USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Andover > Andover: symbol of New England; the evolution of a town > Part 7
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Chubb must have acquired some military experience, for in February, 1696, he was placed in command of the newly con- structed Fort William Henry, at Pemaquid, on the coast of Maine. With fifteen cannon, a well-stocked powder magazine, and a garrison of ninety-five soldiers, it was one of the strongest fortifications on the Atlantic seaboard. In the early spring the fort was visited by Egeremet, chief of the Machias Indians, Abenquid, a Sagamore of the Norridgewocks, and Toxus, chief of the same tribe, together with several other Indian leaders who hoped to negotiate for an exchange of prisoners. While the dis- cussion was being carried on and the unsuspicious red men were imbibing the white man's "firewater," Chubb and some of his companions fell upon them and murdered in cold blood Egere- met and Abenquid, with two of their attendants. Toxus and a few others escaped, but several natives were detained as hos- tages. One such captive was later found in irons in a dungeon in the fort. Chubb's conduct was described by Hutchinson as "a horrible piece of villainy," and even the most ruthless Puritans were shocked by the massacre.
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On July 14. Iberville, commanding three ships of war and supported by nearly three hundred Abenaki Indians led by the Baron St. Castin, appeared off Pemaquid and summoned Chubb to surrender. The latter, in an outburst of pompous declama- tion, replied that "if the sea were covered with French vessels. and the land with Indians, yet he would not give up the fort." On the following morning Iberville landed with two mortars and two other heavy guns. Then Castin conveyed a message to Chubb and his garrison notifying them that if they delayed sur- rendering until an assault was made, they could expect no quar- ter from the bloodthirsty savages, eager to avenge their slain leaders. Chubb, who had been so valiant in words, now hastily hoisted the white flag and was allowed to march out with his men unharmed.
The legend is that St. Castin's Indian allies were so incensed by this arrangement that the only way of saving the garrison from a wholesale slaughter was by removing the red men to a nearby island under a constant guard of French troops until plans could be carried out for transporting Chubb and his men back to Boston. The surrender of Pemaquid has been described as "a crowning triumph for the French." Once back in New Eng- land, Chubb was promptly thrown into prison, and was univer- sally condemned for his cowardice. On November 18, 1696, he petitioned the General Court either to be brought to trial or to be released on bail. Evidently friends intervened in his behalf, and he and his wife settled in Andover, near her family, the Faulkners. They must have been somewhat disturbing members of a community just recovering from the witchcraft delusion.
The story has the neat and inevitable conclusion of a Greek tragedy, in which Character is Destiny. On March 4, 1698, a large band of Indians, led by Assacumbuit, one of their most energetic and daring chieftains, made a carefully planned attack on Andover. Because the winter had been one of the most se- vere within the memory of living inhabitants, the invasion was
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apparently unexpected. Judge Samuel Sewall in his Diary gives a short contemporaneous account of what happened:
At break of day Andover is surprised. Lt. Col. Bradstreet's house rifled, his kinsman slain, Captain Chubb and his wife slain and three more. Some houses and barns burnt and in one a considerable quan- tity of corn and twenty head of Cattel. Pulpit cushions taken away, fired but not quenched.
Despite Governor Hutchinson's contrary view, it seems prob- able that these Indians were seeking revenge on the officer who had so treacherously betrayed their leaders. This opinion is con- firmed by the fact that although the savages went through Brad- street's house and carried off some members of his family, they quickly released them, on finding out who they were, and sent them back unharmed. Slightly different versions of the affair are given by Cotton Mather, Judge Sewall, and the Reverend John Pike, but the most significant item, the killing of Chubb and his wife, is reported by all three.
Attempts to whitewash Chubb on the ground that, in surren- dering the Pemaquid fort, he was ensuring the safety of the women and children within its walls, cannot obscure his earlier treachery to the Indian leaders who had come to him in good faith. He has gone down in history as an unmitigated rascal who met his just deserts. For his sins he paid what can only be re- garded as a fitting penalty. But it was rather hard on Mrs. Chubb!
In this same Indian attack the town suffered a disaster which, from the viewpoint of the historian, is more lamentable than the death of the knave whom Cotton Mather called contemptuously "Pemaquid Chubb." Many of the town records were burned or destroyed by the marauders, and it is likely that much val- uable material on the early days of the town then and there disappeared.
The attack of 1698 was the last, as well as the most severe, in Andover history. The danger was far from being over, and the
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residents did not dare for many years to abandon completely their guard. The local militia were furnished with snowshoes during the winter season. Two blockhouses were erected on the Merrimack River. Stores of ammunition were always kept in readiness. But never again was a citizen slain by an Indian with- in the limits of the town.
It is easy, years afterward, to sit at a typewriter and record the facts as they are known. It is less easy to reproduce the mood of the Andover community, the whispered fears, the vague gos- sip around the fireside, the rumors of disaster along the frontier, the alarm whenever a child was for a moment missing, the terror when a redskin appeared on a peaceful trading mission. These were all part of the picture. To the Andoverian during haying season trouble was in the air. Doubtless the built-up apprehen- sions of several haunted years were partly responsible for the witchcraft hysteria of the 1690's.
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CHAPTER VIII
The Great Andover Witch Hunt
D URING the spring and summer of 1692, at a moment when Andover people were still much concerned over possible attacks by hostile savages, they were harassed from another quar- ter by enemies both more insidious and more dangerous. In the words of Marion L. Starkey, the Devil took over Andover, and the village was paralyzed with terror. The story of how a neu- rotic, irresponsible group of children corrupted a supposedly mature and religious society is the saddest chapter in the annals of the town. For a few weeks the community was permeated, even dominated, by suspicion. At the crisis of the delusion, the worst and the best, the old and the young, might at any hour be charged with witchcraft and convicted on the most preposterous evidence. Nobody could tell who would be the next victim. If we believe the sworn testimony, warlocks and witches rode the air on broomsticks; strange apparitions desecrated marshes and meadows; unholy rites of baptism and dedication were cele- brated; innocent men and women were marked and plagued with degrading symbols. Indeed all hell broke loose, and hate, with its twin emotion, fear, seized and held possession of even the most pious churchgoers. It was as if something morbid and repressed had been suddenly released to run its devastating course.
Even now, considerably more than two centuries and a half later, the subject is very much alive. An article in the New Eng- land Quarterly for December, 1955, by David Levin, opens, "In the last six years American publishers have issued one history, an anthology of trial documents, two novels, and two plays about
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the Salem witchcraft trials." Tourists nowadays visit Salem ex- pecting to be shown where witches were "burned"-and go away rather disappointed.
Not even Miss Starkey, who in The Devil in Massachusetts (1949) has examined the evidence with the perceptive honesty of a scholar, has been able to explain what made intelligent adults believe such absurdities. Modern psychiatry is aware that undisciplined girls, under encouragement, often resort to exhi- bitionism; but it is less easy to comprehend how "grownups" could be deceived by such antics. Behind the charges brought against such respectable citizens as Dudley Bradstreet or John Alden may have been some hidden envy or hatred; and it may well be that the Reverend Francis Dane, although a sainted fig- ure to many, had enemies who were plotting his ruin. Further- more, the agitation must be viewed against the background of a community highly sensitive because of the constant threat of In- dian forays. But much of the panic was a form of mob spirit defy- ing analysis. The conception of the Devil as an active power for evil; the literal interpretation of the Bible with its clear injunc- tion, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live"; the gossipy folklore of the seventeenth century; the prevalence of superstition among the ignorant; what Cotton Mather called "The Wonders of the Invisible World"-all these contributed to the panic.
Starting slowly with what seemed trivial and innocuous inci- dents, the sociological drama moved steadily towards its cli- maxes and catastrophes. It had its meanness and grandeur, its sufferings and its humor, its cowardice and its stoicism. Although it exposed some of the vilest elements in human nature, it also revealed amazing qualities of dignity and courage. It should have had lessons for posterity, lessons which were not fully learned. The heresy trials of the 1880's at Andover Theological Seminary were suspiciously like belated witch hunts. And even in the 1950's reputable men were being condemned on hearsay testimony, on unfounded but reiterated accusations. Perhaps we should not expect too much from our ancestors in 1692.
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THE GREAT ANDOVER WITCH HUNT
Fortunately we have detailed contemporary accounts which enable the historian to recreate the scene and help the psychia- trist to analyze the abnormal. Although we have no portraits of Martha Carrier and Abigail Faulkner and Samuel Wardwell, we do know how they behaved. Many of the dramatic incidents were reported by competent witnesses, some gullible and some skeptical; and the Works Progress Administration in 1938 com- pleted a compilation in typescript of the various court proceed- ings bearing on the subject and scattered about the Common- wealth. The classic investigation of the subject was made by Charles W. Upham, in his two-volume Salem Witchcraft, pub- lished in 1867 but still authoritative. Miss Starkey's book, al- ready mentioned, is the latest and best of recent studies of the affair. I shall discuss it only as it concerns Andover, although in- troductory explanation will be required to set the stage.
The witchcraft delusion is still associated with Salem, a city which had little to do with the course of events except to provide the town hall where some of the trials took place and the gallows where a few of the victims were executed. What is popularly known as the Salem Witchcraft originated in a small community which had been set apart in 1672 as Salem Village Parish but be- came Danvers in 1752. Moreover, the average reader of history does not realize to what extent Andover was implicated and what damage was caused to its citizens. Indeed in some respects the consequences of the hysteria at Andover were even more in- credible than they were at Salem Village.
Belief in demonology was part of the Puritan creed. Accord- ing to William F. Poole, twelve persons were executed for witch- craft in New England before 1692. George L. Burr, in the in- troduction to his Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases, reminds us, "These narratives of witchcraft are no fairy tales. Weird though they seem to us, they were to thousands of men and women in seventeenth-century America the intensest of realities." Witch panics had previously occurred in England, where the latest exe- cution for witchcraft had taken place only ten years before. In-
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crease Mather, in his Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Provi- dences (1684), describes various persons who had been "vext by evil spirits" and relates with some gusto the notorious case of the "Maid of Groton" (Elizabeth Knapp), who in 1671 "was taken after a very strange manner, sometimes weeping, sometimes laughing, sometimes roaring hideously, with violent motions and agitations of her body." All this, however, was negligible when compared with what was to come.
The trouble started in February, 1692, a gloomy time in the New England calendar, when a group of what we should now call "teenagers" in Salem Village, headed by an eleven-year-old "show-off," Abigail Williams, and abetted to some extent by an ignorant Negro servant, Tituba, displayed symptoms of epilepsy and declared themselves "bewitched." No Girl Scouts then ex- isted to give them a healthful physical outlet for their emotional disturbances. At this point a good sound parental thrashing might have been efficacious and perhaps would have prevented many later legal murders. Instead, the local physician, Dr. Griggs, unable to make a satisfactory medical diagnosis, declared that the evil hand was upon them; and the local clergyman, the Reverend Samuel Parris, whose nine-year-old daughter was one of the girls involved, took seriously their wild convulsions and wailings and declared a day of public fasting and prayer. Thus the two leaders who should have used their calming influence to check these absurdities actually added fuel to the flames; and, as one writer has said, "Ignorance placed the seal of doom upon the village."
Pressed as to the cause of their antics, the girls accused certain women of the neighborhood as being responsible. Of course there were skeptics, but the contagion spread so fast that they were afraid to lift their voices. Formal charges were preferred, investigations were conducted, and three persons were consigned to Ipswich prison, entirely on evidence supplied by these mis- guided girls.
As spring moved along and the dazzling success of their meth-
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ods was apparent, the girls grew more and more daring and spe- cific in their denunciations. Ann Putnam, twelve-year-old daugh- ter of the eminently respectable Sergeant Thomas Putnam, was perhaps the most audacious and, as it turned out, the most dan- gerous. Some persons of spotless reputation, like the septagenari- an, Rebecca Nurse, were haled before the magistrates, and the jail was soon crowded with victims awaiting trial. Many of them, weary and bewildered, made "confessions," which they later re- pudiated but which were naturally confusing. The apprehen- sion of each new "witch" stimulated the girls in their sadistic pastime.
As the tension rose, malignant influences, now difficult to trace, began to operate. In the excitement half-forgotten quar- rels were remembered and petty spites revived. Older people with grudges undoubtedly put ideas into the susceptible child- ish heads. The inquisitors employed "brainwashing" techniques, using the power of reiterated suggestion to evoke confessions. Even worse, the magistrates accepted as a premise the assumption that the Devil cannot take on the shape of an innocent person; and on this basis the accuser's hallucination was taken as ipso facto proof of the guilt of the accused. This shocking doctrine of "spectral evidence" was early questioned by such theologians as Cotton Mather and later abandoned, but not until it had been the deciding factor in the conviction of more than one suspect.
What was happening at Salem Village was cause for scandal throughout the colony, and the news spread rapidly. Other town- ships, however, avoided the infection-all except Andover! The first sensational figure in the Andover picture was a woman named Martha Allen, daughter of Andrew Allen, one of the town's earliest freeholders. She had married Thomas Carrier and moved to Billerica. About 1690, however, the Carriers de- cided to return to Andover with their children and made their home with Martha's mother, the "Widdow" Allen, in the south end of the township. Martha could not have been very old, for she had a child, Hannah, born in 1689.
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For some reason Martha was not popular. Possibly the An- dover proprietors simply did not wish to have any more settlers occupying or claiming the lands under their control. More prob- ably the woman was a sharp-tongued, contentious female who quarreled with her neighbors, like others of her sex in the pages of Edith Wharton and Robert Frost. At any rate, she was for- mally "warned out" of the village, in accordance with the New England practice; and when it was noised about that the "Wid- dow" Allen had taken into her household members of her fami- ly suffering from "that contagious disease, the small pox," the local constable was ordered to instruct the ill persons that they must not go near any house or public meeting until they were recovered.
Martha's new south end neighbors complained that she had threatened several of them with disaster; and on May 28, 1692, while the agitation in Salem Village was raging, she was arrested in Andover on complaint of Joseph Houlton and John Walcott, of Salem, and escorted by John Ballard, the constable, to Salem Village for examination. What part Houlton and Walcott played in bringing about the arrest is obscure, for neither one appeared later in the records of the trial. Three days later Martha was brought into the church and confronted with five girls, who promptly "fell into the most intolerable cries and agonies" as soon as she looked at them.
Mrs. Carrier's bearing was defiant, and she never ceased to assert her innocence. Indeed at one point she turned desperately upon the magistrates, exclaiming, "It is false; and it is a shame for you to mind what these say that are out of their wits." But the girls continued to writhe on the floor and roll their eyes and utter outlandish sounds, and their antics were so convincing that Martha Carrier was led off to jail again, handcuffed and fettered, to await further trial. With her were placed her sons and little daughter, who had presumably been contaminated. She was no "arrant hag," as the Reverend Cotton Mather described her, but a relatively young woman. Again and again, as the weeks
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THE GREAT ANDOVER WITCH HUNT
went by, she was to receive the dubious honor of being men- tioned as "Queen of Hell."
While Martha Carrier lay in prison, events in Salem Village were reaching a crisis. On June 10, Bridget Bishop, a somewhat flamboyant local "character" who kept an inn for the entertain- ment of lighthearted roisterers, was convicted. Cotton Mather remarked naïvely at the time, "There was little occasion to prove the witchcraft, this being evident." Bridget had been prosecuted under Section 2 of the Laws and Liberties passed in 1648, read- ing as follows: "If any man or woman be a witch, that is, hath consulted with a familiar spirit, they shall be put to death." The General Court sustained the sentence and on June 10, two days after her conviction, Bridget was hanged from the branches of a spreading oak on Gallows Hill in Salem.
Bridget Bishop was the first Salem Village "witch" to pay for her crime with her life. On July 19, however, followed a group hanging of five other women who had been pronounced guilty. Among these was Rebecca Nurse, a truly noble personality whose tragic fate is now commemorated by a granite shaft erected in 1885 in the village in which she was condemned. On it are carved Whittier's lines:
Oh! Christian martyr! who for truth could die, When all about them owned the hideous lie, The world redeemed by Superstition's sway Is breathing freer for thy sake today.
In early August, Martha Carrier was at last brought up for trial, under conditions which made her acquittal impossible. Her two sons had been tied "neck and heel till the blood was ready to come of their noses," and only under this torture were willing to testify against their mother. Her seven-year-old daughter was asked, "What made you a witch?" Unaware of the inferences to be drawn from her reply, she answered, "My mother. She made me set my hand to a book." Under further interrogation the child confessed that she had seen a cat, who said that it would
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tear her to pieces if she did not sign the book. "How did you know that the cat was your mother?" was asked, and back came the words, "Because the cat told me so!"
Throughout these humiliations Martha Carrier still stoutly maintained her innocence, even with the accumulated evidence against her. The scene as she faced her accusers would make a fine theme for a painting by Grant Wood-the ostentatiously incorruptible magistrates, the highly emotional girls, the trem- bling children, the spectators who had come to watch and listen and wonder, and in the center the victim, like a modern Joan of Arc, puzzled yet undaunted. She was condemned, almost as a a matter of course, and hanged, August 16, 1692, along with four men, one of whom was a former minister of Salem Village, the Reverend George Burroughs. Of all these martyrs, Martha Carrier stands out as the most heroic. She was the only one who never under any circumstances broke down and made a confes- sion. Even on the scaffold she remained calm and unafraid.
While Martha Carrier was lying in her cell, an Andover resi- dent named Joseph Ballard, son of William Ballard, one of the original proprietors, was much troubled by his wife's mysteri- ous and persistent illness, and knowing of the charges against "Goody" Carrier, resolved to find out whether witchcraft had anything to do with her ailment. He appealed, therefore, to Sa- lem Village; and soon there rode out on horseback to Andover not only Ann Putnam, now notorious as a discoverer and expos- er of witches, but also her sixteen-year-old accomplice, Mary Walcott, daughter of a church deacon. These brisk young ladies, as might have been predicted, brought with them little but trouble. It now seems probable that some malicious person must have given these girls some advance information regarding the Andover community.
The two were received with respect, as if they had been emi- nent specialists or missionaries of the church, and were escorted not only into the Ballard home in the south end but also into a score of other sickrooms. In each of these they went through
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their repertoire of frenzied acts, barking like dogs, mewing like cats, and wriggling in fantastic contortions. When they were brought into an afflicted house, various blindfolded people, some of them already labeled as suspects, were led up one by one to touch them. If Ann or Mary then drew a sobbing breath and relaxed her convulsions, it was then assumed that a witch had been made to call off her devils and that the one who had done the touching was therefore guilty. As thus described, the procedure seems preposterous, but most of those present regard- ed it as an infallible test. Some local residents must, of course, have taken the leadership in authorizing such a program, but it is now impossible to ascertain who assumed the responsibility. Whoever it was, he or she is not named in the records.
The consequences of this visitation were extraordinary. The previous residents under suspicion in both Salem Village and Andover had been definitely "queer" or "half-witted," or anti- social, like Martha Carrier. Every New England village has a few forlorn souls on the fringe of society who for one reason or another are not popular. Now, however, the two girls from an- other township were accusing not only outcasts and disrepu- tables but also some of the most respected citizens. Before this "epidemic of audacity" was over at least forty members of the community were under arrest-one out of every twelve or fif- teen, almost a decimation.
As the full scope of the charges was disclosed, Justice Dudley Bradstreet refused to sign any more warrants, on the ground that the evidence was insufficient. Bradstreet was the town's foremost citizen, and at the moment was its representative in the General Court. But when he attempted to curb the hysteria, the extrem- ists took over, and he was himself denounced. Alone, he could doubtless have endured the ignominy, but when his wife was also named as a suspect, he and she packed up and left until the excitement died down. For a few weeks the worst elements in the Andover township gained control. Conditions were much like those under the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution. No-
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body, even with the most spotless reputation or the surest social standing, could feel himself or herself safe. During those fateful weeks the town went wild, and the most absurd tales passed un- challenged from one home to another.
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