USA > Connecticut > A history of Connecticut, its people and institutions, pt 1 > Part 13
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On February 20, 1651, an indictment was found against a Wethersfield carpenter named John Carrington and his wife for having "Interteined familiarity with Sathan, the Greate Enemye of God and Mankinde," and for accomplish- ing works past human power. They were hanged on March 19, 1653.
One of the most pathetic cases was that of Goodwife Knap of Fairfield, a woman, who, so far as we can now judge, was very different from some of the others who were arraigned; "simple-minded," Schenck calls her in his history of Fairfield, but gossip and scandal got after the poor crea- ture and she was committed to the jail, the cold and gloomy prison of logs, with a single barred window and massive door, in charge of a harsh jailer. On the day of her condem- nation, a self-constituted committee of one man and four women visited the jail and pressed the victim to name any other witch in town, and after they had baited, threatened, and badgered her to their hearts' content, in the agony of her soul she cried out to her relentless persecutors, "Never, never poore creature was tempted as I am tempted, pray, pray for me."
The cases of 1662, were the nearest approach made in Connecticut to the Salem cases of thirty years later. Seven cases were indicted, of whom two were executed, and prob- ably a third. This epidemic began with the eight-year- old girl of John Kelley, who in the spring of 1662, cried out in the delirium of illness against Mrs. William Ayres, who saw in the cry a death-warrant and fled. Soon afterward,
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Ann Cole, a religious melancholiac, tormented with doubts about her religious welfare, had fits of derangement in which she talked for hours about a company of evil spirits taking counsel to ruin her. Others caught the contagion, and Ann and two others had attacks in church. A special day of prayer was held for them, on which the demonic exhibition was so effective that one of the company fainted at the sight. Ann Cole denounced Mrs. Richard Seager as a witch. The accused said the charge was a "hodge-podge," but she barely escaped with her life, being indicted three times. On July 16, 1665, Mrs. Seager was convicted and lodged in prison for a year, then removed to Rhode Island, that refuge of the oppressed. Later, Ann Cole recovered control of her nerves and also acquired a surplus, for she married Andrew Benton, a widower with eight children.
An average sample of the people implicated in this debauch of superstition, ignorance, and disordered nerves was Nathanael Greensmith, who lived in Hartford, next to the Coles' on the first lot on the present Wethersfield Avenue. He was a well-to-do farmer, occasionally convicted of thefts, assault, and lying. His wife Rebecca was described by Rev. John Whiting as a "lewd, ignorant, and consider- ably aged woman." Rebecca Greensmith had a genius for confessions of everything alleged by the witch-hunters. She had evidently fed her degenerate mind with all sorts of rubbish from the witch lore, was prompt to admit all kinds of misdemeanors, and accused every one within reach, even her husband. Gossip and rumor about these unpopular neighbors culminated in a formal complaint, and December 30, 1661, at a Court held in Hartford, both the Greensmiths were separately indicted in the same charge, which ran as follows:
Nathanael Greensmith, thou art indicted by the name of Nathanael Greensmith, for not having the fear of God before thine eyes, thou hast entertained familiarity with Satan, the
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grand enemy of God and mankind-and by his help has acted things in a preternatural way beyond human abilities in a natural course, for which, according to the law of God and the established law of this commonwealth, thou deservest to die.
The extent to which the delusion went is suggested in the account given by two ministers, Haynes and Whiting, who interviewed Goody Greensmith while she was in prison, and wrote out the confession which Increase Mather re- garded as convictive a proof of real witchcraft as most cases he had known.
"She forthwith and freely confessed those things to be true, that she had familiarity with the devil. The devil told her that at Christmas they would have a merry meeting, and then the covenant would be drawn up and subscribed." This made a decided impression on the learned Rev. Samuel Stone, who was in the Court, and he laid forth with weight and earnestness the dreadful sin Rebecca had committed, and solemnly took notice that the devil loved Christmas! She said that the devil first appeared to her in the form of a deer or fawn, skipping about her; some of the company came in one shape and some in another; one flying as a crow. One of the reasons why Rebecca was convinced that her husband had help from the devil was, as she testified in the court, "I have seen logs that my husband hath brought home in his cart that I wondered at it that he could get them into the cart being a man of little body, and ye logs were such that I thought two men such as he could not have done it." The Greensmiths were convicted and sentenced to suffer death, and in January, 1662, they were hanged on "Gallows Hill," on the bluff a little north of where Trinity College now stands; an excellent place for the crowd in the meadows to the west to witness a popular form of entertainment.
Two days before the last confession of Goody Green- smith, Mary Barnes of Farmington was indicted for witch-
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craft and found guilty by the jury. The only further note of her fate is a bill for "keep" in prison; and as it was for about the same length of time as the Greensmiths, she was prob- ably executed like them. In May, 1669, occurred the most remarkable case in the colony, when Katheran Harrison, one of the richest people in Wethersfield, was indicted for witchcraft at the Court of Assistants in Hartford, presided over by Deputy Governor John Mason, and the suspected woman was committed to the common jail until the trial. On May 25, at a court presided over by Governor John Winthrop, Jr., with Deputy Governor William Leete, Major Mason, and others as assistants, the indictment was as follows:
Katheran Harrison, thou standest here indicted by ye name of Katheran Harrison (of Wethersfield) as being guilty of witch- craft, for that thou not haueing the fear of God before thine eyes hast had familiaritie with Sathan, the grand enemie of god and mankind, and by his help hast acted things beyond and beside the ordinary course of nature, and hast thereby hurt the bodyes of divers of the subjects of our souraigne Lord and King, of which by the law of god and of this corporation thou oughtest to dye.
Katheran pleaded not guilty and "refered herself to a tryall by the jury present." A partial trial was held in May, but the jury could not agree, and the court adjourned to October, while Mrs. Harrison went to jail.
Here are samples of the miserable drivel to which Win- throp, Mason, Treat, and Leete listened. Thomas Bracy testified that he was at the house of Hugh Wells, over against the Harrison house, making a jacket and pair of breeches, when he fell into unaccountable blunders, and looking out he saw a cart loaded with hay approaching the Harrison barn, and on the top of the hay a "red calves head, the eares standing peart up," and keeping his eyes on the cart till it came to the barn, the calf vanished. Then
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he said he suspected Katheran Harrison of witchcraft, and once while in bed he saw Mrs. Harrison and James Wakely at his bedside consulting to kill him; Wakely wanted to cut his throat, but Katheran wished to strangle him. Pres- ently Katheran seized him and pulled or pinched him so that it seemed as though she would pull the flesh from his bones, and he groaned. His father heard him and spoke, and he stopped groaning; then Katheran "fell again to afflictinge and pinching," at which repeated groans brought his father and mother to the bedside, and James and Katheran went to "the beds feete." The next day appeared marks of the pinching. Joane Francis said that four years before, on the night her child was taken ill, Goodwife Harrison or her shape appeared, and Joane said, "The Lord bless me and my child, here is Goody Harrison." Three weeks later the child died. The widow of Jacob Johnson said that her husband was lying in bed in Windsor, when he had "a great box on the head, and after he came home he was ill, and Goodwife Harrison did help him with diet, drink and plasters," then she sent for Captain Atwood to help, and that night, "to the best of my apprehension, I saw the like- ness of Goodwife Harrison with her face toward my husband, and I turned about to lock the door, and she vanisht away. Then my husband's nose fell a bleeding in an extraordinary manner, and so continued (if it were not meddled with) to his dying day." Mary Hale testified that while lying in bed she saw an ugly dog with the head of Katheran Harrison instead of its own, and it walked over her and crushed her; then came a sharp blow on the fingers. On another night she heard the voice of a woman who said she had a commission to kill her, and she knew it was the voice of Katheran Harrison. Elizabeth Smith gave some neighborly gossip, saying that Katheran was a "great or notorious liar, a Sabbath breaker and one that told fortunes"; that she never knew any one else who could spin such yarns as she.
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On such testimony as this the jury returned a verdict of guilty. But the magistrates doubted about receiving the verdict, and took counsel of the ministers, who rendered a cautious response to the four questions asked of them in a paper in the handwriting of Rev. Gershom Bulkley of Wethersfield, in which it was declared that the communica- tion of things that cannot be known by human skill or strength of reason, "in the way of divination seemes to us to argue familiarity with ye devill, in as much as such a person doth thereby declare his receiving the devills testi- mony, & yeeld up himselfe as ye devills instrument to com- municate the same to others."
Meanwhile Katheran was not idle. She addressed a petition to the court, setting forth her sufferings in person and estate. We are not surprised that in her sense of wrong she should have told Michael Griswold that he would hang her, though he damned a thousand souls, and as for his own soul it was damned long ago. For this Michael brought two suits for slander, and Katheran was adjudged to pay him twenty-five pounds and costs in one case, and fifteen pounds and costs in the other. On May 20, 1670, the General Assembly refused to concur with the court in its verdict, sentencing Mrs. Harrison to death, and dismissed her from a year's imprisonment, on condition that she pay the costs of the trial, and remove from Wethersfield, "which is that will tend most to her own safety, and the contentment of the people who are her neighbors." She went to West- chester, N. Y., but the stories followed her, and the people there tried to send her back. After three years of harrying, an accusation before the Dutch governor failed, and she was released, and told she could live where she pleased.
At the time of the Salem craze in 1692, one spot in Con- necticut suffered deeply; that bloodshed did not attend it was due to the broadening of mind which had begun to appear. A special court was held in Fairfield, the storm center, in September, 1692, including Governor Treat,
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Deputy Governor William Jones, and Secretary John Allyn-and a grand and petty jury. To prepare evidence, the townspeople had put two suspects to the water ordeal; both "swam like a cork," though the crowd tried to push one of them under. Four women were indicted, and two hundred witnesses examined. The distinguished court listened for days to gossipy stories about roaring calves, mired cows, creases in the kettle, frisky oxen, unbewitching sick children, optical illusions, and mesmeric influence. The jury dis- agreed, and the court met again on October 28, for the final decision. A committee of women examined the prisoners' bodies for witch-marks. The jury acquitted all except Mercy Disborough, who was convicted. The governor pronounced the death sentence; but a memorial for her pardon was drawn up, and since she was living fifteen years afterward, we know that the poor creature escaped the gallows. An indictment in 1697, closed the Connecticut witchcraft persecutions, when a woman and her daughter of twelve years were indicted for "misteriously hurting the Bodies and Goods" of several people. They were searched for witch-teats, subjected to the water ordeal, and excom- municated from the church; what became of them we do not know, except that they fled to New York for their lives. The number of executions in Connecticut is believed to be nine and possibly eleven. Three other convictions were found, but the court set aside the verdicts.
We are ashamed of this dreary story of gossipy, half crazy, superstitious people, and our meager consolation is a remark of Hutchinson, late in the eighteenth century, that "more have been put to death in a single county in England in a short space of time, than have suffered in all New England from the first settlement to this time." New Haven escaped bloodshed by having judge instead of jury trial, and that judge, the sensible and considerate Theophilus Eaton.
In the main, the suspects were apt to be cranky and
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unbalanced people, whose neighbors became social police to rid the community of trying characters. That only ten lost their lives in Connecticut during this craze is a trib- ute to the common sense of the Connecticut lawyers and ministers, in an age when the people gave the devil so conspicuous and dignified an agency in the affairs of life that they were inclined to confess his presence at all times; and when an authority like Blackstone could write in a century after the witchcraft craze, "To deny the possibility, nay actual evidence of Witchcraft and sorcery, is at once to flatly contradict the revealed word of God in various pas- sages both of the Old and New Testaments."
CHAPTER XI
SLAVERY
O NE of the curious inconsistencies of the Puritan emigration is that for generations there were slaves in Connecticut. Abhorring as they did religious and political slavery, the people did not object to family slav- ery so long as it paid. Sagacious and heavenly-minded as were John Davenport and Edward Hopkins, they were not averse to keeping slaves, and the tradition is that the Rev. Ezra Stiles, later on president of Yale College, and a vigorous advocate of emancipation, sent a barrel of rum to Africa to be exchanged for a negro slave. The justification ran in this fashion, "It is a great privi- lege for the poor negroes to be taken from the ignorant and wicked people of Guiana and placed in a Christian land, where they can become good Christians and go to heaven when they die." The caste system was marked in the colony, and superiors, equals, and inferiors were recognized in church, prayer, and social life; there being no more question about the rightfulness of keeping slaves than of owning cows or chickens.
From 1639, when the records say there was a boy in Hartford from Dutch Guiana, slavery prevailed for two hundred years. The Pequot war furnished the first slaves, and the money paid for them helped meet the expenses of the war. Few individual men owned many of these humble workers, and the largest owner was Godfrey Malborne of
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Brooklyn, who had fifty or sixty slaves on his large estate. In the early part of the eighteenth century, a slave sold for from sixty shillings to twenty-five pounds; later, the price rose to one hundred pounds for choice goods. In 1756, there were in Connecticut three thousand six hundred and thirty- six slaves, one to every thirty-five of the whites. In 1774, the number had doubled, giving a slave to every twenty-nine of the whites, while in 1800, there were four thousand three hundred and thirty slaves, or one in fifty-nine of the freemen.
Reference has been made to Guiana as the source of slaves, and the question how they came to Connecticut is interesting in its bearing upon the traffic of those days, and the zeal of a Yankee when he could see some money alluring him. Soon after the settlement there sprang up a trade with the West Indies, and some of the vessels, after leaving their cargoes, went to Africa and gathered a load of negroes for the southern market. Of the twenty-two sea captains of Middletown before the Revolution, three were in the slave trade, Captains Walker, Gleason, and Easton. The last named was one of the most successful slave-dealers of his time; he would take droves of negroes to New Hampshire and Vermont, when the market was dull in Connecticut, and exchange them for horses. In 1804, a vessel from Hart- ford carried two hundred and fifty negroes to Charleston, S. C., and captains from New Haven and New London were engaged in the traffic.
It was a family institution and the slaves seem to have been treated fairly well. Tapping Reeve, the head of the famous Litchfield Law School, says that
the master had no control over the life of his slave. If he killed him he was liable to the same punishment as if he killed a free- man. A slave was capable of holding property in the character of a devisee or legatee. If a slave married a free woman with the consent of his master, he was emancipated; for his master had suf- fered him to contract a relation inconsistent with a state of slavery.
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Owners were required to support slaves; it was voted by the Assembly in 1702, that if a slave gained his liberty, and afterwards came to want, he should be relieved at the cost of the person in whose service he was last retained, and by whom set at liberty, or at the cost of his heirs. General Putnam freed his body-servant Dick and bought a farm for his Indian servant. Deacon Gray of Windham kept his old negroes in a cabin, where he supplied them with food. It appears that the law of 1702, to insure the care of freed slaves, was evaded, for, in 1711, a further act was passed, applying to all "negro, malatto, or Spanish Indians . . . servants . . . for time," who come to want after the expira- tion of the term of service. The provision was that in case those responsible refused to care for them, the sufferers should be relieved by the selectmen of the towns to which they belonged, who might "recover of the said owners or masters, or their heirs, executors or administrators, all the charge and cost they were at for such relief, as in the case of other debts." In 1777, the law was modified. A man wishing to emancipate his slave could apply to the selectmen, who were required to investigate the case. If they decided that it was for the best interests of the slave that he should be liberated, and that he would probably be self-supporting, and that he was of "good and peaceable life and conversa- tion," they were empowered to give to the master a certifi- cate stating their decision, and allowing him to free his slave without any obligation to support him.
By an act of 1792, permission might be granted by two of the civil officers who were not selectmen, or by one of them and two selectmen, to liberate a slave who was not less than twenty-five or more than forty-five years old, who was in good health, and who, they were satisfied from per- sonal examination, wished his freedom. If after examina- tion the certificate was granted and recorded in the town records, together with the letter of emancipation, the mas- ter's responsibility ceased. A strict fugitive slave law was
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passed in 1690, and, in 1702, it was ordered that no slave could travel without a pass from his master or the town authorities, and any one assisting a runaway was liable to a fine of twenty shillings. In 1774, there appeared in the Connecticut Gazette the following advertisement:
TEN DOLLARS REWARD. Run away from the subscriber in Canterbury, a Mulatto slave. He is a slender built fellow, has thick Lips, a curled mulatto Head of Hair uncut, and goes stoop- ing forward. He had on & carried with him when he eloped from his Master a half worn felt Hat, a black and white tow shirt, a dark brown Jacket, with slieves cuffed & Pewter Buttons down before, a Butter Nut colored Great Coat with Pewter Buttons, a Pair of striped long Trowsers, & a pair of white Ditto, a pair of White Tow Stockings; & a pair of single chan- nel Pumps. Whoever will take up said Slave and deliver him to the Subscriber in Canterbury shall have the above Reward, and all necessary Charges paid by me, Daniel Tyler, Canterbury, June 27, 1774.
In the preamble of an act passed in 1708, it was stated that negroes and mulattoes had become numerous in parts of the colony and were turbulent and quarrelsome. Any such person as struck a white man was subject to a flogging of not more than thirty stripes. In 1717, New London voted to oppose a negro "buying land in town or being an inhabitant," and instructed its representatives to the legislature to "take some prudent care that no person of color may ever have any personal or freehold estate within the government," and that same year the legislature passed a bill prohibiting negroes "purchasing land without liberty from the town, and also from being in families of their own without such liberty." When the Revolution came on it was found convenient to allow negroes to become food for bullets, and, in 1777, an act passed providing that slaves of "good life and conversation," when adjudged by the selectmen to be suitable for the army, were to be put
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into the service, and many slaves went to war, and in the stress of the conflict it came to pass that "neither the selectmen nor the commanding officers questioned the color; white and black, bond and free, if able-bodied, went into the roll together, accepted as the representatives or substi- tutes of their employers." Many slaves were promised their freedom on condition that they would serve three years in the army, and many displayed superior bravery when death was near; a negro named Lambert at Fort Griswold in 1781, slew the British officer who so savagely murdered Colonel Ledyard and fell, "pierced by thirty-three bayonet wounds."
We read of balls given by negroes, and they were allowed to elect a governor from their number, and to inaugurate him with ceremonies which gratified their desire for display. They chose a man of dignified presence, firmness, and ready tongue, and he settled disputes, imposed fines, punished gross and immoral conduct, and acted as supreme arbiter among his people, displaying every evidence of authority, even to a claim of descent from a line of African kings, being usually reelected until health failed. On inaugura- tion day the whole black population turned out in an "Election Parade," in which borrowed horses, saddles, and gay trappings made a brilliant display, and fantastic garbs, boisterous shouting, laughing, and singing, with fiddles, drums, fifes, and brass horns filled the air with a noise which the blacks called "martial music."
It was amusing to see the black governor, sham dignity, after his election, riding through the town on one of his master's horses, adorned with plated gear. An aide rode on either side, and his majesty, puffing and swelling with pride, sat bolt upright, moving with a slow, measured pace, as though the universe were looking on. When he mounted or dismounted, an aide flew to his assistance, holding his bridle, putting his feet into the stirrups, and bowing to the ground before him. The great Mogul, in a triumphal procession, never assumed an air of more perfect self-importance than did the negro governor at such a time.
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After the parade there was a feast, which often ended with a drunken riot. The ceremonies took place in Hartford, until 1800, when they were removed to Derby. The early notices sent to the blacks in different places in the common- wealth read "negro men"; later the reading was "negro gentlemen"; but the grotesque display, the ridiculous antics, and the brass horns figured just the same." The first record of a black governor is that of Governor Cuff, who resigned in 1766, in favor of John Anderson.
The coarse and brutal side of this slavery is suggested by the following advertisement which appeared in the New London Gazette in October, 1766: "To be sold, a strong and healthy negro man, 29 years of age, and brought up in the country to the farming business. Also an able-body'd wench, 16 years old (with sucking child), can do all sorts of housework ... for no other fault but her breeding. En- quire of printer." As the consciences of the people became more alert to evils in the social conditions, slavery came in for its share of criticism, and for many years there was an increasing sentiment against it, and a movement toward its downfall. Sermons were preached against it before the Revolution, and Samuel Hopkins wrote a dialogue on the duty of freeing slaves. Jonathan Edwards, Jr., proclaimed the "Injustice and Impolicy of the Slave Trade," and, aside from the injustice of the practice urged in pulpit and by pamphlets, there was another reason for its passing away; it was an economic failure, and the shrewd Yankees, finding that it did not pay, started the entering wedge in 1774, in a measure against the importation of more negroes for slavery. In the preamble of that law, there is no claim to morality, justice, or humanity; the reasoning is wholly economic. It reads, "Whereas, the increase of slaves in this Colony is in- jurious to the poor, and inconvenient," it was enacted that "no indian or molatto slave shall at any time hereafter be brought or imported into this Colony, by sea or land from any place whatsoever, to be disposed of left or sold within this
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