The personal diary of Samuel Sewall, started in 1674 when he was 22 years of age and continued until his death in 1730, is a unique document that charts first-hand the early history of the United States, colonial existence and the Puritan life in the colonies.
The New England community of Puritans were famously conservative and devoutly religious. They observed strict moral codes that served as the bedrock for their social and political lives.
Spanning 50 years, Samuel Sewall’s lengthy Diary is a record of the thoughts, events, actions and events of a man at the centre of early Massachusetts life. It documents the life and work of a prominent Puritan figure in the founding and expansion of the Massachusetts colony and bears witness to important periods and episodes of this time. These detailed notes document the evolution, prosperity, death and isolation of early colonial America.
This a re-edited and typeset ebook version of Samuel Sewall's diary, Volume 1 (covering 1674 to 1700). It includes an introduction by Jesse Karjalainen.
"... researched a lot and he quotes so many sources, drops so many interesting facts, ideas, historical bits and pieces. That was awesome!!"
"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat."
Sewall was a prominent man in the colony, where he was an influential businessman and political figure. Although his diary only skates over the Salem Witch Trials, of which Samuel was one of nine judges that condemned as many as 19 people to death, it is this infamous period in American history that Sewall is perhaps best known.
Samuel Sewall was the son of Henry Sewall. Samuel’s father had first come to the Massachusetts Bay colony in 1634, just a few years after its initial founding. He worked as a cattle breeder and occasional minister. It was here he met and married Jane Dummer. The Dummer family were influential members of this blossoming society. The couple returned to England in the 1640s and settled just outside the port cities of Southampton and Portsmouth.
The diary offers a glimpse – in Sewall’s own words and Middle English orthography – of the almost daily battles to survive against disease, war and Indian attack. Try as they like, the Puritans were ultimately unable to withstand the larger forces of competing European empires and the persistence of secular, liberal, cosmopolitan ideas and fashions.
This ebook edition Volume 1 covers the period 1973 to 1699. For those fearing that purchasing this one volume might be lacking somehow: rest assured, this first volume is the full diary as originally published, in its entirety and includes most of the original 1877 footnotes and annotations.
It is a derivative work of the original (3 Vol) text produced in the 1870s. The source text comes from the freely available open-source versions of this text, which however are severely garbled in their text formats. Many of these free versions exist online in this garbled form, including many paid ebook versions also available.
This ebook version is the result of painstaking, manual “restoration” and clean-up by the editor, who has gone through the book line by line and typing out the clean text from a visual representation of the original 1870s book.
Lastly, it is worth noting that the original 1877/82 version of the Diaries also included a long working out of the Sewall family’s (and certain others’) full family tree, with extensive notes and footnotes taking up over thirty pages – right from the outset. The editor of this ebook version has opted not to include these, preferring instead to include an introduction and biography of Samuel Sewall instead – as many readers will be unfamiliar with the man, the work and the context. The editor of this ebook has also not reproduced the index at the back of the 1870s text because the nature of modern ebooks is that they can be searched for names and keywords directly by the reader.
This ebook of Volume 1 is not an abridged version. It contains some 160,000 words.
This ebook faithfully reproduces the 1870s edition by including the many fascinating footnotes that add vital explanation, background or insight to the Diary. However, the editor of this ebook has edited the Diary as such that each footnote appears directly after any paragraph where a footnote as marked. This provides better flow for readers – they can read the footnote directly as they appear, rather than having footnotes bunched together at the bottom of pages as is traditionally by in print. Some footnotes are extensive in the printed original and appear over several pages. This confusion is removed by re-ordering them between paragraphs.
This ebook of Volume 1 is not an abridged version. It contains some 160,000 words.
author, writer, illustrator, photographer, designer, founder,
podcaster, journalist, CMO, comms manager
I live by the motto: "Always be creating". Whether it is 10 words, 10 pages or 10 photos, I try to make sure I have added/created something new by sundown.