Talk:John Alden (sailor)

Notability?

Cpt John Alden is one of the more notable figures in 17th Century Brittish North America. He was involved in the Salem Witchcraft trials. He was involved in several other skandals. There is currently a bit of debate about him in the genealogical community. Deletion of this article would be seriously hurtful to wikipedia as a reference source. John5Russell3Finley (talk) 16:22, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Not every person involved in a notable event is notable. We need multiple, independent sources which deal directly with the topic of John Alden. Do they exist? I see a link to a headstone and the fact that he was involved in two notable events, but no claim to notability. Billions of people have been involved in notable events like wars, colonialism and trials, but they aren't notable. See WP:BLP1E.--TM 17:21, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Again, the sources you've added are about the Salem Witchtrials in general. Are any of them on Google Books or do we have any way of confirming they cover John Alden specifically and in detail?--TM 17:48, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Alden is actually important for several reasons. First, he fought in both King William's War and as a younger man King Philip's War. He would have insight into both the founding of the colony AND the development into the future, which, unfortunately, unfolded into four wars with the French and Indians (and he was the equivalent of an admiral for the first of those four). It also unfolded into religious nutbaggery, to be blunt: Alden Junior would have known perfectly well about procedure, the law, and witches. A lesser known fact is that the more famous John Alden of the Mayflower was often a judge on witch trials in Plymouth. His son would have been a witness to what came before 1692 and known that one person would be hanged or maybe got the ducking stool and that was that. (It is not like a 13 year old boy walks around with a bag over his head while Papa is studying a passage of Leviticus for the next morning's proceedings.)

He is also one of the very few eyewitnesses who ever wrote or was interviewed about what happened. None of those who were murdered could talk and truth be told if he had not run for his life, it is very likely he would have been hanged: George Burroughs was just as prominent as he was and it did not save him; Giles Corey died about 3 days after Alden went into hiding and when Alden decided to run away it was the heigh of the trials themselves. There were people who had an axe to grind about him.

Talking about it alone became taboo in Massachusetts: I grew up there and I remember being a teenager 20 years ago and asking the old folks about it. They told me THEIR grandparents forbade discussion of it (these grandparents would have been folks born around 1885.) It was shameful. Nathaniel Hawthorne changed his name because he was deeply ashamed of his ancestor, John Hathorne, aka "The Hanging Judge". The state did not apologize to the descendants of the dead until well into the 20th century and it is only recently that the site of their execution has been rediscovered. Thank the Lord that we have his account at all, since so many did not get even that and others were bullied by people like Mather into silence: Rebecca Nurse's family lost their matriarch and all her property. John Proctor's son never knew his father and his mother hand to live on the kindness of strangers. Dorothy Good, the worst case of all, was drive insane. Literally: she was so traumatized she went mad. It is likely they chained the little soul in the dark separated from her mother and did not see her again until the woman was dead.

Until the public had regained its reason

This is either in Upham or Savage (v.1) or both John5Russell3Finley (talk) 23:46, 23 March 2011 (UTC)