1648 ALEXANDER ROWLEY. The Schollers Companion Witch Trial & Solomon Stoddard Family Connection!

A wonderful piece of Americana containing a little handful of wonderful early American signatures. 

Daniel Turell His Book 1695. Daniel [1646-1699] was brother to Samuel an inheritor of the vast estate of his father, founder of an anchor business in Boston and was friend of Judge Samuel Sewall, of the original Salem Witch Trials. 

Ebenezer Turell His Book. This one is our favorite. Ebenezer [1701-1788] was the nephew of Daniel Turell and apparently received the book from his collection through an intermediary, seemingly Leonard Dowding [Dowden, b.1673] since Daniel died in 1699.

Ebenezer's parents were Captain Samuel Turell [Brother to Daniel] and Lydia Turell [nee Stoddard, sister to Solomon Stoddard, Jonathan Edwards' grandfather]

After graduating from Harvard in 1721, he was ordained minister at Medford, Masachusetts. He married Benjamin Colman's daughter and later published, among other works, the important memoir of Colman's life, which includes primary material related to George Whitefield, the Great Awakening, and nearly every important moment in Colonial church life. 

Aside from this important memoir, his name endures because of the preservation of his handwritten account of an alleged case of witchcraft in Littleton, MA in 1720. The work is organized into three parts: a description of alleged paranormal events besetting a family in Littleton in 1720, a summary of local opinion and reactions, and an advisory section in which he warns against deceitful children and encourages watchfulness and the application of corporal punishment by adults. He advises against the conflation of "tricks and legerdemain" with genuine Satanic covenants. 

It was later transcribed and published in 1823 as The Detection of Witchcraft as part of the Manuscript Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 

E Thayers Given By [Referring to Ebenezer Turell]. This was likely Ebenezer Turell Thayer [1756-1781] who died fighting in the Revolutionary War. 

Dowding's Book 1712 [and apparently again, Leonard Dowding's Book, 1703; and again, Leonard Dowding]. Dowding [Dowden] seems to have been an Estate agent who was connected to the Turell family. 

Sodalis Discipulis. The Schollers Companion, or a Little Library, Containing all the Interpretations of the Hebrew and Greek Bible, by all Authors, first into the Latine. And now (with the English of Every Latine Word Added Thereunto] brought into a Pocket Book. Not oNly for the Eas of the Learned, but also that the Unlearned May Come ot the Knowledge of Both Testaments in the Originall Tongues. London. M. Bell, for William Larner. 1658. 210 + 152 + 432pp.

Original calf, front hinge tender and through, blank pastedowns both lacking. A blank ffep lacking. Else solid and usable and clean.