The iDeal Reader. Table of ontents by Genre. “A Witch Trial at Mount Holly” eook Option! Sir James George Frazer, “The Myth and Ritual of Adonis” Paulo Freire, from Pedagogy of the Oppressed Sigmund Freud, “Relation of Dream to the Waking State and Material of Dreams”. The Judgment Altar and Witches Well. Bored and looking for something to do I downloaded the Weird NJ app on my phone. Doing a search of things in my area I came across the Judgment Altar and Witches Well in Mount Holly, NJ which is maybe fifteen minutes away from where I live.
See the article in its original context from October 28, 1984,Section NJ, Page11Buy Reprints
TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers.
This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.
Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems. Please send reports of such problems [email protected].
THE Salem (Mass.) witch trials of 1692 comprise a famous and bloody chapter in American history. A good-deal more obscure - and a lot more harmless - was a witch trial that took place in Mount Holly, then a Burlington County village, in 1730.
An account of the case first appeared in Benjamin Franklin's newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette, on Oct. 22, 1730. The cityfolk of Philadelphia who read The Gazette that day found, amidst the news of ship arrivals and merchandise for sale, an article entitled 'A Witch Trial at Mount Holly.'
According to the article, a man and woman there had been suspected of bewitching livestock, and it was decided to put them to a test. They agreed, but only if two of their chief accusers, also a man and woman, were subjected to the same ordeal.
On a Saturday in early October, 300 villagers gathered to watch. The first test called for weighing each person against a copy of the Bible, the assumption being that a person in league with Satan would not weigh as much as the word of God.
The male suspect was the first to be placed on the scale; a 'huge great Bible' was placed on the other side. To the dismay of the villagers, he outweighed the Scripture. So did the three others.
In the second test, accused and accusers were bound and thrown, one by one, into the millpond. The assumption was that a witch would sink while an innocent person would float, since water - the instrument of baptism - would reject someone who had renounced God.
Everyone floated except the male accuser.
The trials appear to have ended on this inconclusive note, for no further word on the subject ever appeared in The Gazette.
This story, if true, is a historically important indication of folk belief in 18th-century New Jersey.
But is it true?
At first, the account was accepted. A contemporary publication, The Gentleman's Gazette, reported it to its readers as fact. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many historians treated it as genuine.
But there have been increasing doubts. In an 1887 book, the historian John Bach McMaster pronounced it a hoax. Oracle sql prompt command. Since then, educated opinion has swung in that direction.
What suggests that the story is false?
First, there is the absence of corroborating historical evidence. An event of this nature, one assumes, might have been mentioned in other records, such as diaries, letters or church minutes. Unfortunately, there are no court records for Burlington County in that period.
Second, the episode is a bit out of synch with what we know of witchcraft in America.
The most famous case, the Salem trials, occurred nearly 50 years earlier. Twenty people were executed in Salem, and this gory excess helped to turn public opinion away from belief in witches. In England, the last legal execution of a witch took place in 1685.
The nature of the charges against the Mount Holly witches is also atypical. In English and American history, witches were usually accused of bringing sickness and misfortune to their victims or their victims' livestock. In Mount Holly, the witches were blamed for causing sheep to dance and hogs to sing.
Third, there is the strong element of satire and broad farce in The Pennsylvania Gazette story. For example, the description of what happened when the first accused witch was placed on the scale is a bit slapstick:
'But to the great Surprize of the Spectators, Flesh and Bones came down plump, and outweighed that great good Book by abundance. After the same Manner, the others were served, and their Lumps of Mortality severally were too heavy for Moses and all the Prophets and Apostles.'
The explanation of why the women did not sink was in a similar vein:
'It (was) the general Belief of the Populace, that the Womens Shifts, and the Garters with which they were bound help'd to support them; it is said they are to be tried again the next warm Weather, naked.'
In describing the overall scene, the article noted that the scale was placed next to the home of the town's Justice of the Peace so that 'the Justice's Wife and the rest of the Ladies might see the Trial without coming amongst the Mob.'
And so on.
Finally, there is Benjamin Franklin.
When the article was published, the 24-year-old Franklin was proprietor of The Gazette and wrote much of the copy. He had a predilection for press hoaxes, which began with the satirical 'Silence Dogood' letters he wrote as a Boston teen-ager.
The Mount Holly story has about it the sense of humor and scorn of superstitution that characterized Franklin throughout his long life.
Salem Witch Trials
Though the story is probably a fraud, it is not without significance. It shows that, by 1730, an educated man like Franklin could attack belief in witches as laughingly old- fashioned.
Summary Of A Witch Trial At Mount Holly Mi
Sadly, those beliefs have not entirely been expunged. Any supermarket carries tabloids with articles about witches, astrology and ghosts.
Benjamin Franklin A Witch Trial At Mount Holly
And The Gazette article also deserves a footnote in history for another reason: In poking fun at the rural folk of Burlington County for his Philadelphia readers, it might be said that Franklin was telling the first New Jersey joke. Mdaemon 10 1 2 keygen crack.