Talk:Letter from Cotton Mather to William Stoughton, September 2, 1692

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Background[edit]

For a long time I was baffled by this letter as reprinted in Silverman (1971) and confused as to why Silverman introduced this section as if the letter didn't exist. This page is my attempt to make it easier for other scholars to access this information.

When I began searching for details of the provenance of this letter, AAS reference librarians were unable to determine exactly who made the typescript copy or when, but in other ways they were incredibly helpful, including locating and sending along both of the cited essays from 1985 by D. Levin and H. Jantz. I don't believe TJ Holmes mentions the letter in his CM Bibliography. Based on those dates, it is possible the typescript was created between 1940 and 1971, but I don't know (more in timeline below). It seems safe to say that WC Ford and GL Burr would likely have noted the existence of the letter in any form in their publications from 1911-1914 if they had known of it, so we can probably date typescript thereafter. Others may be able to weigh in with dating information about the ballpoint pen (?) or the typewriter? Forensics? (Handwriting of person who made AAS typescript?)

Boston College librarians could not provide any provenance information but made available a copy of the holograph of the letter. ML (talk) 13:37, 10 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

TJ Holmes & CK Shipton[edit]

Obit of TJ Holmes by CK Shipton: http://www.americanantiquarian.org/proceedings/44539299.pdf

A timeline that seems interesting relative to article and above discussion:

  • 1924 "Mather opponents have tuned their fiddles to Calef's key." --- a confident TJ Holmes (Biblio. Soc. of Am.) joining together with a younger K Murdock as the latter is working on his doctoral thesis on IM at Harvard, advised by Greenough and Kittredge. Murdock's father is a banker who runs Harv. U pres with Kittredge.
  • 1932 Bibliography of Increase Mather by Holmes. Soon after TJ Holmes moves his workplace to AAS in Worcester, MA, works on CM Biblio.
  • 1936 "Who's interested in the Mathers?" -- Holmes is described working at AAS and "twitching with interest" in meeting another interested younger scholar named CK Shipton (see obit link). Around this time Shipton added volume IV to Sibley's Harvard Graduates covering the 1690s but, unlike Sibley's original 3 volumes, it was scrubbed of witchcraft.
  • 1936 Coinciding with Harvard's tercentary Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century is authored by SE Morison and published by Harvard University Press, now under GL Kittredge. It claims the Mather's wished to stop the trials in August 1692, "But the mob... was howling for more blood." (p 494-7)
  • 1938, Dec 3 -- date on letter at BPL, presumably when it was acquired. This is Cotton Mather to his uncle John Cotton, Oct 20, 1692.
  • 1940 Biblio of Cotton Mather by TJ Holmes published, including the above Oct 20,1692 letter.
  • 1940 TJ Holmes retires to a "twenty acre hog farm" in Ohio for nearly 20 years, until he passed away. No more writings on the Mathers from him.
  • 1943 April 8, leaflet written by a private collector (or a representative thereof) describing negotiations to sell trove of 3 Cotton Mather "A.L.S." to longtime AAS director CS Brigham. Leaflet says Brigham offered $500, but, perhaps fatefully, collector interprets this to indicate they are worth double. CK Shipton is AAS Librarian under Brigham and also head of Harvard Archives. New note: Handwriting on AAS typescript (i.e. copying down the first line of Stoughton's response) is not Brigham's and appears to be a match for the hand of CK Shipton. This handwriting is not on the original typescript held at BC Burns and the surviving AAS typescript appears to be a facsimile of the original typescript.Lewismr (talk) 15:54, 14 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • 1945-6 CK Shipton publishes discussions of an older debunked forgery supposedly by Cotton Mather that is anti-Quaker (Tyler's Quarterly, volume 28 issue 2): "...next to Betsey Ross it is the most persistent popular misapprehension of its kind at the present time." He writes "pressure has been put upon me by professional historians to answer..." regarding a reprint of the older forgery. In general, Shipton seems to demure to "professional historians" and gives the impression of close consultation.
  • [1946 -- Beginning graduate work, David Levin chooses the topic "The Mathers' Influence on the Salem Witchcraft Trials" from slips of paper provided by SE Morison. Levin, Exemplary Elders (1990) p. 59.]
  • 1953 The older anti-Quaker forgery and Shipton's response is described at length in WMQ by grad student Richard Dean Hathaway mentored by Harvard historian SE Morison. Hathaway writes of "...the combined efforts of New England scholars to rescue the reputation of Cotton Mather from further degradation..."
  • 1953 Perry Miller's From Colony to Province pub. with a chapter describing Cotton Mather in September 1692 and citing TJ Holmes "epoch in the study"(p 493) as primary source.

Lewismr (talk) 17:10, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]


Lewismr (talk) 17:13, 21 September 2017 (UTC) : Re Jantz description of TJ Holmes, clarification can be found in TJ Holmes 1937 essay for Papers of Biblio Soc. of Am. It seems H Jantz mistakenly attributed the "Mather bog" to TJ Holmes when this was actually said to Holmes by WC Ford of the MHS. This is less intriguing but makes more sense (see WC Ford's criticism of CM in the intro to his diary). Other than Jantz, I've found no other support for the idea TJ Holmes regretted any work on Mathers, and, after returning to look at Holmes footnotes to the Oct 20, 1692 letter (CM A Biblio1940 Harvard U press), it seems Holmes retained a spotless mind. For instance, he writes of Wonders that CM's "well intentioned aims were frustrated." So I will correct this line from Jantz in the article. Unless TJ Holmes' handwriting is that which can be found on the AAS typescript of the Sept 2 letter (i.e. copying the response from Stoughton), I see no reason to think TJ Holmes didn't go to his retirement in Ohio feeling as if his work on the Mathers was done. [I'd now strike that last line as the leaflet dates the typescript to 1943, the handwriting seems to be Shipton's, and it seems highly unlikely Shipton would not choose to consult TJ Holmes regarding the 3 A.L.S. including such a coveted find as the Return of Several Ministers.--Lewismr (talk) 15:54, 14 February 2018 (UTC)] Lewismr (talk) 17:13, 21 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Lewismr (talk) 15:54, 14 February 2018 (UTC)additions and ongoing refinements for clarity and context to above timelineLewismr (talk) 15:54, 14 February 2018 (UTC) Also added 1946 Levin, to timeline above.Lewismr (talk) 16:36, 6 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

David D. Hall[edit]

The views of David D. Hall seem helpful for the article because his 1985 essay directly refers to some of the main scholars involved. It also seems striking that, of the various experts actively publishing on this issue in 1985, no one who would seem to have closer proximity to the BC archive, with BC only a few miles up the road from BU. Two years after the holograph reached BC, Hall published an essay in WMQ http://www.jstor.org/stable/1939663 called "On Common Ground : The Coherence of American Puritan Studies" The essay carries a more subdued tone than Hall's celebration of the dominant Kittredge lineage in 1985 (see main article). In 1987, Hall writes: "The collapse of synthesis, the confusion that surrounds Miller's [NE Mind, both volumes], the impossibility of mastering the enormous quantity of theses, books and articles... do these circumstances betoken a field of scholarship in disarray? I think not..." Hall is cheered that "two separate but affiliated groups of historians are responsible for most of the recent scholarship" meaning, presumably that both schools are working from within the umbrella of the Kittredge revision, and no one is aligned with what Hall had in 1985 referred to as the "antiquarians." Hall also praises what he calls "seminary historians." Hall's 1987 essay is a defense of Perry Miller but Hall concedes: "If Miller misread some of the documents from the period, it seems useful to say so." Nonetheless, Hall doesn't say anything about the Sept 2 letter. It seems likely that, at this time, Hall may have anticipated someone would write an essay exploring the full ramifications of the Sept 2 letter, as Jantz also seemed to expect, provided "the Stoughton letter could not be proved to be a forgery." An earlier example (1974) of such criticism might be George Selement's exploration of Miller's limited # of sources: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1921632 Yet it seems the essay never came. Perhaps Hall felt that, if the critics of Miller were not paying attention and missed the arrival of the holograph, or if they were unable to find a place to publish their views, it wasn't his "job" to help them out. Thus David D Hall appears to be holding steady in his 1991 book of "documentary history" on witchcraft: "The circumstances under which Mather composed Wonders... are admirably sketched by Thomas J. Holmes..."

Stacy Schiff might seem to be coming from the outside but she cites David D Hall often and credits him for a great deal of background information. Schiff doesn't say what led to the BC archives. The only citations of the BC holograph that have been found thus far are the two spanning a 30 year period: Jantz (1985) and Schiff (2015). Lewismr (talk) 16:18, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Lewismr (talk) 13:59, 7 February 2018 (UTC)I want to add to above that it would seem Stacy Schiff may have found these letters via a short blog written in 2014 by a graduate student at BC which comes up in a general web search if worded a certain way: "The Burns Library owns three letters written by Mather." The grad student does not properly describe the three documents (i.e. one is not a letter but is the famous "Return of Several Ministers"), and he mis-dates another one (March 31 instead of May 31, 1692), and seems to have little clue of the importance or backstory, yet this is the only citation with LOCATION in the archives I have been able to find between Jantz/Levin in 1985 and Schiff in 2015. I will also plan to plug this blog info into article but, together with the note from a private collector that Sempronius4 described yesterday in the article, I am thinking it might be best to create one umbrella page for the trove of 3 documents with a separate branch to each of the 3 documents including this one Sept 2, 1692. Lewismr (talk) 13:59, 7 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

?New Article Needed to Describe All 3 Documents referred to by Private Collector April 7, 1943?[edit]

Lewismr (talk) 15:14, 7 February 2018 (UTC) : A new section about provenance was added by Sempronius4 yesterday who alerted me on my talk page. Thank you Sempronius4! I was astonished to discover the April 7 1943 last fall but had not yet found time to describe it here. I think you are right that the AAS typescript of the Sept 2 letter also dates to 1943, as the typescript at BC Burns seems to be the original with some minor additions by ballpoint pen added to AAS transcript, most importantly a copying of Stoughton's first line of response on the back of the Sept 2 holograph. The AAS librarian under CS Brigham was CK Shipton. Shipton held strong opinions about the Mathers, as can be seen in his publications both before (see "A Plea for Puritans") and after 1943 (see Richard Dean Hathaway, WMQ, 1953). Over several decades, Shipton was a leading archivist working closely with the major NE archives-- Harvard, MHS, Col. Soc.-- thus I have focused on him in searching for further clues as to why these documents appear to have been shut-out from the archives from 1943 until 1981 when BC purchased them via Sotheby's (as told to me by a librarian at BC Burns). I have requested helpful info from two of the aforementioned archives (Harvard and AAS) but so far nothing has turned up related to these documents. If I do happen to find anything Sempronius4, I will try to quickly post location info here, so that, hopefully, we might save each other a little time digging thru miscellaneous boxes of notes and scraps.[reply]

One difference I have to current Sempronius4 entry in current article: I think the "three A.L.S." described by the private collector are simply 1) Return of Several Ministers, 2) May 31, 1692 letter associated with J Richards, 3) Sept 2 1692 letter. Thus I don't think there's a missing "A.L.S." I think the private collector uses "A.L.S." in an overly broad way, as we would prefer to say "holograph", because all 3 are indeed written in Cotton Mather's hand. This confusion is part of the reason I think a larger article could help. Anyone agree? Disagree? I have tended to use the term "Stoughton trove" to refer to the larger file at BC (MS1990.023) of 3 documents partly due to a speculation that the 3 documents may have been saved by Stoughton + heirs, explaining a separate route to the archives from Cotton Mather's other correspondence (like letters to his uncle John Cotton) or the manuscripts and materials that arrived at archives in 19th c. through Mather family offspring. Lewismr (talk) 15:14, 7 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I think I agree with you, Lewismr, that the "Return" is probably the "missing" third A.L.S. That had occured to me too, but then I thought perhaps the reference to the "Return", which occurs in the same paragraph as the Richards discussion, might have been inserted only to provide a printed source with similar heads to those in the Richards letter. I suppose, however, that if there really was another unknown A.L.S. in the trove, a typescript copy of it would also have been made by Mr. Brigham. I have rewritten the closing paragraph of new section – feel free to make any changes or additions you'd like. Sempronius4 (talk) 03:54, 9 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sources and notability[edit]

Citations such as "Verified by script expert Margo Burns via email April 30, 2017" do not meet the Wikipedia guideline for reliable sources, and contribute to the impression that this article contains original research which is against Wikipedia's policy. More reliable, third-party, published sources are needed. These are also needed to establish the notability of this letter.--Pontificalibus (talk) 08:11, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you Pontificalibus for keeping a careful eye on things here and elsewhere. It is reassuring in these unsettling days of fakery. We should probably be glad here to have an ancient subject, based on paper and ink. Stacy Schiff's book from 2015 is cited first as the source for the additional handwriting on the letter being Stoughton's. So my email query to Margo Burns is a secondary confirmation. Feel free to cut it if you prefer. Margo Burns name can be googled to see other involvement with trial docs from 1692 including another listed citation within the article, that of Bernard Rosenthal "Records". I have heard that others are working on this letter, and if so, I will add additional sources when they are published.
It seems within the longtail of wikipedia there is room for this article. A major revision, as occurred in the 20th c. with the Mathers, creates a dilemma for wikipedia because there are 2 separate conflicting lineages for editors to draw from (TJ Holmes describes the branching of two lineages as early as 1924). I think you are right Pontificalibus, that without the Jantz and Levin articles, it would be difficult to hew to wikipedia standards here. Unfortunately, the Jantz article does not seem to be available online and probably must be verified with the help of a large university library. But the David Levin article is widely and easily available online and it corroborates various aspects of Jantz. Levin expresses the critique of the timeline of Perry Miller and TJ Holmes as disrupted by the letter, with Jantz also specifically mentioning TJ Holmes. Thereafter is the 30 year gap running til Stacy Schiff and Clive Holmes. How would you recommend an editor go about describing this gap in a way that is not deemed original? If an editor has diligently searched for something, and instead found nothing, is it considered original to describe this gap? (sorry if that sounded like armchair Rumsfeld) To me it would seem to be an editor's best effort, with the hope other honorable editor's will freely contribute if and when other materials are found. Lewismr(talk) 16:01, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Handwriting Verification -- Stoughton's handwriting on the back of the September 2, 1692 letter was verified via email (April 30, 2017) by the handwriting expert who deciphered the various scribes for the large "Records of the Salem Witch-hunt" (2014, paperback).
CK Shipton's hand, in copying the exact same selection onto the typed AAS transcription, can be compared to selections of his handwriting provided by an email query to the Harvard Archives.
These don't fit the criteria for official wikipedia sources-- I'm pointing to them here in the talk page for fellow researchers wanting to use care and get things right. Lewismr (talk) 15:47, 20 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I will be working on cleaning this up, Pontificalibus, to address issues of Wikipedia style, sources, and notability over the next few weeks. It is an important document historically, but much of the article in its current state concerns the physical manuscript, which is less important to the general reader than the content of the letter itself. Ogram (talk) 23:54, 2 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Welcome Ogram! Given your interests and scholarship (per your talk page) it will be exciting to have you participate with the subject of this page. Note, I have re-structured the outline of this section in order to fix my mistake of not having indented my initial response and to put both your response and mine in chronological order. Thank you for your style and typo fixes. I need to disagree with you that the provenance of this letter is uninteresting and I have restored the intro to speak to that issue first. It was highly significant to scholar Harold Jantz, who in 1985 expresses great astonishment at the arrival of the letter in the archives. David Levin also published a description the same year, as noted. The provenance aspect relies on those two important sources. The content of the letter is also very interesting of course. But I feel the need to maintain the historical information regarding both aspects--content and provenance-- in keeping with the ethos of wikipedia that more information available is usually better than trusting one individual or a small group to curate information. Group-think can create blind spots. An open and robust debate is healthy. To wit, again, my sincere welcome and thanks to you for being interested and getting involved with this article I created back in 2017. I imagine that another editor who has made wonderful contributions, Sempronius4, will also feel the same.
There's one more thing,Ogram, that I am sorry to feel the need to point out, and hope you won't be offended by it. If you have published something on this topic and have it out in the marketplace for sale, it is important that you proceed delicately. Bias and POV are almost impossible to avoid in language choices, but there's a difference between subtle bias in one's argument and editing in a way that seems to have self-interest or self-protection at heart. I don't mean to suggest that you are guilty of the latter, I'm only intending a word of caution. This is something of a gray area but I think the main ethos of wikipedia is that as long as your intent is to provide helpful information than the more learned experience you have the better. Lewismr (talk) 14:44, 3 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Lewismr, I differ with you on the relative significance of aspect of this particular letter: it is the content of the letter that is more important to the general reader than the provenance of the manuscript. The content deals with the communication between major players in an historical event. Please see how various historians have discussed the importance of Mather seeking the approval of Stoughton for the publication of his book, Wonders of the Invisible World: The Salem Witch Trials (Marilynne K. Roach, 2002) pp. 265-266; In The Devil's Snare (Mary Beth Norton, 2002) p. 269; The Devil in the Shape of a Woman (Carol F. Karlsen, 1987) p. 179; The Story of the Salem Witch Trials (Bryan F. LeBeau, 1998) pp. 215-216; Witchcraft at Salem (Chadwick Hansen, 1969) pp. 168-170; A Delusion of Satan (Frances Hill, 1995) pp. 194-195; A Storm of Witchcraft (Emerson W. Baker, 2015) pp. 199-201; and Salem Story (Bernard Rosenthal, 1993) p. 147. All discuss the importance of how Mather sought the support of Stoughton for the publication of his book. Your interest in the provenance of that particular manuscript belongs in a subtopic of the article. Ogram (talk) 20:47, 3 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  1. Notability. Disagreement about the primary notability of the subject of the article: the content of the item vs. the physical item 21:09, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 3 January 2019[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Moved. See general agreement below that an improved title is needed, and a rough consensus to use the proposed title. Kudos to editors for your input, and Happy Publishing! (nac by page mover) Paine Ellsworth, ed.  put'r there  01:28, 19 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

September 2, 1692 letter by Cotton Mather → Letter from Cotton Mather to William Stoughton, September 2, 1692 – The existing title begins does not appear to me to meet the criteria for Naturalness (starting with the date feels awkward to me) or Precision (it does not name the recipient) (Deciding on an article title). It does not seem to me that beginning the article title with a date meets the standard for Consistency with the pattern of similar articles' titles, so I am submitting this as a move request rather than doing it myself. Ogram (talk) 00:18, 3 January 2019 (UTC) --Relisted. Paine Ellsworth, ed.  put'r there  18:24, 11 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps merely a stylistic choice but it seems fine to me provided the content of the article is not disrupted and all articles linking to this letter will be updated quickly to avoid any broken links. Lewismr (talk) 14:44, 3 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Upon further reflection, I'm going to vote NO on this change as it seems an unnecessary disruption and according to the wikipedia policy, the current title seems to carry at least 4 of the 5 primary aspects listed 1)naturalness, 2)precision, 3)conciseness, 4) consistency. The year 1692 is synonymous with the Salem witch trials, and Cotton Mather's interest therein is widely known, so placing these two things in a concise title seems to move quickly to the pertinent details. Additionally, another important letter written by Cotton Mather and described in the article (due to sharing same file # and provenance of acquisition at BC) is dated May 31, 1692, but names no particular recipient, and at least once shifts from "you" to the plural "yourselves," and thus would have difficulty meeting Ogram's above stated preference for titles: "it does not name the recipient". Lewismr (talk) 16:20, 3 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
In support of the move: The titles of all the letters in the volume Selected Letters of Cotton Mather (Silverman, 1971) name the recipient and so should this. Starting the article title with a date with gives undue focus to it, rather than to the writer and the recipient, both of whom are important historical figures. There is nothing particularly significant about the specific date.Ogram (talk) 19:36, 3 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Manual of Style issue regarding subsequent use.[edit]

I am undoing the given name changes made to this article. Please refer to the [Manual of Style] regarding subsequent use of names. There is no mention of anyone else within the article with the last name of Mather, therefore the use of surname alone is sufficient. Ogram (talk) 19:53, 3 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I think anyone who reads and writes a lot about the Mathers notices how often the two become confused. Clarity is what I'm going for. A good compromise could be C. Mather?Lewismr (talk) 20:25, 3 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Lewismr Please see the Wikipedia Manual of Style regarding the use of initials. Ogram (talk) 20:58, 3 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Original research a-go-go[edit]

There is a lot of original research here, which I think fails wikipedia standards.

The word "seems" appears a dozen times, which (ahem) seems to indicate a lack of real supporting evidence. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:18D:580:8FC9:5948:BEB7:A8C4:1D5A (talk) 20:34, 4 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. Lewismr, I have a concern about this article in regard to WP:OR as well as WP:OWNERSHIP on your part, and am considering recommending it for deletion. I'm sure this is not what you want and am willing to discuss this here on the Talk page before making that recommendation. Ogram (talk) 22:32, 4 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I cannot see any possible grounds for deletion of the whole article. The presence of OR is grounds for deleting unsourced material only. It's a tricky RM as the common name criteria are difficult to apply, but it's in enough reliable secondary sources that the GNG is easily satisfied. Or so it seems to me. Andrewa (talk) 23:46, 18 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion of Deodat Lawson relative to this[edit]

Hi editors, If interested in some further discussion of this letter, and the one to Stephen Sewall, relative to the odd Deodat Lawson--

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Deodat_Lawson#Why_Deodat_Lawson%3F

Lewismr (talk) 17:21, 26 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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