Notes & Notions from the Salem Witch Museum

“We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.”

Quoted from

The Salem Witch Trials:  A Day-By-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege by Marilynne K. Roach, page 201-202

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Salem Town

Between eight o’clock and noon, Sheriff George Corwin transported Rebecca Nurse, Susanna Martin, Elizabeth How, Sarah Good, and Sarah Wildes – all praying that God would prove their innocence – from prison by cart through the streets of Salem to be hanged.  Quiet housewives or turbulent scolds, well-to-do or in rags, all five women now faced a painful, public death.

It was customary for the dying to attempt facing death in a spirit of forgiveness lest their souls appear before Heavenly judgment seething hatred.  Sarah Good would have none of it.  At the gallows Reverend Nicholas Noyes urged her to confess what the courts had seemingly proven and at least not die a liar.  When she denied the guild, Noyes said she knew she was a witch.

“You are a liar,” she snapped.  “I am no more a witch than you are a wizard, and if you take away my life God will give you blood to drink.”  (The folk curse was loosely based on a verse in Revelation.  People later remembered it when Noyes, it was said, died bleeding at the mouth when a blood vessel burst in his head.)

Rumors hinted that the Devil might attempt a last-minute rescue of his followers, but all five hanged as scheduled on the ledge above the tidal pool.

Joseph Ballard probably witnessed the executions on his way from Andover.  Soon after, he entered a complaint in Salem before Magistrates Gedney, Corwin, Hathorne, and Higginson against Mary Lacy and her daughter Mary Jr. for tormenting his wife Elizabeth with “strange pains and pressures.”  He even put up a £100 bond “on condition to prosecute.”  (Plaintiffs customarily did this in civil suits, the sum forfeit if the plaintiff didn’t appear in court, but this is the first recorded bond in these witch cases where the accusations seem to have been treated as a public emergency.)  The magistrates issued a warrant for only Goody Lacy, however, and not for her daughter.

The bodies of the dead, meantime, were buried (if only temporarily) near the rocky execution site.  By family tradition the Nurses waited for darkness (sunset was about a quarter after seven) then rowed up the North River to the bend by the ledge and exhumed Rebecca’s body.  According to another tradition Caleb Buffum  (a distant relative) noticed this effort from his home nearby and helped carry the remains to the shore.  From there a small craft could slip downstream past town on the midnight’s high tide, then north up the estuary to Crane River and along its narrowing length to the Nurses’ land, where they buried her privately on the homeground.

President Obama in Tucson: “The Forces that Divide Us are Not as Strong as Those that Unite Us”

From The Whitehouse Blog

Posted by Jesse Lee on January 13, 2011 at 11:00 AM EST

Click here to see the President’s full speech

How lucky we are to have visitors who are passionate about the subject of human rights and witch hunts.  The talented Texas resident Cathy Hutchison of the “random Cathy…” blog caught my eye recently when she wrote about the treatment of immigrants in our country today. 

Check out her full post at: random Cathy… Sounds Like Salem

I love that she quotes from the The New Colossus, the 1883 sonnet by Emma Lazarus which is mounted on a bronze plaque inside the Statue of Liberty:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles.  From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips.  “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

We thank Cathy for her tolerance and insight and for allowing us to share her blog.

“It were better that ten suspected witches should escape, than that one innocent person should be condemned.”

INCREASE MATHER (1639-1723)
An authoritative minister in Boston, President of Harvard College and close friend of Governor William Phips, his publication of Cases of Conscience illustrated his more moderate position on the witch trials.   He was also the father of Cotton Mather.

Learn more about Increase Mather and the Salem Witch trials online.