Tag Archives: Massachusetts

Defenders of the accused in the Salem Witch Trials 1692-10-18

The Salem Witch Trials took place all over Massachusetts colony. In Andover, almost everyone accused confessed, but, according to a petition mentioned in a TV show: “from the information we have had and the discourse some of us have had with the prisoners, we have reason to think that the extream urgency that was used with some of them by their friends and others who privately examined them, and the fear they were then under, hath been an inducement to them to own such things, as we cannott since find thay are conscious of;” I was familiar with that since some of my ancestors defended some of the accused, and more ancestors moved south after that nightmare.

[Petition and chart]
Petition and chart

Gretchen and I were watching Salem’s Lot, Season 9, Episode 2, of Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

An ancestor of guest Jeff Daniels signed a peition on behalf of their wives and daughters who had been accused of being witches. This petition was Continue reading →

Remembering Elsie Quarterman –Paul Somers, Ph.D.

Posted with permission. I added the links. -jsq

Remembering Elsie Quarterman
by Paul Somers, Ph.D.
Retired State Botanist, Massachusetts Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program
and former botanist, Tennessee Natural Heritage Program

Not wanting to miss a chance to pay tribute to my friend, the 103+ year old Dr. Elsie Quarterman, I’m sitting down to reflect on my remembrances of this wonderful woman who befriended me and many other botanical and conservation colleagues. It was the summer of 1976 when I moved to Nashville to join the young staff of the Tennessee Heritage Program as its first botanist. The program, now well established with the State Department of Environment and Conservation, benefited greatly from the prior work of Dr. Quarterman (Elsie) and many of her graduate students at Vanderbilt University who had done vegetation and rare plant studies in the Central Basin of Tennessee.

For help with understanding and conserving the best examples of cedar glades and their many endemic, nearly endemic, or otherwise rare Tennessee plant species, I and other colleagues frequently turned to Elsie and her Continue reading →