SWP
2:677–78. Parris’s surrender of that page of his notes to the marshal at the time probably explains why 12 April is absent from Abigail’s 31 May depositions against the Proctors; Parris did not have that record in front of him when he later drafted those statements. He must have had other notes for 4 and 6 April, though, for those dates are included in the complaint against John Proctor.
SWP
2:389 (Abigail); 3:810 (Ann Jr.); 3:842 ( June); 1:173 ( July).
Lawson,
Brief and True Narrative,
in Burr,
Narratives,
155;
SWP
1:248. Lawson added yet another name to the list of the afflicted: “the ancient” Goody Goodale, mentioned for the only time in the crisis. She was Margaret, wife of Robert Goodale, whose stepson Jacob had been beaten to death by Giles Corey in 1675. See Robinson,
Devil Discovered,
146. Because by the following Friday, Betty Parris was living in Boston at the home of Stephen Sewall (see below), she perhaps did not attend Martha Corey’s examination.
This paragraph and the next are based on
SWP
1:248–49, 259. Lawson,
Brief
and True Narrative,
in Burr,
Narratives,
156, records the observation of the “black man” but does not attribute it.
A keyword search on “black” or “blak” in
SWP
on the Witchcraft in Salem Village website produced hits in thirty-three different cases, some with multiple references to the phrase; the only person other than Tituba referring to clothing was William Barker Sr. (
SWP
1:74). Two additional references are in the examinations of Ann Dolliver and Mary Ireson, not accessible through that index; see chapter 6, n. 31, below. Although English afflicted and confessors also occasionally termed the devil “a black man,” that description did not predominate in their accounts, as it did in Salem. For example, the afflicted children in the Starkie case variously termed the devil a “very yll favored” hunchback, “a foule ugly man with a white beard,” “an urchin,” “a beare with a fyer in his mouth,” and “a white dove,” in addition to “an ugly black man with shoulders higher than his head.” See John Darrell,
A True Narration of the Strange and Grevous Vexation by the Devil, of 7 Persons in Lancashire, and William Somers of Nottingham
(n.p., 1600), 11–12.
Quotations, in order:
DHSM
4:455; David D. Hall, ed.,
Witch-Hunting in
Seventeenth-Century New England,
2d ed. (Boston, 1999), 156;
SWP
2:611; Mather,
WIW,
in
WDNE
1:159. See also James Axtell,
The European and the Indian: Essays
in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America
(New York, 1981), 105 (thanks to James Axtell for this reference). The color designation would have been reinforced by the Algonquians’ custom of blacking their faces for war or grieving; see Mary Rowlandson,
The Sovereignty and Goodness of God,
ed. Neal Salisbury (Boston, 1997), 101, 106; and Samuel Lee to Dr. Nehemiah Grew, c. June 1690, British Library Sloane Manuscripts #4062, f 235, transcript, LCMD. The
Oxford English
Dictionary
defines “black” in one seventeenth-century usage as “having an extremely dark skin; . . . often, loosely, [applied] to non-European races, little darker than many Europeans.”
John McWilliams, “Indian John and the Northern Tawnies,”
NEQ
69 (1996): 581 (see 581–85 passim). McWilliams does not link his “spectral Indian” to the “black man” of the examinations. On Indians as devil worshippers, see Elaine Breslaw,
Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem: Devilish Indians and Puritan Fantasies
(New York, 1996), 167–70; Richard Godbeer, The Devil’s Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England (New York, 1992), 191–92; William S. Simmons,
Spirit of the New England Tribes: Indian History and Folklore, 1620–1984
(Hanover, N.H., 1986), 37–64 passim, esp. 37–38. Cotton Mather, in
DL,
in Lincoln,
Narratives,
often describes Indians as diabolical; see, e.g., 190, 208, 211, 212, 230, 238, 242. David S. Lovejoy, “Satanizing the American Indian,” NEQ 67 (1994): 603–21, examines the general theme but dismisses any connection to Salem witchcraft. Alfred A. Cave, “Indian Shamans and English Witches in Seventeenth-Century New England,”
EIHC
128 (1992): 239–54, makes the link to Salem but focuses primarily on the nature of shamanic acts.
This paragraph and the next are based on
SWP
1:250–53.
SWP
1:253; Lawson,
Brief and True Narrative,
in Burr,
Narratives,
156, 163.
SWP
1:252–54; Lawson,
Brief and True Narrative,
in Burr,
Narratives,
157.
SWP
2:604. The description of Nurse’s specter as wearing a nightcap is crossed out in the deposition.
This paragraph and the next are based on ibid., 2:593–94. Elizabeth Porter was John Hathorne’s sister; Daniel Andrew’s wife Sarah was Israel Porter’s sister. I date this visit on March 22 because during it Nurse told her visitors that she had been sick “allmost A weak” (probably six days), and at her examination on March 24 she said she had been confined to her house for eight or nine days. The visitors, as is clear from their comments, were also well aware of a major theme at Martha Corey’s examination on March 21. Who asked the group to call on Goody Nurse is not recorded. On Andrew and the Porters, see Boyer and Nissenbaum,
Salem Possessed,
120–23.
Lawson,
Brief and True Narrative,
in Burr,
Narratives,
157–58. Lawson’s “sober and pious” description of Ann Carr Putnam is from the 1704 edition of Brief and True Narrative, as printed in Charles W. Upham, Salem Witchcraft (Boston, 1867), 2:531.
Complaints:
SWP
2:351 (Good), 583 (Nurse); Walcott quotation:
SWP
2:352.
This and the next four paragraphs are based on ibid., 2:584–87, and Lawson,
Brief and True Narrative,
in Burr,
Narratives,
159. The interrogation revealed that Parris had been present at the Putnams’ while Ann Sr. had fits, and that he had taken notes on what she said. Those notes could well have formed the basis for her deposition of 31 May 1692 (
SWP
2:603–604).
Lawson,
Brief and True Narrative,
in Burr,
Narratives,
159–60; Upham,
Salem Witchcraft,
2:535. That the interrogation of Dorcas Good followed Rebecca Nurse’s is evident from Lawson’s reporting. He left the meetinghouse in the middle of Nurse’s examination to prepare his sermon for later that day and had to rely on others for information about the questioning of Dorcas.
Lawson,
Brief and True Narrative,
in Burr,
Narratives,
159;
SWP
1:259–60.
SWP
2:683, 670, 665.
Lawson,
Brief and True Narrative,
in Burr,
Narratives,
159–60;
SWP
1:219, 216, 215. Sending an afflicted child away, usually to relatives, was common practice in England. For detailed discussions of Rachel Clinton, see John P. Demos,
Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England
(New York, 1982), chapter 1; and Carol F. Karlsen,
The Devil in the Shape of a Woman
(New York, 1987), 108–10.
Lawson, “Christ’s Fidelity . . . ,” reprinted in its entirety in Richard B. Trask, ed., “The Devil hath been raised”: A Documentary History of the Salem Village
Witchcraft Outbreak of March 1692
, rev. ed. (Danvers, Mass., 1997), 66–67. (The sermon is on pp. 66–105 of that volume.)
Ibid., 67–68.
Ibid., 73, 75–77.
Ibid., 78–80.
Ibid., 80, 87, 91–92, 95–97.
Ibid., 98, 100.
This and the next paragraph draw on ibid., 94, 101–102, 104–106. An account showing a payment to Lawson amid other expenditures “for the Eastward” has been preserved among the papers of the colony’s treasurer, John Usher, in box 1, f 147, Jeffries Family Papers, MHS.
Lawson,
Brief and True Narrative,
in Burr,
Narratives,
161. Lawson, who probably left Salem Village late on March 26, misdated the incident as April 3. Robert Calef later claimed that the wind, not Sarah Cloyce, had closed the door “forcibly”; see
MWIW,
in
WDNE
3:14. Nothing else in the extant record suggests a reason for the accusation of Cloyce, but this incident had a striking impact on people in the meetinghouse that day; both Abigail Williams and another afflicted girl, Jemima Rea, later referred to it. For Williams, see below; for Rea, see
SWP
2:606.
This and the next paragraph are based on James F. Cooper and Kenneth P. Minkema, eds.,
The Sermon Notebook of Samuel Parris, 1689–1694
(Boston, 1993), 194–98.
This paragraph and the next are drawn from Lawson,
Brief and True Narrative,
in Burr,
Narratives,
160–61. See also
SWP
2:659. The witches’ gathering first described here (and later presented in much the same way by many other afflicted and confessing people in 1692) differed greatly from those common in Europe. Cf., e.g., Eva Pócs,
Between the Living and the Dead
(Budapest, 1999), chapter 5, “The Alternative World of the Witches’ Sabbat”; and Michael Bailey, “The Medieval Concept of the Witches’ Sabbath,”
Exemplaria
8 ⁽1996⁾: 413–39.
SWP
2:669, 660. Bittford did not date his vision precisely; Gould saw the specters on April 7. On April 6, he had also seen Giles and Martha Corey at his bedside, and on another occasion Giles was accompanied by John Proctor in his spectral visiting (ibid., 1:244).
Ibid., 2:667, 670, 666, 665, 677. Parris noted (ibid., 678) that Walcott had not seen either of the Proctors’ specters till the evening of April 11, but since the March 28 incident involved a “jest” rather than an actual sighting, the speaker at her great-uncle’s house could have been she.
Biographical information on both Proctors from Boyer and Nissenbaum,
Salem Possessed,
200–202; and Robinson,
Devil Discovered,
281–83.
SWP
2:683–84. Mary Warren’s background remains a mystery, for she has proved impossible to trace definitively, despite sustained effort by me and my research assistants.
Ibid., 3:796–97, 800.
Bernard Rosenthal and Elizabeth Reis contributed to the development of this analysis. Possibly Joseph Pope too objected to the proceedings and so prevented his afflicted wife Bathshua’s name from appearing on any legal complaint. On husbands and fathers as legal gatekeepers for their wives and daughters in the seventeenth century, see Mary Beth Norton, “ ‘Either Married or to Bee Married’: Women’s Legal Inequality in Early America,” in Carla Pestana and Sharon Salinger, eds.,
Inequality in Early America
(Boston, 1999), 29–36.
SWP
3:795, 798; Lawson,
Brief and True Narrative,
in Burr,
Narratives,
162. This paragraph is admittedly speculative, but it accords with the scanty surviving evidence. On a Sabbath, Mary Warren put up a bill of thanks for something; Lawson states that an afflicted girl named “Mary W.” was said by others to have signed the book after she was “a little better at ease”; and the last date in Lawson’s narrative is April 3, although it includes material revealed at the April 11 examinations. Burr identifies the “Mary W.” of the narrative as Mary Walcott, but no other source suggests that Walcott ever broke ranks with the afflicted, whereas Warren clearly did, as will be evident in the discussion below.
SWP
2:657–68. Only John McWilliams has devoted much attention to the role of John Indian among the afflicted; see McWilliams, “Indian John and the Northern Tawnies,”
NEQ
69 (1996): 597–600.
Biographical information on Sarah Towne Cloyce from Robinson,
Devil
Discovered,
273–74; for Peter and Thomas Cloyce and Susanna Lewis, see
GDMNH
and chart 1, p. 50, above. As widow Bridges, Sarah and her five children were warned out of Topsfield in September 1682, thus revealing her poverty; see G. F. Dow, ed., “Topsfield Town Records,”
HCTHS
2(1896): 41.
SWP
1:259 (Lewis); 2:686 (Putnam).
M. Halsey Thomas, ed.,
The Diary of Samuel Sewall 1674–1729
(New York, 1973), 1:289. Calef, in
MWIW,
in
WDNE
3:14–15, commented that the proceedings were filled with “hideous clamors and Screechings.”
This and the next paragraph are based on
SWP
2:658–59. Abigail Williams’s question to Goody Cloyce at the witch meeting was reported in Lawson,
Brief and True Narrative,
in Burr,
Narratives,
161.
This and the next two paragraphs draw on
SWP
2:659–61.
Ibid., 661–62.
Ibid., 677–78.
Ibid., 601–602. Parris recorded the Putnam baby’s death on 15 April 1692, along with other deaths in Salem Village during his ministry, in the church records. I thank Richard Trask, Danvers town historian, for supplying me with a copy of the relevant manuscript pages from the Danvers Archival Center, Peabody Institute Library, Danvers. Parris’s list of deaths has been fully reprinted in
NEHGR
36 (1882): 187–89, but with most dates erroneously labeled as one year too late.
Mary Swayne Marshall, deposition, 10 September 1692, BPL (thanks to Ben Ray for a copy of this document). The news of the Salem Village examinations would most likely have traveled by ship to Stamford. I have dated the onset of Branch’s fits by working backward from the first precise date given in the documents (afflictions on April 25 that later became the subject of indictments), using information on timing contained in Daniel Wescott’s statement, cited n. 75, below. He described about thirteen days of fits, followed by some additional days before a suspect was specifically identified, or perhaps two and a half weeks. The emphasis on identifying specters through clothing suggests familiarity with that theme of Martha Corey’s case. For the indictments (giving the date of April 25), see Wyllys Papers (Brown), W-39; Wyllys Papers (CSL), f 37. The latter and a variant of the former are printed in Hall, ed.,
Witch-Hunting,
345.