USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Municipal history of Essex County in Massachusetts, Volume II > Part 54
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Susanna Martin, of Amesbury, arrested on May 2, was tried in the higher court in July, and executed on the 19th. She had been tried for witchcraft in 1669.
Mary Easty, wife of Isaac Easty, of Topsfield, lived on what is now known as the Pierce farm. She was fifty-eight years of age. Arrested on April 22, she was examined and committed, May 18, but was dis- charged and rearrested on the 21st, tried before the higher court in Sep- tember, and hanged on the 22d of that month; Sarah Cloyes, convicted and sentenced with her, was never executed. Alice Parker of Salem, Wilmot Reed of Marblehead, Margart Scott of Rowley, Mary Parker of Andover, and Ann Pudeator of Salem, were tried in September, and ex- ecuted on the 22d. The warrant for Mary Parker's arrest was not issued until September 1st.
Sarah Wildes of Topsfield, wife of John Wildes, was arrested April 22, tried June 29, and hanged July 19. Samuel Wardwell, of Andover, was examined September 1, and denied being a witch. On the 13th he made a confession, and his wife and daughter testified against him to save their own lives. Wardwell then retracted his confession, was con- victed, sentenced, and on September 22, hanged.
The court took a recess until November 2. Nineteen persons had been convicted and hanged; Sarah Osborn and Ann Foster had been convicted, but died in prison. And Giles Corey had been pressed to death. A law having been passed creating new courts, the commissioner of oyer and terminer ceased to exist, and most of the judges were ap- pointed to the new court. Trials were resumed in Salem the following January. Fifty indictments for witchcraft were found, twenty odd of them tried, and Mary Post of Rowley, Elizabeth Johnson and Sarah Wardwell of Andover convicted; they were never executed. Trials con- tinued some months, the last at Ipswich in May, but no more convic- tions could be secured.
The following is a list of persons under suspicion of witchcraft: Executed, June 10, Bridget Bishop; July 19, Sarah Goode, Sarah Wildes, Elizabeth How, Susanna Martin and Rebecca Nurse; August 19, George Burroughs, John Proctor, George Jacobs, Sr., John Willard and Martha Carrier; September 22, Martha Corey, Mary Easty, Alice Parker, Ann Pudeator, Margaret Scott, Wilmott Reed, Samuel Wardwell and Mary Parker; September 19, Giles Corey pressed to death. Condemned, but not executed: At the third session of the court in August, Elizabeth Proctor; the fourth session, Dorcas Hoar; fifth session, Abigail Faulk-
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ner, Rebecca Eames, Mary Lacey, Ann Foster, and Abigail Hobbs; at the January session of the new court in 1693, Mary Post, Sarah Wardwell and Elizabeth Johnson. Below will be found a partial list of persons accused, whether convicted or not:
Andover-Nehemiah Abbott, Sarah Bridges, Abigail Barker, William Barker, William Barker, Jr., Mary Barker, John Bradstreet, Mrs. Ebenezer Baker, William Barry, Martha Carrier, Richard Carrier, Sarah Dane, Deliverance Dane, Mrs. Nathan Dane, Abigail Faulkner, Ann Foster, Eunice Frye, - Harrington, Stephen John- son, John Saundry, Mary Lacey, Mary Marston, Mary Osgood, Mary Parker, Han- nah Tyler, Martha Tyler, Joanna Tyler, Hope Tyler, Samuel Wardwell, Sarah Wil- son, Sarah Wilson, Jr., Mary Wardwell .. Amesbury-Susanna Martin. Beverly- Dorcas Hoar, Rebecca Johnson, Sarah Merrill, Sarah Morey, Susanna Roote, Sarah Riste, Job Turkey and John Wright. Boxford-Rebecca Eames and Robert Eames. Boston-John Alden and John Flood. Billerica-Goodman Abbot, M. Andrews, Mary Toothaker, Jasen Toothaker, Roger Toothaker. Chelmsford-Martha Sparks. Charlestown-Elizabeth Carey, Elizabeth Payne. Gloucester-Mary Coffin, Ann Dolliver, Martha Prince and Abigail Somes. Haverhill-Mary Green, Mrs. Frances Hutchinson. Lynn-Sarah Bassett, Sarah Cole, Mary Derick, Mary Derrill, Thomas Farrer, Elizabeth Hart, Mary Ireson and Mary Rich. Malden-Elizabeth Fosdick. Marblehead-Wilmot Reed. Reading-Elizabeth Couslon, Sarah Dustin, Lydia Dustin and Sarah Rice. Rowley-Mary Post, and Margaret Scott. Salem-Candy (an Indian slave), Phillip English, Mary English, Thomas Hardy, Alice Parker, Sarah Pease, Ann Pudeator, Mary de Riels and Mrs. White. Salem Village and Farms-Daniel Andrews, Edward Bishop, Bridget Bishop, Sarah Bishop, Mary Black, John Buckston, Sarah Bibber, Sarah Buckley, Sarah Cloyse, Martha Corey, Giles Corey, Sarah Goode, Dorothy Goode, John Indian, George Jacobs, Sr., George Jacobs, Jr., Margaret Jacobs, Martha Jacobs, Rebecca Jacobs, Rebecca Nurse, John Proctor, Elizabeth Proctor, Benjamin Proctor, William Proctor, Tituba, Mary Warren, Mary Whittridge and John Willard. Salisbury-Mary P. Bradbury. Tops- field-Nehemiah Abbott, Jr., Mary Easty, Abigail Hobbs, Deliverance Hobbs, Eliz- abeth How, James How, and Sarah Wildes. Wells, Maine-George Burroughs. Walburn-Bertha Carter. Residence unknown-Rachel Clinton, Sarah Osburn, and Ann Foster were convicted and sentenced but died in prison.
The judges who presided at these trials before jurors were especially appointed as a commission of Oyer and Terminer, owing to the crowded condition of the jails. They were at first, William Stoughton of Boston, Nathaniel Saltonstall of Haverhill, Major Bartholomew Godroy, John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin of Salem, (the two last named having issued most of the warrants for arrest) ; Major John Richards, Wait Winthrop, Peter Sargent and Samuel Small of Boston. Saltonstall sat with the court but a short time and then resigned, "because he was very much dissatisfied with the proceedings of it." Stoughton presided as chief-justice. Preliminary examinations for the purpose of issuing war- rants for the arrest of accused persons were held in the two churches in Salem and Salem Village, in the residence of the minister in Salem Vil- lage, in Ingersoll's Tavern at the village, and Beadle's Tavern in Salem. Most of the final trials before juries were held in the court house on what is now Washington street, Salem, opposite the Masonic Temple. Some persons are thought to have been tried in the church.
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After conviction and sentence, the victims were taken to the top of Gallows Hill and hanged, presumably from limbs of trees. This is the universal tradition, and we know that hangings in the early days took place on the highest elevation of land. John Adams has left a record of a visit in 1766 to Witchcraft Hill. This would be while persons were living who might well have witnessed some of the executions. He could not have made any mistake. A modern and lower elevation has been suggested, but Adams could not have seen Salem Village from there, and he tells us that he saw that settlement from the hill he visited.
The prominent and influential part taken by children in these trials is a striking feature. The original accusers were children, and children had a leading part in nearly every case. But for their activity, it is doubt- ful whether as many convictions would have been secured. Ann Putnam testified in nineteen cases; Elizabeth Hubbard in twenty; Mary Walcott in sixteen; Mary Warren in twelve; Mercy Lewis in ten; Abigail Wil- liams, Susan Sheldon and Elizabeth Booth, eight, and little Dorcas Good, only five years of age, was allowed to tell her story or the story who some one may have manufactured for her.
Substantially everyone who had to do with these prosecutions sub- sequently admitted the error of his way-the judges of the court, the jurors, the ministers. The General Court revoked the attaint and re- imbursed the individuals then living, or their descendants. Witchcraft was certainly repudiated by the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Sometime in the future, when narrowness shall have disappeared from' certain of the present generation of Salemites, a monument will be erected on Gal- lows Hill, which will proclaim to all the world that these men and women of 1692 by their moral courage "struck the death blow" to witchcraft throughout the world right here in Salem, when they refused to confess themselves witches in order to save themselves from an ignominuous death.
CHAPTER L.
UNITED SHOE MACHINERY CO.
Pioneers as they were in the production of footwear in America, the citizens of Essex county have never in the centuries which have elapsed since Thomas Beard and Isaac Rickman first made shoes in Salem lost or in any way receded from the leadership established on so sure a founda- tion by Kirtland, Dagyr and those who followed them. Essex county has continued through all the succeeding years to produce more footwear than any section of similar size in the world, and shoes made in Lynn, Haver- hill and Newburyport are well and favorably known wherever shoes are worn.
This long maintenance of leadership is the more remarkable when consideration is given to the great changes in the methods of manufac- ture, which began about the year 1860, and which were so largely con- summated in the shoemaking centers of Essex county. No other indus- trial revolution transcends in importance that of shoemaking, which had since the days of the pyramids remained in the strictest sense a pure hand craft, was transformed in a few short years into a highly-organized industry, in which machinery had a most important part.
It was with this great change that the history of Essex county is most intimately entwined; for while the conception of machinery to be used in the making of shoes was old and had been attempted in Europe, it had invariably died in infancy, those responsible for it apparently lacking the organizing ability or vision to overcome the deep prejudices which had been engendered in succeeding generations of shoemakers.
When Elias Howe of Cambridge, who had labored so diligently and under such adverse circumstances, gave to the world the first sewing machine to gain a foothold in industry, his success set up a train of thought in the minds of New England shoemakers and inventors which was to go on and on, until there remained no operation in the making of a pair of shoes which could not be better performed by the use of machinery than by hand. When it is understood that it is perfectly pos- sible that there should be in the making of a high-grade woman's shoe as many as 210 distinct factory operations, 174 of which may be per- formed by machine and 155 may be performed on different machines, the proportion of the change which has taken place may be better compre- hended.
The evolution of the shoemaking industry in Essex county may be divided into six defined epochs: First, the period in which shoes were made by craftsmen imported from the old country for that purpose. Sec- ond, when the Colonists undertook to make their own footwear. Third, the establishment of the guild or trade apprenticeship system. Fourth, the division of work and the beginning of a factory system. Fifth, the
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coming of machinery and shoe factory organization. Sixth, the organi- zation of machinery.
In the first period the Colonists, who had arrived in a new and strange country, were so busy overcoming the forest and the manifold problems that beset their daily existence that they still relied on the means of supply to which they had been accustomed in the communities in which they had previously resided. For a period the requirement of the Colonists for those articles, which were the product of trained craftsmen, were supplied by importation. The long voyage and the un- certainties of transatlantic travel made it quickly apparent that the pro- duction of apparel, agricultural implements and other essentials should be undertaken in the newly-established colony.
To that end there came to these shores and to Essex county crafts- men who had been engaged by the Massachusetts Bay Company to take care of the requirements of the Colonists. Among the first of those who came under the conditions as described were Thomas Beard and his assist- ant, Isaac Rickman, who were assigned by the Governors of the Com- pany to Salem, and were the first shoemakers of record in this country. They were soon followed by Philip Kertland, who settled in Lynn in 1735, and was the pioneer shoemaker of Lynn, or "The Third Plantation," as it was known. These craftsmen were eagerly welcomed, for appar- ently in each instance tracts of land were given them and other provision made for their comfort.
The aggressive spirit of the pioneers ever urged them on into new places, and new opportunities in the wonderful and strange land to which they had come soon divorced them from the centers where supplies were at hand, and which could be visited only at long separated periods, and then only as necessity required. This condition forced the Pilgrims to these shores to become self-sustaining, and forced them to cultivate those traits which made for self-reliance and that ingenuity which has ever characterized the Yankee.
This condition brought about the second period in which the pro- duction of most of those articles, including clothing and shoes, which had previously been obtained from the trained craftsmen, became a matter of household concern. The skins or hides which came to hand either as the result of the hunt or the slaughter of domestic animals were crudely tan- ned or tawed into leather, which was afterwards fashioned into clothing and shoes.
Strange indeed must have been the product of any of the early ecorts in this direction on the part of the pioneers, but compelling neces- sity developed faculties unsuspected, and in a surprisingly short time boots and shoes were being fashioned in a manner which from a prac- tical standpoint served the makers better than those obtainable from the town cordwainers or shoemakers. True, they lacked the elegance of design and finish which distinguished the handiwork of the trained crafts-
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men, whose patronage came more and more from the gentle folk of the cities and towns, the families of the successful merchants who so quickly followed the pioneer adventurers in the new world.
The requirements of the new country in many sections rapidly out- grew the means of supply, and the farmer-shoemaker of Essex county soon found that footwear of the type he could fashion was in demand, par- ticularly among plantation owners of the South, where the economic prob- lem presented by the footsore slave and the loss of service which this condition entailed had been solved by the shoes produced by the farmers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It was soon found that the long winter evenings could be profitably employed in making boots and shoes. Every member of the family found a place in this employment. The women bound or sewed the different pieces for the upper; the children pricked the holes for stitching, whittled pegs or performed other light portions of the work; while the men lasted, bottomed and finished the work. Much of the material used came from the village storekeeper, who on the return of the completed shoe allowed credit for the various com- modities found in his stock of goods and required by the family. The making of shoes became so important a factor in the lives of many farm- ers that little buildings were erected on many farms, in which were the shoemaking benches and pegging jacks, together with the simple tools used by the shoemaker of the period. These were the first of the little "ten-footers," of which there were in after years so many in Essex county.
With the rapid increase in population and the greater demand that naturally followed for all of those articles which required craft train- ing, there came a desire in the new generation to learn a trade as their forebears had done before them in Europe. This desire brought the third period, in which there was established something akin to the guild system of Europe, in which the young man who essayed to learn a trade was bound to a master in a long period of apprenticeship. In the making of shoes, as well as other trades, the period was ordinarily seven years, and the young man was taught all the "mysteries" of his craft. The number of master craftsmen who had emigrated to these shores had greatly increased at this time. Among the more famous of them was John Adam Dagyr, a Welshman, who settled in Lynn in 1756, and who is often alluded to as "the father of American shoemaking." He was a man of exceptional skill and possessed the ability to transmit his knowledge and skill to others. He did much to establish even in those early days the reputation of Lynn as a shoemaking center on a firm and enduring foundation. With the constantly increasing importance of the trade and the number of men who worked at it, there came a more pronounced tendency to group, and in many instances men of thrift and organizing ability set themselves up as masters, employing oftentimes as many as six journeymen to work for them. These men, working under one roof
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and the direct supervision of their employer, were the means of bringing about a most important change, for it soon ushered in the fourth period, in which there began a real organization of the work. One man no longer made a complete shoe, but performed only that portion of the work in which he had shown the greatest proficiency.
Although it could not have been perceptible at the time, this period marks a most important point in the evolution of boot and shoe produc- tion. Considered in the light of important events which followed, this organization of shoe workers into teams marked the beginning of a fac- tory system, shall and crude as it was, and seems to have been an almost providential directing of the trend of the industry toward the use of machinery, the introduction of which was so soon to follow.
An endeavor to apply mechanical means to the production of boots and shoes had been attempted early in the century in both France and England, only to meet with abject failure, due not only to the crude na- ture of the machines, remarkable as they were at the time, but to the bitter hostility of the workers, who thought they perceived in them an attempt to rob them of their livelihood. This position was made potent by the strong position and control of industries exercised by the trade guilds of the period and the absence of organization in production or specialization among the workers. A similar fate had met the early efforts at machinery in Essex county. The pegging machine, invented by Samuel Preston of Danvers, and patented in 1833, while it had been successfully worked, was not received with any enthusiasm by the workers and came into a limited use; while the invention by Joseph Walker of a machine for cutting pegs emancipated the young men and boys of the period, whose spare time had been largely consumed in the whittling of pegs to be driven by their elders. Despite all the resistance, there had been a persistent endeavor to make shoes by machinery, and with the organization of the little teams in the small factories there came the change in conditions which made it possible and brought about the fifth period.
The first machine to be generally received in the industry was that of a little rolling machine, which took the place of the lapstone and hammer, which had been used by the shoemakers for so many ages. This was soon followed by the introduction of Howe's wonderful and revolutionary mechanism, the sewing machine. While not invented originally as a means of sewing shoe uppers, a Lynn mechanic, John Brooks Nichols, adapted it for the purpose of sewing or binding shoe uppers in 1851, and thus early was the sewing machine introduced to the shoe industry. The introduction of this machine was very rapidly accomplished, and it is said in 1860, that there were over 5,000 sewing machines engaged in the sew- ing of shoe uppers in Essex county alone. These machines were used in sewing ladies' shoes and gaiter-boot stitching. With the successful in- troduction of this machine, it was rapidly adopted in other shoemaking
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centers, and led to a division of the work at this point in which people undertook the making of shoe uppers as a separate and distinct occupa- tion; and there were in Lynn, Haverhill, Newburyport and other of the smaller towns throughout Essex county, men and women who undertook this part of the work on contract. The successful introduction of this machine increased the boot and shoe business of Essex county threefold between the years 1854 and 1860.
The invention and perfecting of the Howe machine marked the be- ginning of a period of great activity in connection with that class of merchandise which had depended on sewing, and the organization of factory gangs continued; for in 1857, there came a machine which very quickly made a place for itself in connection with pegged shoes, the in- vention being that of B. F. Sturtevant-the New Era Pegging machine. Immediately following came the invention of Lyman R. Blake of Abing- ton, a machine for sewing the soles of shoes, which afterwards became famous as the Mckay sewing machine.
The trials of Gordon Mckay, who purchased the invention of Blake, largely centered in Essex county. It was in Lynn and nearby towns that most of his experimenting was done in connection with the very remark- able machines which he developed. That the industry as a whole was little prepared for the introduction of machinery, even at this time, is at- tested to by the constant obstacles which had to be overcome in nearing the success of Mr. Mckay. Even the most progressive shoe manufactur- ers of Lynn and Essex county were not disposed to allow that machinery could possibly do the work which had for so many centuries remained a pure-hand process, and certainly had no money to venture in such an undertaking. Mr. Mckay was therefore driven almost to the point of abandoning his entire enterprise, as he had expended nearly all of the fortune which was his at the time he entered in this enterprise. It is said that he offered to sell all of his patent rights and all of the machines he had produced to syndicated Lynn manufacturers for $250,000, the sum that he had expended up to that time, an offer which was not ac- cepted.
The great war of the rebellion brought the one incentive that was re -- quired by Mckay in his success-shortage in hand labor. As the shoe- makers left for the front, there came the problem of supplying the re- quirements both of the government and of the populace. Mr. Mckay was able to establish his claims for production, and the iron sinews of the mechanisms he had produced took the place of the large number of Essex county shoemakers who had laid aside their awls and hammers and taken up the rifle in defense of the Union.
Mckay, however, was not able to introduce his machines until he had advanced a most unique method of securing payment for their use. While manufacturers were willing to concede that his machines would do the work, they still felt too skeptical to make large payments of money on
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them, and Mckay therefore announced a plan of participating in what he claimed the machine would save. To this end, there came into being a system of little royalty stamps, which the manufacturers attached to the shoes as they were made, the stamps having been previously sold to the manufacturer by Mr. Mckay. This system of royalty has been a most unique and important one in the evolution of the shoe industry, not only of Essex county, but of the entire world, for no other industry is estab- lished on quite so unique a basis and receives as a result of it the benefit of a mechanical service which is the natural outcome of machine manufac- turers being dependent upon the constant working of the machine to gain revenue for not only the shoe manufacturer, but for themselves. This condition quickly forced itself on Mr. Mckay's attention after he had installed his first two machines in the factory of William Porter & Sons in Lynn. To meet it, he very promptly inaugurated an expert ser- vice both for keeping his machines in working condition, and also for teaching their operation, for young men came to Lynn from all parts of the country for the purpose of observing the machines and their work, and when possible to learn their operation.
Once the thick hard shell of prejudice had been broken, war-time necessity made the introduction of machinery in many divisions of shoe making easy. The activities of inventors in Essex county alone would require a volume to record, even ignoring the similar efforts in other sec- tions. Most of these inventors turned to the well-established and organ- ized factories of Essex county for trial and approval. As soon as these machines proved their merit, the inventors found in Mr. Mckay not only a possible but plausible customer; for his star had rapidly risen and brightened, until he became the sun about which all the lesser planets of the industry revolved. Those inventions which fitted into his general scheme he purchased or brought within his control. Those which did not he fought.
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