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Samuel Sewall

Judge in Colonial America (1652 – 1730)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 29, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

Samuel Sewall was a judge, businessman, and printer in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, best known for his involvement in the Salem witch trials, for which he later apologized, and his essay The Selling of Joseph (1700), which criticized slavery. He served for many years as the chief justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature, the province's high court.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Samuel Sewall” is judge in Colonial America (1652 – 1730). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Samuel, Sewall and Judge, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1700—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Samuel, Sewall and Judge is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “judge in Colonial America (1652 – 1730)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1700.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Samuel Sewall”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Samuel Sewall primary sources, Samuel Sewall archive and Samuel research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Samuel Sewall” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.