'Forgotten Frontier: Untold Stories of the Piscataqua' with Prof. Emerson W. Baker

Emerson W. Baker is a Professor of History and Interim Dean of Graduate and Professional Studies at Salem State University and the author of "A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience" discusses how merchants, slaves, captives and outcasts vied with Native Americans and French raiders for control of northern New England’s seventeenth-century frontier.

Presented at History Camp Boston on March 16, 2019.

This was one of 60 sessions at History Camp Boston this year. View more sessions from this History Camp and others here in our channel.

About the session:
The colonies founded in our region in the 1600s are often called “Puritan New England,” but northern New England was none of these things. The first English settlers were not Puritans. They were Anglicans, loyal to the Church of England and the king—people who ventured here for profit, not religion. Nor was this was a “new” land, as the Wabanaki had occupied the territory for thousands of years. Furthermore, much of the population was not even English. Aside from indigenous people, there were African slaves, Scottish prisoners of war, and a range of other Europeans. Ironically, northern New England would become a religious refuge for some—those Quakers, Baptists, Antinomians, and others unwelcome in Puritan Massachusetts.

This presentation views this world through the Old Berwick Historical Society’s recent exhibit Forgotten Frontier: Untold Stories of the Piscataqua and its companion exhibit catalog. Inspired by archaeological research, Forgotten Frontier explores how merchants, slaves, captives and outcasts vied with Native Americans and French raiders for control of northern New England’s seventeenth-century frontier.

[haleydoe]

Did you come across the "Doe" family? It was mentioned he was disenfranchised and accused Thomas Walford's wife of withcraft after witnessing his will.

I think he may have changed his name.