Month: October 2012

Halloween and the History of Witches

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Modern depiction of a witch

Modern depiction of a witch

With Halloween approaching, you’ve probably seen witches decorating people’s houses and yards. Maybe you or a friend will dress up as a witch before going trick-or-treating. But do you know how witches became a symbol of Halloween?

In another blog post, I wrote about the festival of Samhain, which represented the start of winter and the New Year for the Celtic people. Celts believed that the dead roamed the earth on Samhain. The Celtic priests, called Druids, told the people that since spirits knew a great deal about the afterlife, predictions for the future would be more accurate on Samhain. The practices of Druid priests, such as predicting the health of the community or figuring out how to cure an illness, were associated with witchcraft.

The Celts did not view witchcraft or witches as evil. That idea came from the early Catholic Church during the Middle Ages. Though the Church incorporated some elements of Samhain into a new holiday that honored the dead with prayers (All Saints’ Day), witches were excluded. The word witch meant “wise one,” and the male heads of the Church saw witches’ knowledge of the natural world as a threat to the Church’s authority. As one historian put it, women did not fit into the early Church hierarchy of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God in all his forms was referred to as “He.”

To rid the communities of witches, the Church claimed that these women made a pact with the devil and wanted to bring harm to their neighbors. Witch-hunts became popular not only in the Middle Ages but also during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Europe. Most witch-hunts occurred in areas with political and religious turmoil. Accused witches were either burned at the stake or hanged.

Like their European counterparts, American colonists also viewed witches as evil. Colonists blamed witches for their problems, such as illness or poor a harvest. When teenaged girls in Salem, Massachusetts consulted an African slave to tell their futures, they became frightened and appeared possessed by an evil force. The town’s church leaders accused the slave woman of witchcraft, and other colonists used the hysteria to accuse neighbors they disliked of planting spells that caused illness or other problems. The witch trials in Salem sentenced twenty people to death in 1692.

Salem’s residents, along with most colonists, did not celebrate All Saints’ Day because they were Protestants who didn’t believe in saints. Some aspects of the holiday were preserved, however. For example, New England residents celebrated the harvest in late autumn. The Puritan beliefs in the magic of witches and fortunetelling eventually led to our modern day Halloween celebrations, which prominently feature witches.

Building the White House

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In 1790, the United States Congress decided that a new capital city should be built to accommodate the new federal government. Virginia and Maryland offered land along the Potomac River, but there were no buildings on the site. President George Washington took a personal interest in the planning for the Capital and the President’s House—the place where all future chief executives would live.

After firing the first architect hired to construct the house, Washington agreed to hold a contest for the best design. Ads in the major newspapers stated the requirements for the President’s home and promised payment of $500 to the winner. Though no architecture schools existed in America yet, the design of James Hoban, an Irish immigrant who already designed state buildings in South Carolina, caught Washington’s attention. The design called for a three- story house with stone columns in the front. Other features included large windows and high ceilings.

Washington wanted the home to be grand enough for European rulers to admire it, and he thought Hoban’s plan met that requirement. The President also believed the United States would become a great country, and its leader needed a house that could grow with the increasing power of the nation. “It was always my idea, that the building should be so arranged that only a part of it should be erected for the present, and…to admit of an addition in the future as circumstances might render proper,” Washington later wrote. Hoban’s box-like design with wings that could be expanded later was a perfect match.

The Modern White House

The Modern White House

Though Washington put Hoban in charge of the construction site, he remained so involved with the project that Hoban never made any changes without consulting him. One design element Washington insisted on was that the exterior of the house be made of stone. Though Hoban found just enough stone for a scaled down, two-story version of the original plan at Aquia Creek in Virginia, one problem remained. The sandstone from the creek absorbed water easily, which caused the stone to weaken. Hoban ordered his workers to apply a thick coat of white paint to the exterior walls. As work continued, people living in the area referred to the building as the White House—a nickname that eventually stuck.

By 1796, workers completed the interior walls of the White House. Stonemasons brought in from Scotland hand-carved flowers, medallions, and other decorations around the entrance and windows. Two years later, a roof was added.

The year 1800 was the deadline for the project’s completion. By then, John Adams was President and he moved in with his wife. Despite the grand exterior, the thirty inner rooms of the house were not complete. Abigail Adams wrote “Not one room or chamber is finished of the whole. It is habitable by fires in every part, thirteen of which we are obliged to keep daily, or sleep in wet and damp places.” In a few months, the Adams’ moved out when Thomas Jefferson became President. He and the next occupant, James Madison, made the inner rooms of the White House more comfortable.

Unfortunately, during the War of 1812 British soldiers burned the White House and everything inside was destroyed. A rainstorm helped preserve the exterior of the house, however. James Hoban was summoned to help with the rebuilding process so that the White House would look almost the same as when it was first constructed.

The Great Chicago Fire

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On the evening of Sunday, October 8, 1871, a fire started in a barn owned by Chicago residents Patrick and Kate O’Leary. The fire became known as the Great Chicago Fire because of the destruction it caused. You may have heard the legend of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow. According to the legend, the cow started the fire by kicking a lantern that Mrs. O’Leary left behind when she finished milking the cow. Yet Mrs. O’Leary claimed she was in bed when the barn caught fire, and even today no evidence exists to dispute her story. No matter how the fire started, in the nineteenth century the city of Chicago was almost destined to burn.

At the time, the city’s population was growing, and contractors built thousands of new buildings. They often put up wooden buildings, which were finished more quickly than those made of materials like stone. Unfortunately, wood also burned quickly—a fact that allowed the fire at the O’Leary barn to spread across the city.

To make matters worse, a fire watchman originally misidentified the fire’s location. Though he tried to correct the mistake, firefighters still went to the wrong place. By the time the firefighters arrived at the barn an hour and a half later, the fire was out of control. Though the fire started west of the Chicago River, winds sent burning debris flying over the river. The flames spread throughout the city.

When the roof of the city’s waterworks collapsed, the water supply was cut off and firefighters brought water in buckets from the river and Lake Michigan. Residents ran for their lives toward Lake Michigan or the prairie west of the city. Ten-year old Fannie Belle Becker remembered, “the heat was so intense that it drove us down to the water’s edge…we sat there until I was almost blind with the dirt and cinders that filled the air.”

Finally, on Monday night rain fell and by the next morning the fire finally stopped. Though grateful that the fire was over, residents who lived through the fire knew it would take time for the city to recover. Jonas Hutchinson, a lawyer, wrote to his mother: “We are in ruins. All the business portion of the city has fallen prey to the fiery fiend. Our magnificent streets for acres and acres lined with elegant structures are a heap of sightless rubbish.”

In addition to the destruction of buildings, the fire took the lives of about 300 people and left about 100,000 people homeless. Other cities sent food and clothing to the needy, though as one survivor noted, “the sufferers are so numerous it is hard to meet their wants.”

Yet the people of Chicago refused to give up on the city. They put up temporary shacks for shelter and set up soup kitchens with donations from other cities.

Chicago business owners like Marshall Field eventually replaced their destroyed buildings with grander and safer ones. Construction workers from across the country came to build new houses for residents. By the end of the century, Chicago hosted millions of visitors during the World’s Columbian Exposition, a celebration of the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus.