For most young people fresh out of school, they all had to face one question: Where should I go? What should I do?
This was not a question faced only by graduates of ordinary secular schools; even seminary graduates had to face it.
Hey, what else could a seminary graduate do besides become a priest?
In the seventeenth century, education was for the wealthy. Even Harvard University's original founders were Oxford and Cambridge graduates from affluent families. And in an era when theocracy had not yet completely disappeared, even a Harvard Master of Arts graduate could not find clerical work. Someone who could write and speak could start a newspaper or become a private tutor; in short, he did not necessarily have to become a pastor.
Samuel Parris was a member of Boston's First Church. When representatives from the Salem church came looking for him, he was still a young pastor with little seniority and the father of three children. He had been born in England and spent most of his youth in Barbados. His family had been in the plantation business, owning an estate and seventy slaves. He had attended Harvard for several years, but dropped out after his father died.
Barbados had once been very wealthy because of its sugar industry, but the place was like the pre-Civil War South: nothing but balls, boasting, and wig-wearing "aristocrats."
The commercial environment there was poor, and Barbados's export channels relied mainly on Europe. To expand one's market, one had to swallow up someone else's. After Parris's father died, his trade channels were seized by others. Still a boy with the air of a bookish scholar, Parris was not good at commercial competition. A few years later, he sold those properties cheaply and came to Boston, where he married Elizabeth and