Hall, ed.,
Witch-Hunting,
350–51 (see also 353). The statement is dated 12 May 1693 but defends an action taken earlier, probably shortly after Disborough’s conviction in late October. Hall, ibid., 344, 347, omits the names of the jurors, but a comparison of those listed in the manuscript account of the trials, W-39, Wyllys Papers (Brown), shows that Thomas Knowles had been replaced by Joseph Rowland. Box 24, Winthrop Family Papers, MHS, contains numerous letters from Alleyn to Wait Winthrop in this period, although no letter reporting the results of the Connecticut deliberations survives in the collection.
For this paragraph and the next, see council minutes, 16 December 1692, CO 5/785, f 185;
SWP
3:887–901 (calls for jurors); Phips to Earl of Nottingham, 21 February 1692/3, in Burr,
Narratives,
200 (original in Blathwayt Papers, vol. 5, fol. 1, CW). Because of missing records, it is impossible to determine how many indictments were returned “ignoramus” in January, but grand juries failed to indict Martha Emerson, Hannah Bromage, John Jackson Sr. and Jr., Jane Lilly, Henry Salter, and Rebecca Aslet Johnson Sr., along with the Englishes.
Quotations:
SWP
3:883; Phips to Nottingham, 21 February 1692/3, in Burr,
Narratives,
201. Case records of those convicted: Johnson:
SWP
3:923–24 (see also 2:503–505); Post: ibid., 3:925–26; Wardwell: ibid., 3:919–20 (see also ibid., 791–92). The jury that convicted Johnson on the 11th was nearly identical to that which convicted Post on the 12th; and four men who served on the jury that found Wardwell guilty on the 10th also were members of the other two juries. For the January–February proceedings in general, see
SWP
3:903–37.
Phips to Nottingham, 21 February 1692/3, in Burr,
Narratives,
201;
A Further Account of the Tryals of the New-England Witches
(London, 1693), 10. For Stoughton’s return to court on 25 April, see
SWP
3:937. In late January there were seven convicted but not yet executed witches: Dorcas Hoar, Abigail Hobbs, Abigail Faulkner Sr., Elizabeth Proctor, Mary Lacey Sr., Rebecca Eames, and Mary Bradbury. Bradbury had by then escaped from jail (see
SWP
3:980–81). One of the two women initially reprieved for pregnancy (Faulkner or Proctor) had probably delivered her baby and was now regarded as executable, while the other had not yet done so. That would leave the five for whom Stoughton issued a death warrant.
Alden:
SWP
1:54–55, 3:938 (for his return by 22 December, see Thomas, ed.,
Sewall Diary
1:302); April-May acquittals:
SWP
3:939–44; Tituba: ibid., 755. A key error in
SWP
(the substitution of “1692” for “1693” as the date of the grand-jury proceedings in Tituba’s case) has misled many scholars, most notably Peter Hoffer, The Devil’s Disciples: Makers of the Salem Witch Trials (Baltimore, Md., 1996), 154–55, and Rosenthal,
Salem Story,
28–29. The latter corrected his error in “Tituba’s Story,”
NEQ
71 (1998): 198–99. That Tituba was jailed for at least a year is evident from “the prison keepers acount reagarning the withcraft for Diet,” c. May 1693, Miscellaneous Manuscripts Bound, MHS, which lists as one item “Tatabe Yndan a whole year.” The line has been crossed out, probably representing the payment on Tituba’s behalf (this account was presented to the court at Salem for reimbursement).
Watkins:
SWP
3:938; Calef,
MWIW,
in
WDNE
3:128–29; William Stoughton et al. to Caleb Ray, Boston jailer, 14 July 1693, Fogg Collection 420, vol. 18, MeHS (I owe this reference to Ben Ray); Walter Watkins, “Mary Watkins: A Discolored History of Witchcraft, Cleansed by Modern Research,”
NEHGR
44 (1890): 168–70. For Dustin’s death date, see Enders A. Robinson,
The Devil Discovered: Salem Witchcraft 1692
(New York, 1991), 345.
GDMNH,
q.v. “Watkins, Thomas,” and “Book of Eastern Claims,”
MGHR
7 (1893): 194, on the Watkins and Stevens families. See also Emerson Woods Baker II, “Trouble to the Eastward: The Failure of Anglo-Indian Relations in Early Maine” (unpub. Ph.D. diss., College of William and Mary, 1986), 120, 164, on Stevens and Watkins.
GDMNH,
q.v. “Rule, John,” and “Book of Eastern Claims,”
MGHR
4 (1887): 282, for the family; Mather, “Another Brand Pluckt Out of the Burning,” in Calef,
MWIW,
in
WDNE
2:27, 29, 40 (quotations), and 21–47, passim.
See
DHSM
6:421–22 for Stevens’s description of his capture and what the Indians told him.
CONCLUSION NEW WITCH-LAND
“Mr. Willard. May 29. 92. PM,” f 127, Samuel Sewall sermon notebook, 1691–1692, Samuel Sewall Papers, MHS. Such beliefs are examined in detail in Richard Godbeer, The Devil’s Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New
England
(New York, 1992); David D. Hall,
Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment:
Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (New York, 1989); and Michael P. Winship,
Seers of God: Puritan Providentialism in the Restoration and Early
Enlightenment
(Baltimore, Md., 1996).
Deodat Lawson, “Christ’s Fidelity the only Shield against Satans Malignity,” reprinted in Richard B. Trask, ed., “The Devil hath been raised”: A Documentary His
tory of the Salem Village Witchcraft Outbreak of March 1692,
rev. ed. (Danvers, Mass., 1997), 91. Lawson’s sermon was formally endorsed by a large group of Massachusetts clergymen, including Samuel Willard and Cotton Mather (ibid., 66). See Joshua Scottow’s list of the colonists’ sins, in “A Narrative of the Planting of the Massachusetts Colony . . . ,”
MHS Colls
34(1858): 309. For the related argument that God was specifically punishing the afflicted for their misdeeds, see Thomas Maule,
Truth Held Forth and Maintained . . .
(n.p., 1695), 185–86.
Bradstreet (writing for the council) to Massachusetts agents in England, 29 November 1690,
DHSM
5:167–68; Winthrop to Connecticut governor and council, 15 August 1690,
MHS Colls
48 (1882): 312. Thomas Maule declared that God was penalizing New Englanders for their past “unrighteous dealings” with the Indians; see
Truth Held Forth,
194–95.
Scottow, “Narrative of Planting,”
MHS Colls
34 (1858): 310–15, passim. The “Satan’s Emissaries” reference is from Scottow to Increase Mather, 30 October 1683, MS Am 1502, 5:40, BPL.
Bradstreet to Massachusetts agents, 29 November 1690,
DHSM
5:168.
Only a few brief spectral confessions were described as occurring after June
See, e.g.,
SWP
3:708. Some short confessions cannot be dated with certainty; see ibid., 1:127, 244. The related accusations leveled by ghosts against their reputed murderers (which continued for a longer time) placed the afflicted in the role of witness-messengers rather than surrogate magistrates.
“Letter of Thomas Brattle, F.R.S., 1692,” in Burr, Narratives, 188.
EPILOGUE
For the failed 1693 peace agreement, see MA 30, pt. 2:338, 340, MSA. For the rest of the war, see Thomas Hutchinson,
The History of Massachusetts, from the
First Settlement Thereof in 1628, until the Year 1750,
3d ed. (Boston, 1795), 2:68–104. Ian K. Steele, Warpaths: Invasions of North America (New York, 1994), chapter 7, places the Maine war in a broad regional context.
See Emerson W. Baker and John G. Reid, The New England Knight: Sir
William Phips, 1651–1695
(Toronto, 1998), chapters 10–12.
Larry Gragg, A Quest for Security: The Life of Samuel Parris, 1653–1720 (New York, 1990), chapters 8, 9.
Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum,
Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of
Witchcraft
(Cambridge, Mass., 1974), 142–43.
See
SVR
3:120. Enders A. Robinson incorrectly identifies Elizabeth’s husband as Jonathan Pease in
The Devil Discovered: Salem Witchcraft 1692
(New York, 1991), 123. The Elizabeth Booth who married Pease in 1693 was from Connecticut; her parents were Simeon and Rebecca Booth, not George and Alice Booth (later Shaflin), first of Lynn, then Salem Village (information from
familysearch.org
and Booth family genealogies).
GDMNH,
q.v. “Churchwell, Arthur,” and “Andrews, Edward.” See also Neal Allen, ed.,
Province and Court Records of Maine
(Portland, Me., 1958), 4:374, 376; and
York Deeds
10:99.
Vital Records of Andover, Massachusetts, to the End of the Year 1849
(Topsfield, Mass., 1912), 2:441.
Information from
GDMNH
(q.v. “Senter”);
Vital Record
s
of Wenham, Massachusetts, to the End of the Year 1849
(Salem, Mass., 1904), 16, 204;
Vital Records of
Ipswich, Massachusetts, to the End of the Year 1849
(Salem, Mass., 1910), 2:90.
Vital Records of Gloucester, Massachusetts, to the End of the Year 1849
(Salem, Mass., 1923), 1:88–90, 2:283 (q.v. “Hibbert, Elizabeth” and “Benet/Bennet/Bennett, John and Elizabeth”).
Information from
familysearch.org
. Her husband was the son of a sister of Mary Foster Lacey.
GDMNH
, q.v. “Lewis, Philip” (two different entries). Jotham and Abraham Lewis’s father, Philip, who was in New Hampshire by 1663, was probably a cousin of Mercy’s father, also named Philip. Sloppy genealogists sometimes confuse the two men and their families.
Marilynne K. Roach, “ ‘That child, Betty Parris’: Elizabeth (Parris) Barron and the People in Her Life,”
EIHC
124 (1988): 1–27.
Statement printed in Charles W. Upham, Salem Witchcraft (Boston, 1867), 2:510. Her death date: ibid., 511.
The Early Records of the Town of Providence
(Providence, R.I., 1896) 10:13–14. Bernard Rosenthal,
Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692
(New York, 1993), discovered the reference in the Providence records; see 226 n. 2. Susannah’s strange visions suggest that she was seriously disturbed and accordingly that she was the most likely of all the Village afflicted to be the “distracted” girl to whom Hale referred in his book. William Sheldon had a brother named John, but he seems to have lived in Billerica. However, the John Sheldon of Providence could well have been William’s cousin.
The marriage record is in
Boston Births, Baptisms, Marriages, and Deaths,
1630–1699 (Boston, 1883), 218; for the excommunication, see Worthington C. Ford, ed.,
The Diary of Cotton Mather
(New York, 1957) 1:261. See also
GDMNH,
q.v. “Short, Clement.”
Andover Vital Records
2:327 (q.v. “Tiler”).
Robinson,
Devil Discovered
, 249. Information also compiled from family
search.org
.
Quotations: M. Halsey Thomas,
The Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1674–1729
(New York, 1973) 1:361n, 367.
Calef,
MWIW,
in
WDNE
3:134–35.
Quotations: Hale,
Modest Enquiry,
in Burr,
Narratives,
425–27. On his change of heart: Calef,
MWIW,
in
WDNE
3:48. As late as 20 September 1692 Cotton Mather still saw Hale as a supporter of the trials. See Mather to Stephen Sewall on that date, as published in
NEHGR
20 (1870): 112 (original in NEHGS, MSS. c2007).
Burr,
Narratives,
149–50; George H. Moore, “Notes on the Bibliography of Witchcraft in Massachusetts,”
AAS Procs,
new ser., 5 (1887–88): 268–69.
See Kenneth Silverman,
The Life and Times of Cotton Mather
(New York, 1984), chapter 12.
Hutchinson,
History of Massachusetts,
2:56.
Calef,
MWIW,
in
WDNE
2: pt. 2, 75. Although Calef did not date the conversation, it occurred after April 1693, when Hill was named to command the post at Saco (see GDMNH), but probably before the end of the year, because Joshua Scottow included a reference to the story in his narrative of the history of New England, which is commonly dated in 1693. (However, it could have been written the following year, for it seems to contain a reference to the 1694 attack on Oyster River.) See Joshua Scottow, “A Narrative of the Planting of the Massachusetts Colony,”
MHS Colls
34 (1858): 317 (Burroughs), 310 (possible Oyster River reference). Hill knew Burroughs, who carried a letter to him dated 18 February 1690⁄1. See notation on the letter, John Hill Papers, NEHGS.
Acknowledgments
When I began researching the Salem witchcraft crisis, little did I realize that I would be joining the ranks of a large, dedicated group of researchers, some of them descendants of participants in the trials. Their published scholarship informs nearly every page of this book. The current exemplars of the tradition have welcomed me into the fold, offered me assistance and advice, and served as my guides to the many arcana of Salem research. My warmest thanks go to Bernard Rosenthal, author of
Salem Story
(1993) and editor in chief of the forthcoming new edition of the witchraft trial records, who— though knowing from the outset that we were likely to disagree on many topics—has shared freely his infinite store of knowledge of Salem witchcraft and who read a complete draft of this book, blue pen firmly in hand, helping me to avoid factual and other pitfalls.
I also thank Benjamin Ray, professor of religion at the University of Virginia, whose NEH-funded website, Witchcraft at Salem Village (http://etext.virginia.edu/salem/witchcraft), is a boon to all students and scholars because of the ready access it offers to maps, excerpted publications, and transcriptions and images of the original legal documents. Through Ben I met Dr. Anthony S. (Tony) Patton, current resident of the Rea house in Danvers, who on a memorable July morning guided me to the sites of the meetinghouse, Ingersoll’s tavern, and the parsonage, and offered valuable insights into the way the witchcraft crisis still affects the town where it all began more than three centuries ago. Richard Trask, the Danvers town historian, answered a number of questions and supplied me with a copy of a crucial document.
I am especially grateful to my guides to the world of late seventeenth-century Maine and Wabanakia—Emerson W. (Tad) Baker, Alice Nash, and Jenny Pulsipher—and to Evan Haefeli, who generously shared with me his unpublished translations from the Dutch of the important 1692 letters of Jacob Melijn. For additional assistance and suggestions, I thank Chris Bilodeau, Elizabeth Bouvier, John Brooke, James Cooper, Stephen Foster, Pembroke Herbert, James J. John, Richard Johnson, Susanah Shaw, Maurice (Pete) White, and Michael Winship.
Throughout my research the Olin and Kroch Libraries at Cornell University served as my firm home base. Indeed, one of the reasons why I ventured into this topic in the first place was the magnificent Cornell Witchcraft Collection, created primarily under the direction of George Lincoln Burr and housed in the Kroch Rare Book and Manuscript Library. There, thanks to the consistently helpful staff, I read most of the basic texts of the crisis in their original print versions without leaving home. The reference and interlibrary loan librarians at Olin handled a remarkable number of requests with aplomb. And everywhere I went in the older Olin holdings, it seemed, George Lincoln Burr, once a member of my department, had been there before me. Numerous times I opened nineteenth-century volumes to find his tiny penciled marginalia, correcting published errors and giving important cross-references. One of the documents cited herein (the October 1692 opinions—in Latin—on witchcraft of the Reverend John Miller, chaplain to the English troops in New York) I located thanks to a note in Burr’s personal papers in the Cornell archives. Typically, the meticulous Burr not only learned of the existence of the document, but also acquired a photostat of it for the witchcraft collection. It has never been published in its entirety in the original or in translation, and to this day it has been unknown to other Salem researchers.
I also wish to acknowledge the importance of the work accomplished by two more now-dead Salem researchers: Esther Forbes and her assistant, Kit, in the early 1950s. From Carol Karlsen personally and from her book
The
Devil in the Shape of a Woman
(1987), I learned that at the time of her death Ms. Forbes had been working on a novel on the witchcraft crisis that took the same approach I do in this book—that is, stressing the significance of the links between the Maine frontier and Salem witchcraft. One of my first research trips accordingly took me to consult the Forbes Papers at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester. Although the rough historical notes there (often reports from Kit to Ms. Forbes) contain some errors, they also pointed me in many right directions and saved me hours of tedious labor.
Even though many of the materials pertinent to the crisis are available in print, my desire to seek out contemporaries’ comments on the trials and the Indian wars in the years from 1675 to 1695 led me to a number of manuscript repositories. My warm thanks go to the staffs of the American Antiquarian Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society (especially Nick Graham), the Maine Historical Society, the Library of Congress Manuscript Division, the Boston Public Library, the New England Historic Genealogical Society, the Peabody Essex Museum, the Gilder Lehrman Collection at the Pierpont Morgan Library, the New-York Historical Society, the British Library, and the Public Record Office in London. This book could not have been written without them.
It could also not have been written without the financial support offered by Cornell University (in the form of three different funds: the Dean’s Humanities Research Fund, the Col. Return Jonathan Meigs III Fund, and the Mary Donlon Alger endowment) and by the two institutions at which I spent a sabbatical year writing the book. In fall 2000, the Starr Foundation Visiting Fellowship at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, provided me with a quiet office, friendly colleagues, and an atmosphere redolent with learning. My special thanks go to Clive Holmes, Frances Lannon, and the principal of LMH, Sir Brian Fall, and his wife, Delmar, for making my term of residence so enjoyable and productive. Then in spring 2001 I held a Mellon PostDoctoral Fellowship at the Henry E. Huntington Library in San Marino, California. Superficially, one could not imagine an environment that contrasted more sharply with that of Oxford, but it proved to be just as conducive to writing and contemplation. The Huntington Library collections and the other long-term resident fellows (especially Cynthia Herrup, Margaret Hunt, Jennifer Price, and Maria Lepowsky) created a space where I could both work and have fun socializing—not to mention taking long walks to watch the magnificent gardens passing through two seasons. Thanks to my old friend Roy Ritchie, research director of the Huntington, his assistant Carolyn Powell, and the staff of reader services (especially Susi Krasnoo) for their assistance during my all-too-brief stay in their bailiwick.
Several times before I embarked on this project I offered an undergraduate research seminar at Cornell on the subject of witchcraft in early modern England and America. The findings of the enthusiastic students who enrolled in those courses informed me about Salem and other witchcraft episodes. One of those students, Jesse Souweine, went on to write her undergraduate honors thesis on the role of gossip in the 1692 trials; I learned much from it and have cited it herein. Even more important to my own work was the honors thesis written by Molly A. Warsh, who served as my first research assistant on this book and whose independent work on the ties between Salem and the Maine frontier pointed up several key links I might otherwise have missed. Molly also worked diligently for me in the Massachusetts State Archives, the New England Historic Genealogical Society, and the Massachusetts Historical Society. And throughout my year away my graduate student Krissa Swain served as my efficient Ithaca resident research assistant. She answered many key questions by electronic or regular mail.
I have given presentations on the witchcraft crisis to diverse audiences, whose reactions have helped me sharpen my arguments and clarify key points. My thanks go to those who listened and commented at the annual meetings of the American Historical Association and the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, the Cornell University Women’s Studies colloquium, the University of Pennsylvania and the McNeil Center colloquium, the College of William and Mary, Oxford University (especially Robin Briggs), Cambridge University, the Women’s Studies Seminar at the Institute of Historical Research of the University of London, Stanford University, the Bay Area and Los Angeles Early Americanist groups, the Huntington Library, and the Universities of California at Riverside and Santa Barbara.
Several friends read the entire draft manuscript, and their comments improved it considerably. Bernie Rosenthal’s invaluable aid I have already acknowledged; the same thanks are due to Gloria Main, Rachel Weil, and Virginia Yans, who brought to their task their different but equally helpful perspectives. Clive Holmes, Jenny Pulsipher, and Tad Baker read parts of the manuscript, offering valuable advice. My editor, Jane Garrett, offered much wise counsel as I struggled to tell the familiar story of the 1692 witchcraft crisis in a new way.
Finally, two personal notes.
This book is dedicated to my female and Americanist colleagues in the Cornell History Department, and especially to I. V. (Itsie) Hull, who fits in the first category but not the second. When I joined the department in 1971, I was its first female member. My senior male colleagues in American history were somewhat bemused, but largely supportive, as I increasingly abandoned traditional approaches to Early American history and moved into the then-new and untested field of women’s (and later gender) history. I choose this opportunity to acknowledge publicly the important role they have played in my development as a scholar. For five years, I remained the only woman in the department; later, for another decade, Itsie and I were the only two women. Now the department is one-third female, but the ties Itsie and I forged during those ten years and thereafter, working together in teaching, on departmental matters, and in college and university politics, have brought us close together. She has been a wonderful colleague, a close personal friend, and a staunch ally in all things.
Before starting this project I learned that I, like so many other Salem researchers, am a descendant of people involved in the witchcraft crisis, although that was not why I chose to work on it. Mistress Mary Bradbury, convicted as a witch but not hanged for reasons I have explained herein, was my ninth-great-grandmother; and Susannah North Martin, convicted and hanged, was my ninth-great-
step
-grandmother.
But my familial ties to this project are deeper than that. On both sides of my father’s family, my roots go back to Salisbury, Massachusetts, in the mid seventeenth century. My ancestors must have heard George Burroughs preach from John Wheelwright’s pulpit in the late 1670s, after he had fled Falmouth for the first time. Indeed, both Wheelwright and his chief antagonist, Robert Pike, are my ninth-great-grandfathers. (And because I am descended from Pike, I am also related collaterally by marriage to the Carr and Putnam families, since one of his daughters, my eighth-great-aunt, married a brother of Ann Carr Putnam.) Pendleton Fletcher, who knew Burroughs in Wells in the early 1690s, was my eighth-great-grandfather;
his
grandfather, Brian Pendleton, the Saco magistrate during the First Indian War, was well acquainted with John Bonython, the grandfather of Sarah Churchwell. One of my ancestors was carried into captivity by the Wabanakis after the York raid of January 1691/2; others took shelter at Black Point in 1676 and would have known William Sheldon and his little daughter Susannah. How many times have I wished that—through witchcraft or magic—I could summon up the ghosts of my own ancestors to ask their assistance in my research. But since I cannot do that, I have tried my best to tell their story as accurately as possible, even, perhaps, the way one of them might have told it.