I'm referring to the (relatively) modern world, say from the 19th century onward.
I only list selected pieces of info I found in (mostly Greek) contemporary newspapers in 1950's. They do not answer to your question properly, but you can see some misconceptions that were dominating at the time.
The 1952 Kamchatka earthquake (M 9) was initially assigned a 8.2 Richter magnitude. From the first day, thoughts were that it might have been caused by Russians testing the H-bomb.
9 months later, the 1953 Ionian islands earthquakes (M 6.4 foreshock for M 6.8 foreshock for M 7.2 mainshock) stroke and people on the islands wanted to evaquate in fear of complete submergence of the islands. A respectful seismologist of the country said "The earthquakes are tectonic and not volcanic and hence the islands will not submerge" but when asked why he is so sure he referenced an old 1871 earthquake which produced the maximum observed land submergence in Greece, 2 m. Later, he said "Greek land is relatively young and so its balance of forces is not yet achieved; this is why we experience many earthquakes". He obviously had in mind the abundance of older rocks and fossils in northern Europe and elsewhere, while Greece lacks even dinosaur fossils, but this does not explain how earthquakes are produced. He correctly assumed that the nearby submarine Kefalonia Transform Fault was mostly to blame for the 4 consecutive earthquakes (they did not take place directly on the fault, but in subparallel faults) but he did not mention the possibility that Hellenic Arc had anything to do with the earthquakes (the largest one probably was mostly connected to the subduction zone rather the nearby transform zone). Finally he left open the possibility that earthquakes will expand throughout the whole Greece. He characteristically mentioned an earthquake doublet in 1894 which he said had aftershocks for 3.5 years.
Most of his statements are false by today's standards. In other sources I saw that an earthquake in Turkey some 500 km away which took place 5 months before, was assumed to be responsible for the Ionian Earthquake. This trend survives even today, it was never unanimously accepted but some seismologists still open up a window. Ironically, the false statement that earthquakes may expand throughout the rest of Greece came true. The 5 years, 1953-1957 Greece had a series of strong earthquakes and even a small volcanic eruption, a spike in activity never to be experienced before or after.
I could expand this post a lot more but I already consumed a lot of space. I suggest that you search for Mallet (mid-19th century), who has done some amazing work collecting earthquake reports and data. Wegener is widely accepted as the founder of the theory of tectonic plates. He did an amazing job as well, even if he died before the theory was formed properly.
I suggest that you ask at /r/asksciencediscussion. People there should be able to answer you in more detail. One thing I can tell you is that in the past, surface cracks were considered to be products of earthquakes, while today we know they are the cause and the jump was made in 1910 by Reid who researched the cracks generated after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Many geologists had visited the cracks generated by a 1894 earthquake in Greece but they couldn't find the key connection. I can also tell you that the current concept of plate tectonics is still in progress. Deep mantle plumes are being questioned, the dogma that old oceanic crust cannot produce giant earthquakes when subducting was cancelled twice (2004 and 2011), the question whether slabs are being "pushed" or "pulled" is still open, some deep earthquakes remain unexplained.