody Essex Museum); The New York Public Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division; The Boston Public Library/Rare Books Department (Courtesy of the Trustees); The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth for allowing me to cite material in their collections. 2. The Court of Oyer and Terminer (from French for ‘Hear and Determine’) was a special court appointed by the Governor, Sir William Phips, to deal with the cases of alleged witchcraft (Hoffer Citation1997: 70–71). 3. Following the new edition of the Salem documents (Rosenthal et al. Citationforthcoming), I have opted for the term recorder, since terms like copyist, scribe, scrivener, notary or clerk are either misleading or too narrow. Many of the recorders were not officially involved in the trials and did not have professional training in writing. 4. Henceforth, unless otherwise stated, I will use Salem to mean Salem Village, present‐day Danvers (MA), where most of the proceedings took place. An exception to this is the phrase Salem documents, which should be understood as the documents of the whole witchcraft process, that is, documents that may also have originated in other neighboring towns. For a discussion of the complex relationship between Salem Village and Salem Town (present‐day Salem, MA), see Boyer and Nissenbaum (Citation1997 [1974]). 5. For a more detailed discussion of the accuracy and transmission of the Salem documents, see Grund (Citationforthcoming). 6. I have accessed this and similar manuals referred to later at EEBO (Early English Books Online). 7. My study of the corrections is primarily based on digitalized images of the documents available at http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/salem/home.html. Some of the images consulted were only in black‐and‐white, which made it impossible to spot ink‐changes. This may have led to some corrections going unnoticed. 8. In a few cases, only square brackets are used without the hash ‘#’, which also seems to signal cancellation (see e.g. Boyer and Nissenbaum Citation1977: 420, 702). It is unclear to what extent the Boyer and Nissenbaum system has been inherited from the earlier Works Progress Administration transcriptions. 9. I have transcribed the examples from digitalized images of the original documents. In the transcription of my examples, I have followed these specific principles (adopted and adapted from Rosenthal et al. Citationforthcoming): Superscript letters have been retained as superscript. The capitalization and punctuation of the documents have been kept. The letters ‘u’, ‘v’, ‘i’ and ‘j’ have been kept as they appear in the document. Curly brackets, ‘{}’, signal that the feature occurs above or below the line or in the margin. Carets (‘⁁’) marking where an addition is to be inserted have been kept. Angled brackets, ‘ ’, mark that the feature is unclear or that the transcription is uncertain to some extent. Square brackets enclose my editorial comments. ‘[…]’ means that a passage has been left out. ‘[L]’ means that the document is damaged and the reading cannot be recovered. Canceled material has been retained and struck through in the transcription. A superscript wavy macron, ‘∼’, signals that a mark representing ‘r’ preceded or followed by any vowel is found in the document. Sometimes this mark is also used to represent other letter combinations. Underlining represents my emphasis. After the example, I have added a reference to the collection where the document appears and its call number. I have also added information on the text category, witness, accused and recorder. The material in the Essex County Court Archives and Essex Institute Archive is from the Records of the Court of Oyer and Terminer, 1692, property of the Supreme Judicial Court, Division of Archives and Records Preservation, on deposit at the Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA. The New York Public Library material is from Miscellaneous Collections: Places (Massachusetts. Essex Co. Salem), Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations. 10. But at least in one case, Upham (Citation2000 [1867]: 494) notes and discusses a cancellation, in Bridget Bishop's death warrant. However, he appears to mistranscribe the canceled phrase “and buried in the pla ” as “and buried her on the spot.” On the basis of this cancellation, he argues that the canceled phrase “is the only positive evidence we have of the disposal of the bodies at the time [i.e. after execution]. They were undoubtedly all thrown into pits dug among the rocks, on the spot, […]” (Citation2000 [1867]: 494). Even if we disregard the mistranscription, the argument seems tenuous at best. Furthermore, he ascribes the officer's return (appended to the death warrant), where the cancellation appears, to Sheriff George Corwin, who signs the return. However, the return is written in the hand of George Herrick, one of the marshals of Salem, and it is difficult to determine whether the phrase and the subsequent cancellation of it originated with Corwin or Herrick. 11. The total of all the instances of the correction types is not 2,709 but 2,951. The reason for this is of course that in a correction unit there may be several different types of corrections. For example, there are 161 correction units where an item has been canceled and another item has been added above the line with the intention that it should replace the canceled item. 12. The recorders use the caret to varying degrees. The minister Samuel Parris employs the caret in 94% of his additions (47 of 50), whereas Sergeant Thomas Putnam, one of the most prolific recorders of depositions, uses carets in 61% of his additions (93 of 153), and the court clerk Stephen Sewall uses it in 44% of his additions (18 of 41). 13. I have excluded 114 corrections completely from consideration in this regard since it is not clear what has been corrected. These are mostly cancellations (and a few instances of items written on top of each other), where the correction has made the original reading illegible. 14. In Essex County Court Archives 1: 151, Elliot uses the construction “eight & thirty years.” 15. See Essex County Court Archives 1: 44, 1: 122, 1: 123, 1: 124, 1: 234, 1: 235, 1: 236, 1: 312. 16. In this case, it might perhaps also be argued that the previous ‘e’ was written in anticipation of the later ‘e’, thus making it into a copying or writing error rather than a spelling phenomenon. I have only found one other instance of Herrick using the word devil and then it is spelled “Diuell” (Essex Institute Archive 20). This suggests that the correction was motivated by spelling concerns. 17. For examples of this, see e.g. Essex County Court Archives 1: 209, 2: 61, 2: 67. 18. This unidentified recorder is also found in Essex County Court Archives 2: 45 and 2: 60. 19. I am grateful to Matti Peikola for discussing this issue with me. 20. A mittimus is an order to a jailer to remand someone to prison or a warrant of imprisonment. 21. Essex County Court Archives 2: 59 written by William Murray but formula added in an unidentified hand; Essex County Court Archives 2: 63 written by William Murray but formula added by an unidentified recorder; Massachusetts Archives 33 (vol. 135, p. 32) written by Simon Willard; Massachusetts Archives 39 (vol. 135, p. 37) written by William Murray. 22. Essex County Court Archives 2: 70 and Massachusetts Archives 98 (vol. 135, p. 89). 23. The phrase is absent in Essex County Court Archives 2: 1, Essex Institute Archives 2, and Massachusetts Archives 100 (vol. 135, p. 91). 24. Boston Public Library 35 (MS Ch.K 1. 40 v. 2 [400]), 43 (Ms Ch.K 1.40 v.2 [348]); Essex County Court Archives 1: 170, 1: 270, 2: 18, 2: 100, 2: 104. It is also added in one complaint document, Essex County Court Archives 2: 19. See further below for the connection between warrants and complaints. It might be speculated that all the warrants in which the phrase was originally left out were all copied from one and the same document, which lacked the phrase. 25. Of course, it is possible, but perhaps less likely, that the witness, William Stacy, reacted to the formulation when the testimony was read out aloud in court. 26. Pike's endorsement is found in Essex County Court Archives 2: 75. 27. It must be acknowledged that 33a and 33b are more formulaic in formulation than most Salem depositions. However, the Salem depositions vary a great deal in formulation and content, perhaps because of the number of recorders involved, who, presumably, were not all equally well versed in writing depositions. 28. Another possible interpretation is that the deposition is a direct recording of Keyser's testimony. Half‐way through the account of being alone in his room, he remembered something prior to the evening's event and broke off the narrative to insert this event, thus triggering Hathorne's cancellation. However, this seems unlikely since the number of corrections in the document is otherwise very low.
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