Jemma Fox

2016

Witches in Colonial America

Meltzer, Milton. Witches and Witch-hunts A History of Persecution. New York,
Blue Sky Press, 1999.

“At least 344 persons were accused of witchcraft in New England between 1620 and 1725. Nearly four out of five were female. The victims were women with freckles or a birthmark, old women, uppity women, women with property, women who were healers and who continued to pay tribute to mother earth and goddess religions, women who were “in league with the Devil,” women who today would be labled mentally ill, women who enjoyed sex, a woman who resisted some man’s sexual advances, and on and on and on… ”

Paraphrase:

• Lots of woman were convicted of being witches
• 4 out of 5 people convicted were woman
• if you had skin marks like freckles, or birthmarks you could be convicted
• old woman uppity women or woman with property were also convicted
• women who pursued a career in superstition would be convicted
• meantally ill woman and woman who enjoyed sex or resisted sex

My Ideas:

Woman would be wrongfully convicted in killed because of superstition. They would be killed for no good reason and more that 3/4’s of them were woman. If I was born with a mark on my skin I could die for it! People believed in witches and other people couldn’t believe in different forms of superstition like healing without being convicted. If I liked sex I could be  convicted and killed, if I didn’t like someone who a lot of people did I could loose my life for that too.

Alexa Moskowitz
2015

Colonial Women’s Roles
Source?

“When they arrived in the colonies men and women alike had opinions about the proper roles in family and society that people should fill according to their gender. Most accepted the prevailing view that women were inferior to men and should be meek and obedient. Male colonists enforced these views though both religion and law. Women in the colonial period did not have the same legal rights as men and, in fact, often lost rights as individuals when they married.”

Paraphrase:

• Men were treated with more respect than women
• They thought women were lower class than men
• Some women were treated as if they were invisible
• Some native american women were maids or cooks for their masters
• Some were servants
• The very lucky women would become famous from doing heroic things during the war

My Ideas: Women in the Colonial era were not treated with as much respect as the men were treated with. Women were treated sometimes as if they were invisible. They did not have as many rights or freedom as the men. Such as, they were thought of as the lower class, they weren’t allowed to fight in the war, and they had to stay home and do housework all day. From an English woman’s point of view life was not bad, but not as glamorous as the men’s life. To add on to them not having much freedom, when they married, which they had to, they lost a lot of the little freedom that they had to begin with. I don’t think that’s fair because women are just the same as men, girls are the same as boys, I think everyone should be equal. Although they didn’t have many rights some lucky women who wanted to be different would do something heroic and become very famous. For example, Nancy Hart became a famous war hero by capturing a group of British soldiers at gunpoint. She was treated with more respect after that. Yet still the women were not treated with respect. Why were women treated like this? What did/ people think men were capable of that they weren’t?

Name?
2015

Title of card?
Twist, Clint, ed. Colonial America. Connecticut: Sherman Turnpike, 1998. Print.
English Colonial Women #3, Woman Interpreter. “English Colonial Women.” Woman at Jamestown Site. N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. Print.

“She’s Spending most of her time in the garden. And most of her time in the kitchen with her girls teaching them how to do the gardening. They have to know how to dry food.”

“Stews, pies, bread, soups are what they would like to cook because it was the most available on a regular basis”

“The farming was done by the boys mostly with the farmer”

“The lower class women did less housework and more slave like outside work. The women in the middle class had a surprising amount of social and economical freedom, more than the gentry and lower class. The middling class can pursue their own interests and marry for love, they have more of a say on what’s happening on a daily basis. The upper class women are removed from the world The upper class women’s jobs are more mental than the more practical work of the middling class.”

Paraphrase: (see quotes)

 My Ideas: People in the colonial times were split up into three main groups were: The Gentry class, which was the highest, The Middling sort, the middle class, and the meaner sort, the lowest class. Most people who haven’t done research think that they want to be in the upper class, but I figured out that being an upper class woman in the Colonial era was not as much fun as people thought. They were cut off from the world, sitting and sewing all day, they had no say whatsoever in anything that was happening around them, and they, for the most part, couldn’t marry for love. While yes, they were getting an education, it wasn’t an education to get them ready for when they married or what they were going to do, it was playing an instrument and learning how to speak with proper pronunciation, which really isn’t that helpful. Also, the work that they were doing was more mental than the middling and lower class whose work was more practical and quite frankly more crucial to a growing colony. The middling class women had a surprising amount of freedom, more than the upper class. They would do outside farm work, gardening, cooking, drying food for the winter, sewing, making clothing, raising animals and people. They also had a say in what they did on a regular basis and what was happening around them. For example, they didn’t really have arranged marriages so they could marry for love. The lowest class women would basically do the same work as the men, more slave like work, a lot of labor definitely. If I had to be a woman in Colonial America I would want to be in the middling class for sure.