Motivations, Expectations, and Tribulations

Historians of Early America have thoroughly examined the English conditions that precipitated the emigration of tens of thousands of men, women, and children to the northeastern shores of North America in the seventeenth century. Their scholarship explores the transformative processes that converted English people into New Englanders. Historians have also focused on religion and witchcraft, particularly the Salem witch trials, in an attempt to understand the sociopolitical power dynamics that people enacted through identifying and punishing individuals who were perceived as threats to the religious, social, and political interests of their communities. These histories are well known. My focus here