Pennsylvania Witch Trial — Pennsylvania had its own witch trial that beat the more famous — and far more deadly — ones in Massachusetts by a decade.
It was presided over by William Penn, himself, and it happened in Delaware County in Ridley.
Margaret Mattson, the wife of Neals, was accused of bewitching cows and indicted for the dastardly deed on Feb. 27, 1683. She pleaded not guilty and was remanded to trial with a jury of 12 and Penn as the judge.
Penn asked her “Art thou a witch? Has thou ridden through the air on a broomstick?” Margaret, a Swede who did not speak English very well, answered “yes.” Penn pointed out that riding a broomstick was not illegal. The jury went out and came back with verdict of guilty of “having the common frame of being a witch” but not guilty of bewitching the cows. Her husband and son-in-law pledged 50 pounds each to guarantee her good behavior for the next six months. Presumably they never lost their money and Margaret lived to a nice old age.
This was Pennsylvania’s first and only witch trial.
Just gives us one more reason to feel superior to New England, we feel. Quidditch is cool in The Keystone State.
Celebrate Columbus, Ignore Zinn –Let us today, this Columbus Day ignore Howard Zinn, who was after all a very bad historian, and celebrate the guy who, for all intents and purposes, discovered America.
Vinland, after all, never really took.
Howard Zinn was a socialist who wrote “A People’s History of the United States” which used to be able to be read for free at a site, appropriately enough regarding Zinn, called HistoryIsAWeapon.com. It no longer seems to be available there, however.
Zinn claims that America has always been ruled by oppressors — the 1 percenters who own a third of the wealth and keep control by fermenting dissent among the 99 percent who are the rest of us — and starts his claim with Columbus who he says committed genocide on the residents of the West Indies.
It seems to be the theme pushed by the hipster crowd in the twenty-teens.
Well, the truth is the Spanish were pretty rough on the native peoples of the Caribbean, something we know from Spanish sources, but the cruelty was obviously not done at the direction of Spanish authorities as steps were taken to stop it when complaints reached them. Further, the native peoples of the Caribbean were not without their flaws either. The name for the Caribbean comes from the Carib tribe, from whence we also get the word cannibal.
And while Columbus was far from perfect he does not appear to be the gratuitously cruel tyrant Zinn and our hipster friends claim him to be. In Columbus’ own words this is what he says about the Lucayan peoples of the Bahamas who Zinn et al alleges he mutilated and slaughtered: “They are very gentle and without knowledge of what is evil; nor do they murder or steal… . Your Highness may believe that in all the world there can be no better people … they have the sweetest talk in the world, and are always laughing.”
It seems the revisionists are getting their signals crossed, which is understandable as Zinn is a rather bad historian.
America is a place that allowed tens of millions of Europeans and Asians to escape the feudalism that infected their homelands and her discovery only deserves to be celebrated. Even Africans should celebrate. Slavery existed in Africa — it wasn’t Europeans doing the slave catching — before the trans-Atlantic slave trade and it was only after the founding of the United States did the push begin to end it. Pennsylvania was one of the first recognized governments in in history, to ban slavery which happened in 1780 in the middle of the Revolutionary War.
Hipsters ironically want a day named for Bishop Bartolomé de las Casas and there is a point to that as the Bishop is one of history’s good guys. On the other hand, he was the one who suggested that the labor lost due to the death of Indians be replaced by Africans and some credit him with the start of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
History is a bit more nuanced than Zinn and the hipster crowd make it out to be.
One more bit of irony: Zinn’s work was popularized by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck who grew up near Zinn and were family friends. Damon and Affleck are now part of the one-percenter crowd. They have yet to give most of their money to the rest of us, and certainly have not led any crusades to end the tax breaks for performing artists who receive mega millions per film.
Biden And Harris Silent On Historic American Space Achievement — SpaceX, an American, completed the historic first private space walk as part of its Polaris Dawn mission on Sept. 12.
No government employees were involved.
It was also the furthest from Earth in 50 years.
You would have thought President Biden — or whoever is running the country — would have offered congratulations.
Founding Fathers Were Christians — Kim Kennedy shared this March 30 Face the Culture podcast featuring Pastor David Whitney. He points out that all who signed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were all expressed followers of Jesus Christ including Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.
It’s worth listening to and powerfully rebuts the arguments of I-think-I’m-smart academics and their wannabe followers.
Could MLK’s Upland Dorm Room Become Public Place? — Delaware County (Pa) Council, yesterday, Feb. 7 approved a $10,000 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) grant to study turning the Old Main building on the Crozer Chester Medical Center campus in Upland into the MLK Center for Peace and Justice.
The Old Main was part of the Crozer Theological Seminary where Martin Luther King Jr. studied. His dorm room was in the Old Main.
Janet Lloyd Murphy of Middletown, whose idea the center is, gave a short presentation about the seminary before the vote.
Mrs. Murphy said the facility began as a teachers college but became a hospital during the Civil War. Union and Confederate soldiers were treated there and a Confederate soldier was actually housed in the room Rev. King would come to use.
Many of those treated had fought at Gettysburg.
Rev. King’s room is now apparently as storage space.
Mrs. Murphy has an excellent idea.
The building and surroundings are now owned by Prospect Medical Holdings, Inc. which desperately wants to get rid of them.
In other business, Council passed resolutions amending and restating the establishment of the Delaware County Heritage Commission. Council members described this as a routine bookkeeping matter.
Council also recognized February as Black History Month and American Heart Month.
Canterbury Tales And The Constitution — Most know of, or should, Geoffrey Chaucer who wrote The Canterbury Tales, which is usually considered the start of literature in the English language.
He was a boy when the Black Plague killed half the world’s population and served in the 100 Year War being taken prisoner by the French.
Chaucer and his wife, Philippa Roet, had four sons including Thomas who became speaker of the House of Commons. He married Matilda Burghersh.
Their only child was Alice.
Alice’s first two husbands died in the 100 Year War — it was a 100 year war, after all, so for granddad and grandsons-in-law could all participate– and she ended up marrying William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk.
De la Pole’s court intrigues and adventures would make him a major character in William Shakespeare’s Henry VI plays.
The de la Pole line would play a big role on the Yorkist side in the War of the Roses which started in 1455.
When that ended, the family found itself at odds with the House of Tudor compromise. They were generally beheaded, killed in battle or imprisoned for life.
Except for Richard, Geoffrey’s great-great grandson, who managed to flee to France.
While he never married he had a daughter, Marguerite, via his mistress Marie.
Marguerite descendants would include Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu. He is known as the political philosopher Montesquieu.
Montesquieu said there were three primary forms of governments each supported by a social principle. Monarchies are free governments headed by a hereditary figure, and which rely on the principle of honor. Republics are free governments headed by popularly elected leaders and rely on the principle of virtue. Despotisms are the third. They are unfree and headed by despots who rely on fear.
Montesquieu wrote The Spirit of Law in 1748. He said that a government should be created so that no man need be afraid of another. He advocated a separation of powers between the executive, judicial and legislative to stop despots.
From that comes the separation of powers in the United States Constitution.
Political scientist Donald Lutz notes that Montesquieu was cited more than any other source but for the Bible by the American founders in pre-revolutionary British America
And that is Canterbury Tales and the Constitution.
Morton Homestead Filthy Information Station — Here’s one of the information stations at the Morton Homestead off Route 420 in Prospect Park. The structure is traceable to 1698 and may be the oldest building in Pennsylvania. But really, you think someone can do something about the filthy information stations? They are all like this by the way. The photo was taken, Aug. 4.
Jefferson Draft Of Declaration Of Independence — James Woods tweeted a draft of the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson before it was revised by committee.
For the twisted little Marxists who claim this nation — the hope of man — was founded on slavery, this is what Jefferson wanted to include:
(King George III) has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.
Granted it took four score and seven years, but it was finally put back in. America is the greatest nation on God’s earth and we better start once again explaining to the young why that is so. Our schools are now run by fools and that is the first thing we must change.
The Unanimous Declaration– A good way to start today is to remember what it is all about. If you haven’t read this in a while take a few minutes an do so
.IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies: For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation. He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated:
Column 1 Georgia: Button Gwinnett Lyman Hall George Walton
Column 2 North Carolina: William Hooper Joseph Hewes John Penn South Carolina: Edward Rutledge Thomas Heyward, Jr. Thomas Lynch, Jr. Arthur Middleton
Column 3 Massachusetts: John Hancock Maryland: Samuel Chase William Paca Thomas Stone Charles Carroll of Carrollton Virginia: George Wythe Richard Henry Lee Thomas Jefferson Benjamin Harrison Thomas Nelson, Jr. Francis Lightfoot Lee Carter Braxton
Column 4 Pennsylvania: Robert Morris Benjamin Rush Benjamin Franklin John Morton George Clymer James Smith George Taylor James Wilson George Ross Delaware: Caesar Rodney George Read Thomas McKean
Column 5 New York: William Floyd Philip Livingston Francis Lewis Lewis Morris New Jersey: Richard Stockton John Witherspoon Francis Hopkinson John Hart Abraham Clark
Column 6 New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett William Whipple Massachusetts: Samuel Adams John Adams Robert Treat Paine Elbridge Gerry Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins William Ellery Connecticut: Roger Sherman Samuel Huntington William Williams Oliver Wolcott New Hampshire: Matthew Thornton
Nehemiah Or History Repeats — The celebrations of praise and ceremonies of repentance occurring after the Jews rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem following the Babylonia Exile are recorded in Nehemiah.
So, what nation does this remind you of?
Then you helped them conquer great kingdoms and many nations, and you placed your people in every corner of the land; they completely took over the land of King Sihon of Heshbon and King Og of Bashan. 23 You caused a population explosion among the Israelis and brought them into the land you had promised to their ancestors. 24 You subdued whole nations before them—even the kings and the people of the Canaanites were powerless! 25 Your people captured fortified cities and fertile land; they took over houses full of good things, with cisterns and vineyards and olive yards and many, many fruit trees; so they ate and were full and enjoyed themselves in all your blessings.
26 “But despite all this, they were disobedient and rebelled against you. They threw away your law, killed the prophets who told them to return to you, and they did many other terrible things.
