Connecticut as a colony and as a state; or, One of the original thirteen, Volume I, Part 13

Author: Morgan, Forrest, 1852- ed; Hart, Samuel, 1845-1917. joint ed. cn; Trumbull, Jonathan, 1844-1919, joint ed; Holmes, Frank R., joint ed; Bartlett, Ellen Strong, joint ed
Publication date: 1904
Publisher: Hartford, The Publishing Society of Connecticut
Number of Pages: 600


USA > Connecticut > Connecticut as a colony and as a state; or, One of the original thirteen, Volume I > Part 13


Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).


Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31


The foundation of the witchcraft laws was the Mosaic code, on which the Puritan colonies based their catalogue of capital crimes; both New Haven and Connecticut make the same citations, Ex. xxii : 18, Lev. xx :27, and Deut. xviii : 10, as authority. The first, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," was evidently regarded as binding as any other command- ment; why not the second, commanding the witch to be stoned to death, is one of the distinctions drawn by every age in theological matters as related to practice, for the med- itation of the outsider. But as their legislation was not to conflict with the English, there was a more direct precedent in the British statute of 1603, passed immediately after the accession of James I., and as a graceful compliment to his 'Demonology.' The Connecticut law of 1642 reads, "If any Man or Woman bee a Witch, that is, hath or consulteth with a Familiar Spirritt, they shall bee put to Death." The New Haven statute of 1655 is, "If any person be a Witch, he or she shall be put to death, according to" the list of Scripture texts above.


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The first capital case in Connecticut is always assigned to ( March) 1646-7, on the clear statement of Winthrop's Jour- nal of that year : "A Person of Windsor was put to Death on the Charge of Witchcraft at Hartford." This is, how- ever, a very perplexing matter. There is no entry of any such case on the records of the Hartford Particular Court, where all the witchcraft cases for the neighboring towns were tried, and where every other case is set down, nor in the local annals of Windsor or Hartford, though as the first case it must have been a great sensation in those little towns, and the next one was carefully written up. Nor is it at all cer- tain that the entry was made at that time: it is in a large blank space at the end of the year 1646, and may have been later information written in and misdated, especially as Winthrop seems not to have been told the victim's sex. On the other hand, he did not invent it outright, and if a mis- take it must be a confusion with some one else; but it can in that case be no one but Mary Johnson following, and to suppose that on hearing of the execution of a witch from Wethersfield a few weeks before his death (and there is a good probability she was not executed till long after it.), he turned back the leaves of his diary and miscopied it into a place two years earlier as one from Windsor, is so extra- ordinary an improbability that it would seem much easier to believe that the records are wrong. Yet though this seems a simple explanation, it is in this case so difficult to support that we are left in a blind alley. Local records may yet turn up and throw light on this case.


The first certain execution was that of Mary Johnson ("Jonson") of Wethersfield, at Hartford, in 1649 or 1650. On Dec. 7, 1648, a "Bill of Inditement" was framed against her, "that by her owne Confession, shee is guilty of Famil-


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iarity with the Deuill." She appears to have been an un- chaste and light-fingered servant-girl, who two years before had been whipped for "Theuery" (if it was the same Mary Johnson). Whom she had bewitched, or how, we have no statement (all we know is from Mather's 'Magnalia') ; but finding she was to be hanged in any event, she furnished a very satisfactory "confession," which if the "Deuill" is omitted is probable enough. She was discontented with her work, and perpetually wishing the Devil to take certain things, especially disagreeable household duties; one was cleaning out the ashes, and many thousands in the time of the great old-fashioned fireplace have probably echoed her as- piration. Satan obligingly complied with her wish, and on one occasion drove the hogs out of the yard when they had broken in. She also confessed that she had "committed un- cleanness both with men and with Devils," and murdered a child (quite likely her own). She was said to be "very Pen- itent." Servant-girls were more plentiful then than now, or the community would not have spared her, even for the lux- ury of an auto-da-fe. She was probably not hanged till the spring of 1650.


The petition of Uncas to the United Colonies of New England, in the winter of 1649-50, to protect him from the sorceries of other Indians, is hardly relevant to our subject. Connecticut was asked to appoint a committee to look into it, but seems not to have acted; and would have had a divert- ing time examining Indian deponents and passing sentence on Indian culprits, in re the question what was normal and what was abnormal in an Indian.


On Feb. 20, 1650-1, an indictment was found against a Wethersfield carpenter named John Carrington, and his wife "Joane," in common form, for having "Intertained ffamiliar-


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ity with Sathan, the Great Enemye of God and Mankinde," and accomplished wonderful works past human power by his aid. We note again that though convicted, they were not hanged till March 19, 1653. These long imprisonments suggest that the Connecticut magistrates were trying to do in- directly what the New Haven ones could do directly, and release the prisoners after public excitement had cooled down. Unfortunately they had not the same power. There is a reasonable possibility that they would have escaped, how- ever, but for the Bassett and Knapp cases, and that all four were hanged together in 1653, in a sudden exacerbation of feeling.


The next two cases seem to have been closely connected; the connection should be emphasized, because neglect of it has been made the basis of some virulent detraction of an important man. The earlier was of Goodwife Bassett, at Stratford, in 1651; the later of Goodwife Knapp, at Fair- field, in 1653. These two towns had a Particular Court in common, with joint magistrates sitting alternately in the two; that of Fairfield was its founder Roger Ludlow, one of the leading founders of Connecticut. All we know of Goody Bassett is that Governor Haynes and two Magistrates went down to "keepe Courte uppon her Tryall for her Life," after May 15, 1651. She was hanged; we cannot tell when, per- haps not till 1653. One of the efforts of the prosecutors and promoters of the prosecution at each trial was to have the witch name her fellow witches, so that all might be rooted out ; and the frantic victims, out of mental break-down or honest belief in the crime having been committed, vengeful- ness or mischief, would often involve others, so that it is re- markable this ninepin system had not brought on a holo- caust of murders long before the Salem times. It would seem


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that Goody Bassett had hinted at some one in Fairfield, without giving names, and suspicion vacillated between Goody Knapp and the young wife of one Thomas Staplies; at last it fixed or first fixed on the former, who was tried, convicted, and hanged-almost certainly early in 1653. Her case is the most painful in the entire Connecticut list, for she impresses one as the best woman: how the just and high- minded old lady had excited hate or suspicion, we cannot know.


The loss of the court record (carried off by Ludlow) de- prives us of any direct account of her indictment; the whole matter was brought out in a libel suit which followed. While Mrs. Knapp was in prison she was beset as usual, by the gos- sips of the town, to name her accomplices. They were espe- cially insistent with her to name Mrs. Staplies; their un- scrupulous pertinacity, according to their own testimony, was enough to have worn out the constancy and broken down the fibre of any one living, but was powerless, for a while at least, against her upright firmness and honor. They were especially insistent with her to name Mrs. Staplies, but she refused again and again, bearing her tormentors' nagging with Christian meekness and patience. She said she would not add to her condemnation by accusing another falsely; that even if Mrs. Staplies had wronged her in her testimony (probably a mistake), she would not render evil for evil; and at last burst into tears and asked her persecutor to pray for her, for never was any one so tempted as she had been- which did not soften the set narrow women around her by a shade. It is true, others swore that she wavered and incrimi- nated Mrs. Staplies next day; but if true, that would only show that she was breaking down under the torture, with a horde of women warning her to "take heede that the Deuill


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perswaded her not to sow malicious seed to doe hurt when she was dead." And let us bear in mind that she too believed in witchcraft, and on the appeals to her conscience, perhaps felt doubts if she were not doing wrong to hide anything she knew, as Mrs. Staplies might really be a witch.


At all events, unless Ludlow was a barefaced liar (which is a theory out of court), Mrs. Knapp had been beset and perplexed into telling him at the gallows (he having taken his own turn in harrying her on the way thither) that Mrs. Staplies was the one hinted at by Mrs. Bassett. He was on exceedingly bad terms with Mrs. Staplies; made a practice of accusing her of falsehood, and once told her to her face she "went on in a tract of lying." This could have been left as a matter of opinion ; but shortly afterward, Mr. and Mrs. Davenport of New Haven (the Rev. John ) spread abroad a private conversation of Ludlow with them at their home (defending themselves by saying they had not been asked to keep it secret, which Ludlow denied), in which he told them of this confession of Mrs. Knapp, and said Mrs. Staplies had laid herself under suspicion of being a witch by her skepti- cism of Mrs. Knapp being one. They professed to think the story mere malice on Mrs. Knapp's part (they did not know her), and accused Ludlow of trying to spread gossip; a rather impudent charge, as it was they and not he who were spreading the gossip that might bring to the gallows the very woman they professed to be defending. They stated in excuse that Ludlow told them Mrs. Knapp had been over- heard, and he was afraid others would spread it; but then they might not, and it was obvious Ludlow did not intend to. In fact, he said nothing worse than that she was a foolish woman for bringing suspicion on herself-in which her best friends might concur, though we respect her sense and out-


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spokenness. She seems from the record to have been an inquisitive and long-tongued but good-hearted and rational woman, with a sense of humor her townswomen sadly lacked, and which helps to account for their acrid hostility to her. It is not safe to laugh at people who can hang you. But the danger was too great for quiescence; and her husband brought suit for defamation-not against the Davenports who had circulated the defamation, but against Ludlow who had kept the worst part of it quiet. The counts were three, -the statement of the confession, statements as to her in- credulity of Goody Knapp being a witch, and calling her a liar.


Ludlow had for some weeks been preparing to leave Amer- ica for good (he spent his last years in Holyhead, Wales), had his ship engaged, and must have received the process but a few days before he went; he therefore left funds with his attorney, Ensign Alexander Bryan of Milford (New Haven colony), to satisfy any judgment, with directions to collect evidence and defend the case. Bryan collected an overwhelming mass to show that Ludlow only told matter of universal notoriety; then he went into court with it May 29 -but curiously, this suit of one Connecticut citizen against another was not brought in the Fairfield court, but before the New Haven General Court, which had no jurisdiction over Fairfield and would not have been allowed to meddle of its own motion. The only explanation yet attempted is worse than worthless, being a false statement-that Ludlow was a "refugee" in New Haven. I can suggest but one ex- planation : that Ludlow, having expressly or virtually re- signed his Connecticut citizenship, was a citizen of nowhere but England in general when the process was served; that there was therefore free choice of jurisdiction between the


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parties, and that the two agreed on New Haven as being fairer for the plaintiff than the Fairfield Particular Court, of which Ludlow had just left the judgeship, or the Hartford, Ludlow having been so prominent a magistrate. In a word, it was chosen on the basis of an umpire. That court, how- ever, took the question to be not whether Ludlow told the truth, but whether Mrs. Staplies had been brought into un- fair danger; and on the latter ground fined Ludlow in ab- sence £10 for defamation on the first two counts, besides £ 5 for costs of court, and the next term fined him another £10 for accusing her of lying, which was not related to the Da- venport story.


Part of the testimony brought out, in addition to what has been stated, throws an interesting light on the public state of mind. It seems Mrs. Staplies made an opportunity to strip and examine the old woman's body after her execution, to look for the "witch teats" which were one pretext for such killings, and by which the Devil was supposed to suck his fa- miliars. Having done so, she contemptuously told the others there were no teats other than she herself or any other wom- an had, and if those were witch marks she was one herself ; and that if the accusing gossips would search their persons they would find the same-a remark which greatly incensed her auditors. The highly feminine reply of one woman, that it made no difference,-she had teats anyway, and confessed she was a witch,-would be delicious if it were not so grim a specimen of the reasoning on which a human life could hang in those days.


This recital shows the gross unfairness of the charges brought against Ludlow in connection with the case. There is no evidence that he bore any part in fastening the charge on Mrs. Knapp; it was the crowd of female gossips around


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Goody Bassett who must have done that. Nor is there any that he was trying to punish Mrs. Staplies for skepticism over the case : his all-powerful word would have haled her to the same court and quite likely the same gallows as Goody Knapp, but he withheld it, and it was her alleged friends who came near doing her that service instead. We do not even know that his quarrel with her was related to the Knapp case. There is equally little basis for the assumption that the New Haven court was acting out of spite to Ludlow : he must have chosen or agreed to that court himself, and it distinctly stated that it refrained from severe judgment in his absence.


Five persons, and perhaps six, had lost their lives for witchcraft in six years at most, and it may be four of them close together. Possibly people began to have a revulsion of feeling at the deaths coming so quickly, and to scan the evidence more closely. At any rate, no further executions took place for nine years; then there was a frenzy of suspi- cion and several deaths, the last known in Connecticut. Mean- time there are cases which show that common-sense was not wholly dead, and whose grotesqueness we can freely enjoy.


In 1653, immediately after the Knapp-Staplies affairs,- and very likely as part of the same ferment,-an old woman named Elizabeth Godman, then living in the family of Deputy-Governor Stephen Goodyear of New Haven, was currently charged with being a witch. She was a peppery person with an active tongue, and aggressive in her self-defenses; the other women hated and dreaded her; she muttered a good deal to herself; and she was much too ready with rational explanations of the evil eye and other sorceries. Moreover, she told Rev. Mr. Hooke, teacher of the church and afterwards Cromwell's chaplain, that witches should be converted instead of provoked; that gentleman


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thereafter lent ear to the most extraordinary mass of rubbish concerning her actions, to which in due time he deposed in court. Finally the wife of the colonial treasurer, Joshua Atwater, was much disturbed at Mrs. Godman's supernat- ural scent for some figs in her pocket; and when a neigh- bor's girl, after watching her "cutt a sopp" at Mrs. Atwa- ter's house, had chills and fever and laid it to Mrs. God- man's sorceries, the latter was forbidden the Atwater house. Mrs. Godman saw the bolt coming, and with admirable nerve summoned Mrs. Atwater, Hooke and his wife, the Goodyears, the wife of Bishop the colonial secretary, and others, to answer for having hinted at her being a witch. The case was first heard May 21, 1653, but continued many weeks with hearings and depositions, new discoveries of her sorceries, and (more alarming still) her jeers at the witch- craft solution of all sorts of personal and social evils. She had suggested that Hooke's sick boy had done too much slid- ing, and accounted for the fits and stillbirths of a Goodyear bride (whose husband she was suspected of wanting herself, old as she was) by heredity. Two girls had "peeked" at her in bed and seen the Devil there, they were sure, but had been scared away by the old woman before they had a good look at him; and one of them had the ague some days after. Goody Thorpe had a chicken die and others "drope" after refusing to sell them to Mrs. Godman. Finally, on August 4 the court gave judgment that the defendants had a right to suspect her, and that she was reputed a great liar; that she must not go about to other houses "in a rayling manner," as heretofore, but "keepe her place and medle with her own business," otherwise she would come before them again and all this evidence would count. Unluckily, she did not heed this admonition, and two years later she was up again. She


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certainly had the art of making herself well hated, and New Haven felt that it had too much of her. Mr. Goodyear had turned her out, the prayer meeting had barred her out, and the neighbors had had deplorable experiences with their pro- ducts and animals, all laid on her head. She was sent to pris- on in August, to be capitally tried in October; her health be- ing bad, however, she was released with a warning in Sep- tember. Then there was more unaccountable work of the Evil One, Mr. Hooke being the chief sufferer; it seems for- tunate this person was in New Haven and not Connecticut, or Salem might have been outdone in the tale of slaughter. The court in October decided, however, that though she was "full of lying," and it was a pretty clear case so far as suspi- cion went, there was not evidence enough yet to put her to death, and she was let off with the old warning not to go about making enemies for herself. She gave £50 security for good behavior, and disappears till her death in 1660.


Just before her second committal, on July 3, 1655, Nicho- las Bayly and his wife were apprehended on suspicion, but were told that they would not be proceeded against just now ; after several examinations they were advised to leave the colony on account of the wife's "lying malice and filthy speeches," she acting as if "possessed with the verey Devill."


In 1657 New Haven had another equally plain case. This was a charge by Thomas Moulenor that William Meaker had bewitched his pigs, several of which had sickened and died; he discovered Meaker's agency by putting first the sev- ered tail and ear of a sick pig into the fire, and then the re- mainder "till it was dead." Meaker brought suit for defa- mation; it is significant of the confidence felt in the justice and moderation of the magistrates, that in New Haven the accused took the aggressive. Moulenor was a "tough subject."


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drunken, quarrelsome, litigious, and insubordinate; he had been under £100 bonds for good behavior the last twelve years, and the court called his attention to this and informed him that the colony would be better off without than with him. He withdrew his charge.


In 1657-8 a case came to Connecticut from beyond its re- cent Long Island possessions : at Easthampton, where Lion Gardener lived. One of his servants accused another, Good- wife Garlicke, of killing her baby by sorcery; Gardener testi- fied that the accuser had taken an Indian baby to nurse, and to gain the money had let her own baby starve. The magis- trates, however, seem to have been rather proud of their first sorcery case, and felt it incumbent on them to treat de- monology with more respect; and not being competent judges, deputed two men to take Mrs. Garlicke to "Keniti- cut," deliver her up to the authorities for trial, and ask to have Easthampton annexed to Connecticut. The May term 1658 acquitted her, and sent her back with a letter from Gov- ernor Winthrop to the town, admonishing them to treat Jos. Garlicke and his wife "neighbourly and peaceably," if they expected like treatment from them. Nevertheless, by some abstruse reasoning they made her husband pay the cost of her transportation and lodging.


From 1659 to 1663 Saybrook took its turn, but there is little to learn about the case. In the former year Samuel Wyllys and John Mason were deputed to go there and ex- amine the "suspitions about witchery"; but no further rec- ord appears till Sept. 5, 1661, when Nicholas and Margaret Jennings were indicted for "having caused the death of sev- eral." This is much the worst indictment drawn against any Connecticut witches, and would naturally have given them short shrift; especially if (as pretty certain) they are the


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"Nicholas Gennings" and "Margarett Poore, alias Bed- forde," who were brought before the New Haven General Court in 1643 as runaway servants, guilty of lewdness, theft, and other misdemeanors, and were sentenced to be whipped and married. But perhaps the very atrocity of the charge made the jury skeptical; anyway, on Oct. 9 it disagreed. The case would seem to have been sharply debated outside the record; for on March 11, 1663, the Connecticut General Court disallowed the Saybrook constables' charges for wit- nesses in the case, and announced that they would pay no such charges in the future.


The cases of 1662 were Connecticut's nearest approach to the Salem cases of thirty years later, and originated in much the same fashion : here there were two different and possibly unconnected cases of hysterical suggestion, but not falling on ground quite so well prepared, nor stimulated by such en- couragements to falsehood, so that it did not approach the magnitude of that terrible devastation. Seven persons were indicted, of whom two were certainly executed and probably a third. The fire and tow respectively were nervous people fed upon tales of witchcraft and the knowledge of the executions for it at their own doors, and social pariahs a sub- ject of mingled dislike and apprehension to their neigh- bors. It began with the eight-year-old girl of John Kelly, who in the delirium of sickness, in the spring of 1662, cried out against Mrs. William Ayres (whom she had of course been taught to shun) for afflicting her; she died, and an au- topsy was held to see if her interior gave any token of illegiti- mate causes. Goody Ayres foreboded it as a death-warrant (which was made extra ground of suspicion), and effecting her escape, fled with her husband, leaving behind a son, who was apprenticed by the General Court. It is probable that the


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water ordeal had previously been tried on them-tying hand and foot and throwing them in to swim; it certainly had on one couple. Increase Mather says that a bystander (who had the instincts of a man of science) asserted that floating was no proof, because any one would float in that condition ; and offered himself for an experiment, but sank when thrown in. In the flurry of suspicion, others were apprehended also : among them Judith, wife of Caspar Varleth and sister-in-law of Peter Stuyvesant, who wrote a letter in her favor and probably secured her release, and one James Walkley, who fled to Rhode Island. On June 13, Mary the wife of An- drew Sanford was indicted after the usual formula, for hav- ing done acts and learned secrets beyond the ordinary course of nature by Satan's help. She was convicted, but nothing more is known of her.


The next step in the tragedy is very like the Salem per- formances also. Ann Cole was a religious melancholiac, tor- mented with doubts about her religious welfare; and in 1662 began to take fits in which she maundered for some hours about a company of evil spirits taking counsel how to ruin her (with supernatural witlessness, in the hearing of their victim), and concluding to "confound her language that she may tell no more tales." They did it so clumsily that she merely talked in a Dutch brogue : she was not intimate with the only Dutch family there, and her hearers ( she always had her fits before hearers ) were convinced that only supernatural means could have given her so good a Dutch accent. The fits were contagious, and she and two other women had them in church several times, doubtless without consciousness that they were the most interesting objects there. A special day of prayer was held for them, and they rose to the occasion so vigorously that one of the company fainted at the sight ; and




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