lately came to my hands; which, though it contains no wonders, yet is remarkable, and runs thus:An account of what an Indian told Capt. Hill at Saco Fort.The Indian told him, that the French ministers were better than the English; for before the French came among them there were a great many witches among the Indians; but now there were none; and there were witches among the English ministers, as Burroughs, who was hang'd for it.Were I disposed to make reflections upon it, I suppose you will judge the field large enough; but I forbear.As above, R. C. Legacy 18th- and 19th-century views In 1718, Francis Hutchinson, a minister in Bury St Edmunds (a town infamous for other trials and eleven miles from Calef's birthplace) wrote, An Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft: '' ... observe the time of the publications ... I know Mr. Cotton Mather, in his late Folio, imputes [the Salem witchcraft] to the Indian powwows, sending their Spirits amongst them; but I attribute it to Mr. Baxter's book, and his, and his father's, and the false principles, and frightful stories that filled the people's minds with great fears and dangerous notions."... "My author, for the greatest part, is Mr. Calef, a merchant in that plantation." In 1768, historian Thomas Hutchinson (no relation to Francis Hutchinson but a close relative of the Mathers and born in Boston's north end) wrote extensively about the trials, and often relies on Calef's analysis and calls him a "fair relator." Thomas Jefferson owned a copy of Robert Calef's book in his library at Monticello. In 1796, less than ten years after the Constitutional Convention, Calef's book was re-printed. Writing in 1809, Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS) secretary John Eliot includes Calef as an entry in his Biographical Dictionary: "[Calef ] made himself famous by his book ... even the present generation read his book with mingled sentiments of pleasure and admiration." Another edition of Calef's book was brought out in 1823. In his History of Harvard University (1840), Harvard President Josiah Quincy writes of his predecessor, "That both the Mathers had an efficient agency in producing and prolonging that excitement, there can be, at this day, no possible question." 1867: CW Upham, a Salem minister, published an extensive two-volume history of the trials centered on Salem paying little mind to either Mather until near the end of his second volume (p 366) when his