This first issue of 2025 features another volume in the “Parade of States” series with articles featuring Connecticut and Rhode Island, both with roots in early Massachusetts settlements:

● Bewitched! Misguide Hysteria in Colonial Connecticut: America’s First Witch Hunt. We can all agree that the well-known events which took place in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692 were among some of the most misguided tragedies occurring in early colonial America. I briefly highlighted some of the cases in the second to last 2024 issue. However, would it surprise you to learn that the Salem trials weren’t the first instance of witchcraft hysteria? We’ve always been taught otherwise, but the first witch trials pre-dated Salem by several years and they occurred in Connecticut.

● Mining Genealogical Gold: Finding Historical Records of Connecticut (and the stories behind them). It’s officially nicknamed the Constitution State, stemming from the Fundamental Orders adopted by the Connecticut Colony in 1639 and believed to be the first written constitution in history. Unofficially (and more often today), it’s called The Nutmeg State. 

● Digging Up the Devil’s Concubine: New England’s Nineteenth Century Vampire “Panic”. Throughout New England’s colonial era, a number of so-called “panics” or “hysteria” infected the populace with irrational fears – which produced even more irrational responses to those fears. The Salem Witch Trials, as well as the Connecticut witch panic which pre-dated them by several decades, were prime examples. However, a century later yet another wave of hysteria was brewing – one which would linger until the 1890s when a young woman in Rhode Island was exhumed in order to perform what can only be described as an “undead ritual”. 

● Mining Genealogical Gold: Finding Historical Records of Rhode Island (and the stories behind them). Rhode Island is the only state which was founded for the express purpose of guaranteeing religious freedom and the separation of church and state. Unlike the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies, Rhode Island would not only be a destination for religious and political dissenters it would have a secular government. That is, of course, a bit ironic since the colony was founded by a religious refugee.

● The Dash: Ezra Stiles (1727-1795) - He was a minister, a lawyer for a brief time, one of the founders of Brown University, the president of Yale University and an aspiring scientist who corresponded with Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. His list of accomplishments are many; author Edmund Sears Morgan called him “the gentle Puritan”.