On 8/23/02, Lisa <LSHOLLINGSWORTH@aol.com> wrote: >One thought is that a lot of those families still had close ties to England. You are right on that point, but it has been generally unexplored, so far. In a recent visit to the library at the Peabody-Essex Museum, I had a chance to meet a doctoral candidate from a British university who was working on her dissertation on the subject of trans-Atlantic influences on the culture in the colonies. For instance, if a family had a reputation in England for being thieves, did it cross the ocean with them? She is not concentrating specifically witchcraft accusations and reputations, but more on the transfer of culture to the colonies -- so witchcraft obviously crops up as a topic in her work. Parish memberships in Old England resonated in parish memberships in New England. There was indeed a lot of travel back and forth between the colonies and England in the latter part of the 17th century, apparently a lot more than we really might assume, with our mental images of the creaky old Mayflower, constantly taking on water, barely making it to land with the Pilgrims in Plimoth in 1620. And with the thriving merchant class, ships had to be more dependable. What do I remember something, too, about sugar from the Caribbean being used to make rum in the colonies. Cheers, Margo -- Margo Burns, List Owner of the SALEM-WITCH List at Rootsweb.com margo@ogram.org