My name is Lisa Hensell and I am currently a second-year graduate student in Ball State University's MA history program. This is my second digital history project and my third website. This project is part of a Creative Project under the guidance of Dr. Doug Seefeldt, Summer 2016. I am working towards completing a comparative study on witchcraft in England and Colonial British America. I have conducted research on various topics of witchcraft including: England's witchcraft historiography, Anglo-Saxon words relating to magic, the transformation of keywords after the onset of Christianity, the influence of Elizabethan theater on thoughts concerning witchcraft, and Colonial Connecticut witchcraft. If you have any questions, contact me by email.
Holy Conjuring: Religion and the Creation of the Colonial American Witch is a digital history project inspired by the digital history project Under Connecticut's Spell: Witch Trials in Colonial Connecticut 1647-1697. Under Connecticut's Spell is a case study of the colonial British America witch trials. The first case of witchcraft to occur in the new world happened in Connecticut and Under Connecticut's Spell explores the cases to create an image of Connecticut and to fill in the gap between England and Salem. Holy Conjuring springboards off Under Connecticut's Spell and looks at all the cases in the new world. So much attention is placed on Salem, Massachusetts and Holy Conjuring places the emphasis on visualizing the whole witchcraft experience in the colonies. Only then can we understand witchcraft's timeline from England to the colonies.
The methods used in this project were determined on the type of digital tool utilized. The documentary video "Spell & Cases: Witchcraft Trials in Colonial British America (1647-1706)" was created using iMovie. The video clips were cut to fit the theme and the music and images were carefully picked to cover each particular witchcraft case. The narration was written and done by Lisa Hensell.
One timeline was created using Timeline JS. The timeline sets each colonies timeline along with England's timeline within context. Using the template provided, a date, image, and description of each input was placed into the template. The other timeline (the one below) was created using Timeline JS. Major works on witchcraft are represented here and acts as a visual for viewers to see the publishing date of each monograph.
The story map was created using ArcGIS Online. Each case (and each case's details) within the map was put into an excel sheet and uploaded to ArcGIS Online. The overall map was created and layered with a map showing religion in each colony. Maps for each decade were made and saved separately to show the change over time with the layer of the colonies religion. Images and links were added into the story map for viewers to link to and view. One of the last maps used within the story map is a heat map. It was created using CartoDB. Each case was put into the data spreadsheet by pinpointing the location. The chosen tool for this map was change over time. The heat map shows where the most cases occurred while going through the years 1647 until 1706.
Various data throughout the project such as cases, crimes, and religious text were analyzed using Voyant. Word clouds called cirrus were used. These display the frequency of words that appear in a document. The words appearing more frequently appear larger than the other words. Links is another tool within Voyant that was used for text analysis. The links represent the relationship between words that are represented in a newtwork web. The large words are the more used words in the graph. The last tool within Voyant used was the RezoViz. RezoViz shows the relationship between people, locations, and organizations. Every relationship within the document is represented in the visual.
My website template and CSS files came from Chocotemplates.
You can view the sources used in the Archive Bibliography page. Most secondary sources are well-known monographs on witchcraft. The primary sources are mainly case documents from the accused witches. Other primary sources include sermons and cases on other crimes within the colony. The sermons came from Matthew Grant's diary, which can be found on the Connecticut State Library. Matthew Grant was Windsor, Connecticut's first surveyor and second town clerk. Grant took notes on sermons and wrote down various sermons given by different reverends.
This project could not have been completed without the assistance of many people. First, I would like to thank my advisor on this digital project, Assistant Professor at Ball State University, Dr. Douglas Seefeldt. I would also like to thank Assistant Professor, Tara Wood at Ball State University who assisted in needed content for the project and was an advisor for the information presented throughout the project. A big thank you to Angie Gibson, Geographic Information Systems Specialist in the GIS Research and Map Collection at Ball State University. Angie assisted me with all the maps used in the Story Map. I want to thank Chris Grahl who made Have Fun with History.com. Grahl assisted in finding the main video source for the documentary video for this project. Last but not least, I want to the Internet Archive, Connecticut State Library, and Ball State Library for making sources available and easy to use. This project had its ups and downs and everyone possible made the ups possible. Thank you!