This paragraph and the next are based on Emerson W. Baker and John G. Reid,
The New England Knight: Sir William Phips, 1651–1695
(Toronto, 1998), chapters 1–6, passim. On William and Mary Phips’s many links to Maine in the 1690s, see chapter 7, passim.
Phips to William Blathwayt, 12 October 1692, and Phips to Earl of Nottingham, 21 February 1692/3, in Burr,
Narratives,
196, 199.
An account of the swearing-in ceremony is in “Diary of Lawrence Hammond,”
MHS Procs,
2d ser., 7 (1891–92): 161; members of the council are listed in CO 5/785, f 86. Depositions taken by Pike in Salisbury on May 11, 13, 16, and 20 are printed in
SWP
2:558–69.
Council minutes, 27 May 1692, CO 5/785, f 90. Hathorne and Corwin were not present; they had returned to Salem to continue examining suspects and to prepare for the upcoming trials. Phips, though, did not formally name them (and others) as justices of the peace in Essex County until May 30 (a copy of the commission is in the oversize box, Saltonstall Papers, MHS). A brief report on the first council meeting is in Thomas, ed.,
Sewall Diary
1:291–92. On Courts of Oyer and Terminer: Hoffer, Devil’s Disciples, 135. See Thomas Newton to William Blathwayt, 8 April 1691, vol 8, fol. 2, and James Graham to same, 5 May 1691, vol. 10, fol. 5, William Blathwayt Papers, CW, on the trials of Jacob Leisler and his associates. Parris and Stephen Sewall must have been close friends in Boston in the 1680s, for only relatives usually served as hosts for afflicted children.
Phips to Blathwayt, 30 May 1692, vol. 5, fol. 1, Blathwayt Papers, CW; Phips to Nottingham, 29 May 1692, CO 5/751, f 7. Since Phips could not write, his secretary handled all his correspondence. See Baker and Reid,
New England
Knight,
20–21, on this point. The council’s minutes were also forwarded to England, although when is unknown; the general wording of the commission for the Court of Oyer and Terminer, while revealing the court’s existence, concealed its specific function.
SWP
3:849, 851, 846, 822; “Parris’s Record of Deaths,”
NEHGR
36 (1882): 188.
SWP
3:820–21, for Herrick; those afflicted at Ingersoll’s on May 17 were Walcott, Lewis, and Vibber (ibid., 841). This paragraph and the next two are based on ibid., 826–29. There are two versions of the notes on Willard’s examination, both by Parris; this account relies on the second, which is somewhat fuller.
Ibid., 3:771–73. Both the warrant and the order to jail him (and Willard, Farrar, and Hart) in Boston are dated May 18. Richard Godbeer, The Devil’s
Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England
(New York, 1992), 68, identifies Toothaker as the only doctor ever accused of being a witch in early New England. Philip White was Phips’s half brother; see Baker and Reid,
New
England Knight,
143. Roger Toothaker died in the Boston jail on June 16 (
SWP
3:773–74), so he was never tried. His wife and two of his daughters were later accused of witchcraft; see below. Toothaker could well have abandoned his wife and children in Billerica when he relocated to Beverly; see Henry A. Hazen,
History of Billerica, Massachusetts
(Boston, 1883), pt. 2, 150.
This paragraph and the next two are based on
SWP
1:294–301 passim (quotations 294–97, 301). For brief references to the others having cleared Easty, see ibid., 296–97, 300, 304. See also ibid., 287–88, 290–91, for complaint, warrant, and indictments of Easty for bewitching Lewis and Walcott during her May 23 examination. Why Mercy Lewis behaved as she did toward Easty is unclear.
The complaints: ibid., 2:691, 655–56; 1:117, 183; results of the governor’s order: ibid., 3:953; Calef:
MWIW,
in
WDNE
3:20. James Kences usefully points out that this flurry of witchcraft activity occurred around the second anniversary of the fall of Ft. Loyal at Casco. See Kences, “Some Unexplored Relationships of Essex County Witchcraft to the Indian Wars of 1675 and 1689,”
EIHC
120, no. 3 ( July 1984): 207.
SWP
2:692, 3:803–804 (Elizabeth Booth); 2:693 (Sheldon). Other complaints against Sarah Proctor: ibid., 2:688, 692, 694. Elizabeth Booth was the daughter of George and Alice Booth of Lynn, then Salem Village. Her father, a joiner, died in 1682; her mother remarried Michael Shaflin, who died in 1686. In 1692 she was living with her mother and her younger sister Alice, who later was afflicted, as was her sister-in-law (the wife of her brother George Booth Jr.), also (confusingly) named Elizabeth.
SVR,
q.v. “Booth” and “Shaflin,” passim.
Incidents on May 15:
SWP
3:839, 851, 1:145; May 17: ibid., 3:838–39, 841; May 20: ibid., 1:295–98, 2:692–93. Afflictions at May 18 examinations: ibid., 1:145, 2:495, 3:826–29, 858.
Ibid., 2:673–74, 688–89.
Cary’s account, originally published in
MWIW
in 1700, and undoubtedly written at Robert Calef’s request before the manuscript was completed in 1697, is reprinted in
SWP
1:207–10, on which this paragraph and the next three are based. Mistress Cary was one of those formally complained against on May 28,
after
the events described in the text.
Mather, “A Brand Pluck’d Out of the Burning,” in Burr,
Narratives,
259–60. Mather states that Mercy’s encounter with Sarah Good occurred in the “Summer,” but since he calls Good at the time only a “Suspected” witch, the meeting must have taken place before her conviction in late June. Mather, as shall be seen below, did not become directly involved with Short until some months later, and his description of the onset of her troubles was vague. For a reference to another wealthy friend supplying Mary English (and her husband) with “victuals & provisions” while they were jailed in Boston, see John Noble, ed., “Some Documentary Fragments Touching the Witchcraft Episode of 1692,”
CSM Pubs
10 (1904–1906): 19.
Newton:
SWP
3:867; Short residence: Mather, “Brand,” in Burr,
Narratives,
261; Thacher residence: Thwing index to seventeenth-century Boston property holdings, MHS.
These points will be explored further in the discussion that follows. On the meaning of “mistress” and “dame,” see Mary Beth Norton,
Founding Mothers &
Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society
(New York, 1996), 18–19.
Few documents pertaining to Mistress Thacher survive today. Searches of the relevant fragments turned up no explicit connection to Mercy Short.
Quotations: Mather,
DL,
in Lincoln,
Narratives,
207–208. See
GDMNH,
q.v. “Short, Clement,” on the fate of the members of the family. At least five of Mercy’s captive siblings survived; they too ended up in Boston.
Mather,
DL,
in Lincoln,
Narratives,
209, 213.
See
GDMNH,
q.v. “Webb, Henry,” “Sheafe, Sampson.” Margaret Thacher’s property was inventoried by her sons-in-law Jonathan Corwin and Sampson Sheafe after her death in March 1693/4; see the probate records of her intestate estate, Suffolk County Probate Records #2126, JA, MSA. See Richard Simmons, “The Founding of the Third Church in Boston,”
WMQ,
3d ser., 26 (1969): 241–52; and Hamilton Andrews Hill,
History of the Old South Church (Third
Church), Boston, 1669–1884
(Boston, 1890), 1–122 passim (120–25 for biographical information on Thomas and Margaret Thacher). Molly A. Warsh, “Memories of the Eastward: Reexamining the Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692 in the Context of King William’s War” (unpub. honors thesis, History, Cornell University, 1999), first alerted me to the importance of Boston’s Third Church in the crisis. Thomas Thacher was a friend of Henry Webb’s before marrying Webb’s daughter Margaret, for Webb left a legacy to Thacher in his 1660 will; see Suffolk County Probate Records #246, JA, MSA, printed in large part in
NEHGR
10 (1856): 177–80 (thanks to Elizabeth Bouvier for locating all Webb, Sheafe, and Thacher probate documents for me).
Quotations: Margaret Thacher to Elizabeth Corwin, 28 October 1686, box 1, fol. 13, Curwen Family Papers, PEM.
Mather, “Brand,” in Burr,
Narratives,
260–61.
Ibid., 261–63, 266–67.
Ibid., 282.
Ibid., 270, 274, 276. Mather might well have suspected Mistress Thacher of being a witch; at the very least, he seemed to have little respect for her. His biography of Thomas Thacher identified the clergyman’s first wife, praising her as “every way worthy of the man to whom she became a
glory,
” but barely mentioned Thacher’s second marriage to an unnamed Bostonian. See
Magnalia Christi
Americana . . .
(Hartford, 1855), 1:490–91.
Mather, “Brand,” in Burr,
Narratives,
271; “Letter of Thomas Brattle, F.R.S., 1692,” ibid., 178.
The formal complaints:
SWP
1:117, 1:183; a summary list dated 28 May: ibid., 3:871–72. Mistress Bradbury’s status protected her from arrest until 29 June (ibid., 3:956).
Involvement of Gedney and location: ibid., 1:52. Little or nothing is known about four of those accused on these days—Elizabeth Fosdick of Malden, Sarah Rice of Reading, Elizabeth Paine of Charlestown, and Arthur Abbott of Ipswich—but I am assuming that the three women fell into the “usual suspect” category. See ibid., 2:339–40, 3:719–20. Other suspects not discussed in the text included a Proctor son and the young daughter of Mary Toothaker (see below). For the arrest of Philip English: ibid., 1:315; afflictions at his examination: ibid., 1:315–16; his capture: Noble, ed., “Some Documentary Fragments,”
CSM Pubs
10 (1904–1906): 18–19.
Quotation: Mather,
WIW,
in
WDNE
1:200. Mary Toothaker is discussed in chapter 7. Because of an error by a WPA transcriber, who read the last name of another suspect, Ireson, as Jerson, a strange first name of “Doktr toothekers wiffe,” there has been considerable confusion about Mary’s identity (see
SWP
3:765).
Quotation: Sarah Loring Bailey,
Historical Sketches of Andover . . .
(Boston, 1880), 202. Biographical information from Karlsen,
Devil in the Shape of a Woman,
98–101. On smallpox deaths in Andover: Philip J. Greven Jr.,
Four Generations:
Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Ithaca, N.Y., 1970), 107, and
Vital Records of Andover, Massachusetts, to the End of the Year 1849
(Topsfield, Mass., 1912), 2:375–76. For testimony against Martha Carrier, see below, chapter 7.
This paragraph and the next draw on
SWP
1:184–85.
This discussion is based on ibid., 3:713–14. The other three cured were Sheldon, Williams, and John Indian. For Wabanaki use of “knocking in the head,” see, e.g.,
DHSM
5:142, 6:178, 9:22.
SWP
2:434–35 is the basis for this and the next paragraph. Biographical information from Robinson,
Devil Discovered,
301.
Biographical information on Floyd from Mellen Chamberlain,
A Documentary History of Chelsea
(Boston, 1908), 1:174–75, 178–79; the mutiny,
DHSM
6:473–75; his leave,
DHSM
5:336; the complaint,
SWP
1:183, 3:872. Mary Walcott’s brother probably served under Floyd with other Salem Village men.
Quotation: Cotton Mather,
DL,
in Lincoln,
Narratives,
224. See also chapter 3, above; and
DHSM
5:113, 126.
Quotations:
DHSM
5:141 (see also 140); Mather,
DL,
in Lincoln,
Narratives,
224. The deaths of four Village men in battle in July 1690 are noted in “Rev. Samuel Parris’s Record of Deaths at Salem Village during His Ministry,”
NEHGR
36 (1882): 188 (misdated as 1691 in this printed version, but given as 1690 in the original manuscript, Danvers Archival Center, Peabody Institute Library). Although the dead men are not specifically designated as having been in Floyd’s company and three (not Sheldon) are said to have died “at Casko,” Floyd’s men were the only ones engaged in fighting that week, when nothing was happening at Casco. Mather rarely acknowledged any criticism of a commander during the war, thus suggesting the probable widespread circulation and harsh character of the censures of Floyd.
“Diary of Lawrence Hammond,”
MHS Procs,
2d ser., 7 (1891–92): 160.
Quotation:
SWP
1:52. Alden’s narrative, like Nathaniel Cary’s, was originally published by Calef. It was written in the third person, but Calef explicitly identified Alden as the author; see
MWIW,
in
WDNE
3:26
.
I posit that Ann Jr. was the accuser because of two details in Alden’s account: the accuser did not know him by sight, and she was little (a man held her up to see him). Ann Jr., who often spoke for Mercy Lewis, was always more interested in Maine than was the other little girl, Abigail Williams. I have not been able to confirm the charge that Alden fathered métis offspring.
Little has been written about Alden. Warsh, “Memories of the Eastward,” pieced together some biographical details, 23–24. For the Aldens’ Saco sawmill, see “Book of Eastern Claims,”
MHGR
7 (1893): 150. An account that came to my attention too late to incorporate into this discussion is Louise Breen,
Transgressing
the Bounds: Subversive Enterprises Among the Puritan Elite in Massachusetts,
1630–1692
(New York, 2001), 197-212.
Boyer and Nissenbaum,
Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft
(Cambridge, Mass., 1974), 188. Most books on Salem cite Alden as a largely inexplicable suspect and do no more than summarize parts of the brief narrative Calef published. The list of Alden’s sixteen trips was compiled primarily from
DHSM
5, 9, passim; and from MA 36, 37, 81, passim, MSA. The sample trips mentioned in this paragraph can be traced in
DHSM
9:14, 40, 61, 5:6–9 (defense of Falmouth, 1689); MA 81:90 and chapter 3, n. 72 (guns, 1690); and MA 81:90,
DHSM
5:159, MA 39:429, CO 5/856, f 528 (voyages to Port Royal). Sarah Churchwell might not have been in Maine in the 1680s, but she would surely have known him as a young girl in Saco because of the proximity of her grandfather’s and his father-in-law’s property, and she could well have been living in Marblehead at the time of the mob action in July 1690.