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(SAMUEL SEWALL) 1652-1730 Presiding Salem Witch Trials Judge 1714 Payment Writ

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:1,000.00 USD Estimated At:1,400.00 - 1,800.00 USD
(SAMUEL SEWALL) 1652-1730 Presiding Salem Witch Trials Judge 1714 Payment Writ
Autographs
Samuel Sewall’s Payment Due to the Massachusetts Judge of the Salem Witch Trials and Signed by Joseph Hammond Captured by Indians Held Prisoner In Canada & Ransomed
(SAMUEL SEWALL) (1652-1730). Magistrate Who Presided Over the Salem Witch Trials in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, for which he later apologized, who served for many years as the Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature, the Province's high court.
September 15th, 1714-Dated Early Colonial Period, Legal Manuscript Document Signed, “Jos. Hammond” as Clerk of Court, Kittery, York County (then Massachusetts), Involving and mentioning the direct complaint involvement of Samuel Sewall (not signed), Choice Fine. This Legal Complaint Writ to the sheriff states that Hanscom never delivered his horse of Sixteen Shillings paid, and no longer has it in his possession to provide. It is Signed by Joseph Hammond as Court Clerk at its conclusion. The original official red wax court seal remains intact at the upper left corner. Some written text is a bit light but easily readable, penned in brown ink on clean folded 7” x 8” period laid paper. This original Document is dated 1714 during the Reign of Queen Anne, at York, Maine, where the constable has been ordered to attach the estate of Moses Hanscom of Kittery, who seems to have promised a horse to Samuel Sewall, in trade for a mare of three years of age for sixteen shillings and never delivered. (Apparently a bad idea to cheat a chief judge for the Colony.)

After leaving Harvard in 1674, Samuel followed the Sewall family tradition of marrying well and made his match with Hannah Hull. Hannah's father, John Hull, was America's first goldsmith, the Massachusetts Bay Colony “Mint Master” and perhaps the wealthiest man in the colonies. Sewall worked for his father-in-law until Hull's death in 1683 when Sewall began his career in public service. In 1692 Sewall was appointed as Justice of Superior Court of Judicature. It was in this capacity that he became involved in the Salem Witch Trials. Although history holds the trials in Salem as very significant, Sewall makes very few comments in his Diary on the remarkable case. Sewall was the only one of those judges who ever recanted, and asked for public forgiveness for his part in the Salem Witch trials.

Major Joseph Hammond, the son of William Hammond was born in 1646, and died February 20, 1709-10 at age sixty-three. He moved from Wells to what is now Eliot, Maine in 1669, and had a Garrison house near Franks Fort. He was for many years town clerk, also served as a selectman, a representative to the general court, a councilor, a military captain, then major, then the recorder of deeds and judge of the court of common pleas. He was the Major Commandant at York, Maine, receiving a grant of twenty-five acres in Piscataqua near Franks Fort, in 1671. He was captured by the hostile Indians on July 6, 1693 and ransomed in October. Hammond was a man of integrity and significant worth, truly one of the leaders in his day.
Samuel Sewall's involvement in the political affairs of the colony began when he became a Freeman of the colony, giving him the right to vote. In 1681 he was appointed the official printer of the colony; one of the first works he published was John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. After John Hull died in 1683, Sewall was elected to replace him on the colony's council of assistants, a body that functioned both as the upper house of the legislature and as a court of appeals. He also became a member of Harvard's Board of Overseers.

Sewall's oral examination for the MA was a public affair, and was witnessed by Hannah Hull, daughter of colonial merchant and mintmaster John Hull. She was apparently taken by the young man's charms, and pursued him; they were married in February 1676. Her father, whose work as mintmaster had made him quite wealthy, gave the couple £500 in colonial currency as a wedding gift. (Biographer Richard Francis notes that the weight of this amount of specie, 125 pounds (57 kg), may have approximated the bride's weight, giving rise to Nathaniel Hawthorne's legend that the gift was her weight in coins.) Sewall moved into his in-laws' mansion in Boston, and was soon involved in that family's business and political affairs. He and Hannah would have fourteen children before her death in 1717, although only a few survived to adulthood.

He also entered local politics, and was elevated to the position of assistant magistrate in the judiciary. In 1692 he was one of the nine judges appointed to the court of Oyer and Terminer in Salem, charged with trying those from Salem Town and elsewhere who were accused of witchcraft. His diary recounts many of the more famous episodes of the trials, such as the agonizing death under torture of Giles Corey, and reflects the growing public unease about the guilt of many of the accused. Sewall's brother Stephen had meanwhile opened up his home to one of the initially afflicted children, Betty Parris, daughter of Salem Village's minister, Samuel Parris, and shortly afterward Betty's "afflictions" appear to have subsided.

Sewall was perhaps most remarkable among the justices involved in the trials in that he later regretted his role, going so far as to call for a public day of prayer, fasting, and reparations. Following the dissolution of the court, the Sewall family was blighted by what Sewall thought to be punishments from God. In the five years after the Trials, two of Sewall’s daughters and Hannah’s mother died and Hannah gave birth to a stillborn child. What convinced Sewall of his need for public repentance was a recitation of Matthew 12:7, “If ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless”.

Not only had Sewall’s home life been shaken, but in the years after the Trials, the people of Massachusetts experienced setbacks and violence, notably the Navigation Acts, the declaration of the New England Dominion, and King Philip's War. He saw this as a sign not that witchcraft did not exist, but that he had ruled on insubstantial evidence. He records in his diary that on 14 January 1697 he stood up in the meeting house he attended while his minister read out his confession of guilt.

In 1693 Sewall was appointed an associate justice of the Superior Court of Judicature, the province's high court, by Governor Sir William Phips. In 1717, he was appointed its chief justice by Governor Samuel Shute.