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In Detestable and Wicked Arts , Paul B. Moyer places early New England's battle against black magic in a transatlantic perspective. Moyer provides an accessible and comprehensive examination of witch prosecutions in the Puritan colonies that discusses how their English inhabitants understood the crime of witchcraft, why some people ran a greater risk of being accused of occult misdeeds, and how gender intersected with witch-hunting. Focusing on witchcraft cases in New England between roughly 1640 and 1670, Detestable and Wicked Arts highlights ties between witch-hunting in the New and Old Worlds. Informed by studies on witchcraft in early modern Europe, Moyer presents a useful synthesis of scholarship on occult crime in New England and makes new and valuable contributions to the field.

A significant proportion of witchcraft prosecutions in early New England targeted married couples. Although these cases have not received much attention, they open up a window onto witch-hunting in the region and how it compares to that in other parts of the English-speaking world. An examination of New England's witch spouses reveals how witchcraft intersected with demographic change as well as the social and religious outlook of its Puritan inhabitants. During the opening decades of settlement when colonists were few in number and couples' childbearing capabilities were essential to the survival of the New England colonies, spouses who fell short in this regard sometimes fell victim to suspicions of witchcraft. However, as the century advanced and the population expanded, the pressure on couples to produce children shrank while anxieties over family governance grew. Thus, New Englanders increasingly envisioned witch couples as bad parents rather than failed child-bearers. Moreover, the high frequency of accusations against spouses in New England was a product of the important place marriage held in the Puritans' worldview. They viewed it as the foundation of a godly society and, as a result, commonly envisioned witchcraft as a dark alter ego of nuptial relations.

Northeast Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley was truly a dark and bloody ground, the site of murders, massacres, and pitched battles. The valley's turbulent history was the product of a bitter contest over property and power known as the Wyoming controversy. This dispute, which raged between the mid-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, intersected with conflicts between whites and native peoples over land, a jurisdictional contest between Pennsylvania and Connecticut, violent contention over property among settlers and land speculators, and the social tumult of the American Revolution. In its later stages, the controversy pitted Pennsylvania and its settlers and speculators against \"Wild Yankees\"-frontier insurgents from New England who contested the state's authority and soil rights. InWild Yankees, Paul B. Moyer argues that a struggle for personal independence waged by thousands of ordinary settlers lay at the root of conflict in northeast Pennsylvania and across the revolutionary-era frontier. The concept and pursuit of independence was not limited to actual war or high politics; it also resonated with ordinary people, such as the Wild Yankees, who pursued their own struggles for autonomy. This battle for independence drew settlers into contention with native peoples, wealthy speculators, governments, and each other over land, the shape of America's postindependence social order, and the meaning of the Revolution. With vivid descriptions of the various levels of this conflict, Moyer shows that the Wyoming controversy illuminates settlement, the daily lives of settlers, and agrarian unrest along the early American frontier.

Amid political innovation and social transformation, Revolutionary America was also fertile ground for religious upheaval, as self-proclaimed visionaries and prophets established new religious sects throughout the emerging nation. Among the most influential and controversial of these figures was Jemima Wilkinson. Born in 1752 and raised in a Quaker household in Cumberland, Rhode Island, Wilkinson began her ministry dramatically in 1776 when, in the midst of an illness, she announced her own death and reincarnation as the Public Universal Friend, a heaven-sent prophet who was neither female nor male. InThe Public Universal Friend, Paul B. Moyer tells the story of Wilkinson and her remarkable church, the Society of Universal Friends. Wilkinson's message was a simple one: humankind stood on the brink of the Apocalypse, but salvation was available to all who accepted God's grace and the authority of his prophet: the Public Universal Friend. Wilkinson preached widely in southern New England and Pennsylvania, attracted hundreds of devoted followers, formed them into a religious sect, and, by the late 1780s, had led her converts to the backcountry of the newly formed United States, where they established a religious community near present-day Penn Yan, New York. Even this remote spot did not provide a safe haven for Wilkinson and her followers as they awaited the Millennium. Disputes from within and without dogged the sect, and many disciples drifted away or turned against the Friend. After Wilkinson's \"second\" and final death in 1819, the Society rapidly fell into decline and, by the mid-nineteenth century, ceased to exist. The prophet's ministry spanned the American Revolution and shaped the nation's religious landscape during the unquiet interlude between the first and second Great Awakenings. The life of the Public Universal Friend and the Friend's church offer important insights about changes to religious life, gender, and society during this formative period.The Public Universal Friendis an elegantly written and comprehensive history of an important and too little known figure in the spiritual landscape of early America.

Disputes and disappointments marked the last two decades of the Public Universal Friend’s ministry. The prophet had moved to the New York frontier hoping to find a peaceful sanctuary for himself and his followers, but instead he witnessed his disciples fall away and their Society descend into conflict. In addition, the seclusion that life in the backcountry afforded was only fleeting, and the Friend’s community of the faithful soon proved to be all too exposed to the baleful influence of outsiders. Methodist circuit preacher Thomas Smith demonstrated this in 1806 when he held an outdoor meeting in Jerusalem near the

Elizabeth Drinker, the wife of one of Philadelphia’s wealthiest Quaker merchants, Henry Drinker, stood at the center of social life in the city, and few notable events took place there that escaped her notice. So, when the Public Universal Friend arrived in Philadelphia in 1782 to proclaim his divine status and holy mission, she made note of the event in her diary. Drinker, who viewed the strange visitor as a bizarre young woman rather than a heaven-sent prophet, had this to say in her entry for October 12: “Some days past Jemima Wilkinson left this Town a woman lately from

While traveling from Philadelphia in June 1795 to see the natural wonder Niagara Falls, the Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt made a brief detour to visit an allegedly supernatural wonder, the Public Universal Friend. One of many French noblemen living in exile and touring the United States in the wake of the French Revolution, Liancourt, accompanied by ten companions, arrived at Jerusalem on a Saturday, the Society of Universal Friends’ day of worship, and attended services led by the prophet and held in his home. In his journal he later wrote, “We found there about thirty persons, men, women, and children.

John Bradstreet came before a Massachusetts court in 1652 on “suspicion of hav[ing] familiarity with the devil” after stating before several witnesses that he had consulted “a book of magic” in order to invoke a demonic spirit. Two years later, Lydia Gilbert faced trial in Connecticut for having “killed the body of Henry Stiles” and committing “other witchcrafts.” Bradstreet’s alleged crime may appear trivial compared to Gilbert’s, but in the Puritan colonies where witchcraft was legally defined as a compact with the Devil, the charge laid against him was just as serious as murder and should have led to a

In the spring of 1658, Elizabeth Garlick traveled from her home in Easthampton, Long Island (which was under Connecticut’s jurisdiction at the time), to stand trial in Hartford for witchcraft. After hearing testimony, the jury reached a verdict of not guilty, and the court duly released her from custody. Her husband, however, had to enter a bond of thirty pounds to ensure that he and his wife would “carry good behavior to all the members of this jurisdiction” and appear before the next court held at Easthampton, so it could confirm that Goody Garlick had not been a source of

In 1657 William Meaker of New Haven initiated a slander suit against his neighbor, Thomas Mullenner, claiming that the defendant had called him a witch. Questioned by the court, Mullenner explained that several of his pigs had died “in a strange way, and he thought them bewitched” by Meaker. The two men had a contentious history, and the witchcraft accusation that put them at odds was but one act of a longer feud. The trouble started the previous year when Meaker provided testimony against Mullenner as he stood trial for stealing swine. Mullenner lost the case and, among other reparations,