Archive for the ‘Salem Witch Trials’ Category:
July 19th, 1692 – Tuesday
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.
Bridget Bishop as performed by Jenney Dale
On the 319th anniversary of the hanging of Bridget Bishop we approached learning more about her story in a few unique ways. We spoke with Jenney Dale, the actor who portrays the first executed Salem witch trial victim in the History Alive! theatrical production of Cry Innocent.
We asked Ms. Dale what most captivated her about playing Bridget Bishop. “She was stubborn. I could identify with her outspoken nature, not wanting to go along with others’ definitions of how a person should act.” In some ways we still experience that today, but we have it so much easier than they did in 1692.” Being an outspoken woman certainly made her all the more suspect of being a witch, having endured years of town talk about her independent spirit.
Cry Innocent calls their audience to sit on the Puritan jury, hearing the reenacted historical testimonies from the pre-trial examinations, cross-examining the witnesses, and finally passing judgment themselves. Ms. Dale admits that sometimes the verdict is surprising. “It’s hard to tell which way they’ll go. But, I really want people to see the events through the eyes of Puritans,” so they can understand why the proceedings went as they did.
For more information about Cry Innocent, please click here or call their box office at: 978-867-4767
June 10th, 1692: Bridget Bishop is Hanged
BRIDGET BISHOP, “alias Bridget Oliver”; Salem; born Bridget Playfer; married Samuel Wasselby 1660, then Thomas Oliver, lastly Edward Bishop; long suspected of witchcraft; tried, found guilty; hanged 10 June 1692; sentence reversed 2001.
Are you a descendant of Bridget Bishop and have an interesting family story or legend? Send an email to stacyt@salemwitchmuseum.com to participate in a discussion.
Word of the Day: CRUCIBLE
[kroo-suh-buhl]
–noun
1. a container of metal or refractory material employed for heating substances to high temperatures.
2. Metallurgy . a hollow area at the bottom of a furnace in which the metal collects.
3. a severe, searching test or trial.
From dictionary.com, based on the Random House Dictionary.
This play has inspired interest in the Salem trials since 1953. In it Arthur Miller “brilliantly explores the threshold between individual guilt and mass hysteria, personal spite and collective evil.” The DVD, filmed on location in Ipswich, is also available in our store.
March 14th, 1692 – Monday
Over the weekend Ann Putnam, Jr. continued to report being tortured by the apparition of Martha Corey, who was Giles Corey’s third wife and a full member of the Salem Village church. Ann’s uncle Edward Putnam and neighbor Ezekiel Cheever set out to investigate by asking young Ann about the specter’s clothing. She claimed she could not see the Invisible World that day, but only felt the torment.
When Edward and Ezekiel traveled on to find Martha Corey on her farm, she seemed to already know the purpose of their visit; “…Does she tell you what clothes I have on?” They explained that Ann had been blinded so no comparison between the specter’s clothing and her own physical attire could be made. Goody Corey was not intimidated.
Meanwhile, in Salem town, Martha’s phantom was reportedly plaguing Mary Warren, John and Elizabeth Proctor’s twenty-one year old servant. John Proctor had his own treatment for this affliction. He kept Mary spinning at the wheel and threatened to beat her if she had any more outbreaks. This method seemed to work until he had to leave the home for a day, and without his presence, she deteriorated back into fits.
Later in the weekend, Ann Putnam, Jr. claimed to be afflicted by yet another ghost, that of an indistinguishable woman. Her mother, Ann Putnam, Sr., and their maid Mercy Lewis – a refugee from the wars in Maine – hoped to discover the identity by suggesting a few names to the ill young girl. She confirmed that of Rebecca Nurse who, though a member of the Salem town church, often attended Village meetings, which was closer to her family farm.
By Monday, Abigail Williams said the invisible forces of Martha Corey and Elizabeth Proctor were causing her convulsions. Giles Corey had reported that one of his oxen was unable to rise and work though it had walked moments before. Later the ox rose and stood as if nothing had been wrong. Then his cat seemed to become ill as if on the verge of death. Martha recommended hitting the creature on the head, but Giles refused and the cat recuperated as inexplicably as the ox.
Giles Corey had a checkered reputation himself: it had been evidenced that he’d stolen dry goods from Justice Corwin’s father and rumored that he’d beaten a handyman to death. Giles had a few run-ins with his neighbor Robert Moulton who called him “contentious” and “quarrelsome” and went as far as accusing him of stealing twelve bushels of apples. John Proctor had accused Corey of setting fire to his house, and the two sued each other until it was discovered that the true culprit had been one of Proctor’s own sons who confessed to the accident.
Works Referenced:
March 9th, 1692
In 1692, as today, March 9th fell on a Wednesday. According to Marilynne Roach’s the Salem Witch Trials: A Day-By-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege the infamous events continued to unfold as the afflicted girls maintained being harassed by the “vengeful specters” of Goodwives Good and Osborn. Since Tituba’s confession, her spirit was no longer reported to be torturing the young girls.
All three earthly women, however, were serving their third day in a Boston jail. Since most capital trials were held in Boston, Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne and Tituba were transported there earlier that week from Salem town jail, a trip that would have taken all day. John Arnold, prison keeper, took custody of the women on March 7th.
The basic fee was two shillings, sixpence a week – about as much as a woman could hope to earn in a week – plus processing fees and fees for shackles. Boston’s jail seemed to be an open common room bordered by smaller rooms where some of the prisoners were locked at night (and from which some escaped by removing the window bars). Like the smaller Essex County jails, it was set inside a fenced yard that less dangerous prisoners could exercise in. Wealthy prisoners could even rent a room in the prison keeper’s house and attend religious meetings under guard. It is not clear if any of the rooms were underground, although there may have been windowless inner rooms. References to “dungeons” may be metaphorical, synonymous with “close confinement” or “close prison,” a term an earlier prisoner used when confined full-time to a room with an exterior window. Even then the jails, intended to hold prisoners only temporarily, were hot in summer and cold in winter, infested with lice, and stank at all times of dung and tobacco. Prisons, as one visiting Englishman said a few years before, were “suburbs of Hell” (Roach 35).
Roach, Marilynne K. Salem Witch Trials: A Day-By-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege. Cooper Square Press. New York. 2002.
Why Did the Witchcraft Accusations of 1692 Begin in the Village Parsonage?
The outbreak of witchcraft accusations in 1692 began with the strange behavior of two young girls living in the Salem Village parsonage: 11 year old Abigail Williams, niece of the minister Samuel Parris, and his own 9 year old daughter, Betty. In A Modest Enquiry Into the Nature of Witchcraft printed in 1697, Reverend John Hale writes that he was “credibly informed” that the afflicted persons used an egg and glass fortunetelling game to determine their future husband’s profession (132-133). Hale reports that they saw a “specter in the likeness of a coffin,” inciting the tormented conduct of the young girls. It is reframed elsewhere, however, that these folk practices were quite common in England and the Colonies. So why did the entertainment take such an extraordinary turn in the Parris household?
Salem Town versus Salem Village
A port city settled in 1629 by Roger Conant, Salem Town had always been prosperous and throughout the seventeenth century continued to grow, as farmers moved to the pastoral areas that would be called Salem Village. More than a geographic distinction, Salem Town developed an urban texture with commercial advantages benefitting the prevailing merchant group while the farmers of Salem Village perceived a relative shrinking of their standard of living. It is documented that in the 1650’s about 40% of the overall wealth in the area was attributed to farming. Just 30 years later it had plunged to about 9%. While some Villagers may have felt disengaged from Town life, others benefited by their proximity.
The clashes between rural life in Salem Village versus commercial life in Salem Town shines light on the biases that may have colored the judgment of the key figures of the trials.
Salem Village Ministers – a History of Strife
For many years the establishment of a meeting house as a place of worship, independent from Salem Town, had been a point of contention between Salem Townspeople and Salem Villagers, and among Salem Village neighbors themselves. Deciphering extant petitions and counter-petitions of the time, Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum’s illustrate in Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft that factionalism was alive in Salem Village in the years preceding the infamous hearings. They consider disputes between competing groups and conclude that there are significant patterns distinguishing between Salem Village Church members who supported the ministry and those who did not. Samuel Parris inherited a legacy of discord at the Salem Village parish. None of the three ministers before him had succeeded in establishing a cohesive congregation.
In 1673 James Bayley was the first minister of the Salem Village meetinghouse immediately beset by controversy between villagers who either questioned his appointment or failed to pay taxes that went toward his salary. He resigned in1679. Boyer and Nissenbaum cite this conflict as an example of the pattern of political behaviors, “…which were to surface again and again in the years to come, most dramatically in 1692” (47).
The second, George Burroughs, was hired as new Village preacher in 1680 and, amid similar unsettled conditions as those of Bayley before him, departed in 1683. He relocated to Wells, Maine where he remained until being summoned back to Salem nine years later. Accused of being a “wizard,” he was hanged with the other victims of the witchcraft trials.
Deodat Lawson had succeeded Burroughs as invited minister in1684 and enjoyed two years of seeming calm within his parish. However, in 1686 efforts to ordain Lawson met renewed opposition and were ultimately abandoned. Lawson departed the Village in 1688.
Samuel Parris’s Personal Demons
Samuel Parris was born in England and had been attending Harvard College when his father Thomas died in 1673. Samuel’s inheritance was a sugar plantation in Barbados, while his elder brother received the more valued lands in England and Ireland. After his less than successful period in the Caribbean he returned to Boston in 1680 as a merchant with a wharf and warehouse, but this endeavor was also characterized by some scholars as falling short of his own ambitions.
At the time Parris arrived in Salem Village from Boston around June of 1688, the atmosphere in Massachusetts Bay Colony was thick with angst. There had been about a hundred cases of suspected witchcraft in the area up to that point. Mary Glover, an elderly Catholic Irishwoman in Boston, was hanged for the crime that summer (Roache, xxxv). The belief in witches extended as far back as the Old Testament’s Exodus 22:18 which stated, “Thou shalt not suffer a sorceress to live.” It was within the very fabric of faith that witches existed; that they had entered a covenant with the Devil and therefore should not be allowed to live.
Going forward, Parris’s compensation was debated and negotiated for nearly a year when the Village finally determined his salary to be £66: one third in money, the rest in goods such as firewood. At his ordination as the Salem Village Church minister in November, 1689 he reminded the attending full members of the church that paying his wage was not an act of charity, but a duty. His salary had nearly always been a controversial subject.
In October 1690, Parris attended a meeting of Boston area Congregational ministers to consider, “What shall be done towards the reformation of the miscarriages for which New England now suffers by the heavy judgments of God?” Concurrently in England, King James’ son was born and was to be raised Catholic replacing his Protestant half-sisters in the line of succession. It was in Parris’s mind that their colonial efforts toward their own Promised Land were unraveling and that God was punishing their sins by sending smallpox outbreaks and “Indian attacks.”
In January, 1692 a committee was formed which included Joseph Hutchinson Sr., Joseph Porter, Daniel Andrews, Francis Nurse, and Thomas Putnam to oversee an argument over the parsonage land. As the year progressed there were more and more issues concerning Parris’s agreed upon salary, delivery of firewood and collection of minister’s rates from the congregation. Thus continued the pro-Parris and anti-Parris clash between villagers and the breaking of the minister’s contract.
Salem Possessed (178) sums up his role:
All the elements of their respective histories were deeply rooted in the social realities of late-seventeenth-century western culture — a culture in which a subsistence, peasant-based economy was being subverted by mercantile capitalism. This process played itself out sometimes as a political struggle between vying groups of men, and sometimes as a psychological struggle within individual men. What is unique about our story is the lethal convergence of a man and a community in whom, and in which, these conflicts were already independently raging. Through Parris’s sermons, many Salem Villagers discovered new and alarming dimensions in their chronic difficulties; at the same time, through his Salem Village experience, Parris found abundant nourishment for the obsessions which had long been gnawing at his soul.
Conclusion
After examining the micro-community of the Parris household perhaps it’s easier to understand why Betty and Abigail interpreted their egg glass fortunes as a diabolical message. Social flux was a fact of life. The future of the meetinghouse was uncertain. Scholars point to fears and anxieties within their own homes as a fertile environment for such a reaction to the vision from their crystal ball: “a specter in the shape of a coffin” (Boyer and Nissenbaum, 199).
We can never know what was in the minds of these Puritan families over 300 years ago. Perhaps we can at least recognize that the tragedy of the Salem witchcraft trials took place amid layered contributing factors and beliefs that had been set into motion years, even centuries, before the outbreak of witchcraft accusations.
Works Cited
Boyer, Paul, and Stephen Nissenbaum. Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1974.
Hale, John. A Modest Enquiry Into the Nature of Witchcraft. Bedford. Applewood Books. 1701.
Hall, David C. Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England. Boston. Northeastern University Press. 1991.
Roache, Marilynne E. The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-By-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege. New York. Cooper Square Press. 2002.
University of Virginia. “Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project.” Web. <http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/salem/witchcraft/>
The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft & Conflict in Early New England
This past Thursday evening we enjoyed the second fascinating lecture hosted by Gordon College at Old Town Hall. Dr. Emerson “Tad” Baker discussed his book The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft & Conflict in Early New England, introducing the work as a unique look at New England witchcraft that does not focus on Salem. Dr. Baker has been a historical archeologist as well as a museum director and is currently a public historian and professor at Salem State College.
Ten years before the Salem outbreak, in a place called Great Island (today New Castle) near Portsmouth, NH, there were reported incidents of “lithobolia.” Though educated men of the day knew Greek and Latin and would have been familiar with the term, I needed translation: stone-throwing of the Devil. Hundreds of flying stones, some as heavy as eight pounds, beset the tavern owned by George and Alice Walton for several months, yet no one had ever seen anyone throwing them. These occurrences, as many other inexplicable events at that time, were perceived as acts of witchcraft.
When we look further into the details, the first to come into view are the relationships and territorial boundaries between the key individuals of the story. I don’t want to give away the delicious unfolding of the narrative, so I’ll share only that the Waltons had been in land disputes with neighbor Hanna Jones, who was accused of being a witch. There had also been infighting in the vicinity about the establishment of a separate meeting house in which to worship. Although Dr. Emerson explores this history north of Mass Bay Colony, he does acknowledge that, “…when it comes to witchcraft in early New England, all roads eventually lead to Salem.”
In fact, it seems as though there are many common factors between Great Island and Salem. Neighbors disagreeing over territorial margins were certainly a dynamic that set the stage for the Salem witchcraft accusations. Uncannily, heated debates about an independent meeting house in Salem Village were significant to conditions that allowed the events to unfold as they did in 1692.
If you’re as interested in the environment and events leading to the Salem Witchcraft Trials as I am, next week’s post will be dedicated to the aspect of territorial disputes in Salem Village prior to the eruption of witchcraft accusations. Stay tuned…
What Started the Salem Witch Trials?
We are fortunate to be interviewed by hundreds of history students, magazines and news outlets each year. I’ve noticed some consistency with one of the most frequently asked questions being, “What caused the witch trials?” Read more »
Salem Award Foundation Receives Coveted Annenberg Grant
You may have heard in recent news that the Salem Award Foundation has received a $25,000 grant from the Annenburg Foundation.
Read the full story in the Salem Gazette.
“Charles Weingarten visited Salem last fall to research the history of the witch trials in preparation for a possible film. He contacted Alison D’Amario, Patty MacLeod and Tina Jordan, of the Salem Witch Museum. D’Amario and MacLeod were instrumental in establishing the Salem Witch Trials Memorial and the Salem Award Foundation. During his exploration at historic sites with local experts, they told him about the Salem Award and its mission to educate the public through the lessons of the trials.”
The Salem Award for Human Rights and Social Justice
Charles Annenberg Weingarten (pictured left). Photo courtesy of the Annenberg Foundation.
View Mr. Weingarten’s Film – Salem Witch Hunt
The Salem Witch Museum is proud to be part of a community dedicated to contributing to the cause of human rights and social justice.