Springfield, 1636-1886 : history of town and city, including an account of the quarter-millennial celebration at Springfield, Mass., May 25 and 26, 1886, Part 10

Author: Green, Mason Arnold; Springfield (Mass.)
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: [Springfield, Mass.] : C.A. Nichols & Co.
Number of Pages: 740


USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Springfield > Springfield, 1636-1886 : history of town and city, including an account of the quarter-millennial celebration at Springfield, Mass., May 25 and 26, 1886 > Part 10


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The townsmen began keeping a record of their acts in April, 1647. Thomas Cooper was this year substituted for Holyoke npon the board. Francis Ball and Miles Morgan were surveyors for the upper part of the town, and John Clarke and Jolin Herman for the lower part. Their special instructions, besides keeping the highways in condition, were to open " a Horse way over the meddow to ye Bay path," and a " Bridge over the 3 corner Brooke into the plaine." In 1648 the following were made freemen: John Pynchon, Elizur Holyoke, Henry Burt, Roger Pritchard, Samuel Wright, and William Branch.


The year before the General Court had authorized William Pynchon to administer the freeman's oath at Springfield to " those that are in covenant & live according to their prfession." The word- ing of the vote -" liberty was granted Mr. Pinchon to make freemen " - would seem to imply that he was the judge of an inhabitant's qualifications for freemanship.


No change was made in the townsmen until 1650, when John Pynchon, Henry Smith, Samuel Chapin, Henry Burt, and Thomas


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SPRINGFIELD, 1636-1886.


Cooper were chosen. John Pynchon now began to figure promi- nently in local affairs, being elected the town treasurer.


Much trouble was in those days occasioned by breaches of the town order as to swine, and it was specially decreed, in 1646. that : -


All swine that breake into any mans corne ground or meddowe yt is sufficiently fenced against yoked hoggs : in case men iet yr Swine run abroad unyoked if they breake in and doe any man Trespass, then ye master of the sayd Swine shall be lyable to pay all damages as two indifferent men shall Judge ye damadge to be : but if Swine be yoked and runge then they are free from damages.


The townsmen took the matter up the year following, and ordered that : -


All swine that keepe about his howse or neere any corne ground belonging to the Plantation and not under the hand or custody of a keeper, shall be suffi- ciently yoked and runge, according to the age and bigness of the swine : And in ease any Swine that are above the age of six months shall be found in the streete or about any of ye Common fences of the corn fields with out yoke & runge : It shall be lawfull for any person soe findinge them, to drive them to the pound (weh may be any mans privat yard or out howse in ye present defect of a comon pound) p'vided alsoe yt he give the owner of the sayd Swine notice of his im- poundinge them with in 24 hours after it is soe done, etc.


We have transcribed several notes of passing interest. Ordered by the town in November, 1646 : -


That Jno Clarke or those that shall Joyne with him in ye burninge of Tarr shall have liberty to gather candlewood in ye playne in ye Bay path : prvided they come not to gather any in this side the great pond and ye swamps that point out from it to Chickopee river and the Mill river weh is Judged to be about five miles from the towne.


Ordered by the town in September, 1647 : -


Yt no person shall gather any hops that grow in ye Swamps or in the comon grounds untill this prsent day yearly upon payne of forfeitinge what they shall


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SPRINGFIELD, 1636-1886.


soe disorderly gather, & 2s. 6d. for breach of order. The forfeiture to ye in- former & ye penalty to ye town treasury.


Ordered by the town in Jannary, 1646 : --


Yt if any trees be feld having no other worke bestowed on ym above 6 months from this day forward in ye Comons, it shall be lawfull for any man to take them, but any tymber yt is cross cutt, or firewood yt is cut out & set on heapes, or rayles, or clefts for pales, no man may take any of these till it have lyen twelve months after it is soe cross cntt or cloven.


The townsmen then declared it unlawful to transport outside the town limits any " buildinge tymbers, board loggs or sawne boards or planks, or shingle tymber or pipe staves." The townsmen also decreed that " Whereas it is judged offensive and noysome for flax & hempe to be watered or washed in the Brooke before mens doores, yt is of ordinary use for dressinge meate : Therefore it is ordered that no pson shall hence forth water any flax or hempe in the sayd brooke" on pain of a 6s. 8d. fine.


April, 1649 :-


Henry Smith & Samuell Chapen were chosen to seal up our ffreemens votes for magistrates & to send them sealed up to John Jolinson of Roxbury, who is chosen for our deputy to ye Generall Court.


William Pynchon held court four times a year, all breaches of the peace being presented by a grand jury of two men. In April, 1648, Thomas Mirriek was muleted in 12s. 8d. for abusing the child of Alexander Edwards. It is believed that Mr. Moxon usually opened eourt with prayer. The town-meetings now were held in the meeting- house. In later years taverns were sometimes utilized for that purpose.


CHAPTER VII.


1648-1652.


Witcheraft. - Mysterious Lights seen at Night. - Mrs. Bedortha. - Hugh Parsons's Threat. - Mrs. Parsons condemned for Slander. - Mary Parsons bewitched. - Par- sons arrested. - Mrs. Parsons accuses herself of Child-Murder. - Taken to Boston. - Mrs. Parsons sentenced to be hanged. - Death before the Day of Execution. - Pecowsic. - John Pynchon's growing Importance. - Church Expenses. - William Pynchon's Heretical Book condemned by the General Court. - Mr. Norton's Reply. - The Doctrine of the Atonement. - The Protest of Sir Henry Vane and the Reply of the General Court. - Pynchon, Moxon, and Smith return to England.


THE task of recording the story of early New England is made embarrassing by an amiable disposition to remember a people by their virtues only. While the stalwart devotion of our forefathers to their faith makes an irresistible appeal to us, their superstitions are continually intruding themselves and making it impossible to forget that they were the children of an ignorant and somewhat unreflecting age. They were self-assertive, brave, and biblical, rather than intui- tive. Up to Jonathan Edwards's time one looks in despair for any con- scions or serious attempt in New England to verify the teachings of the gospel in reason. With close interpretations of texts they were content to rest ; the terrors of witchcraft came constructively within this interpretation, and formed a part of the belief of the age on both sides of the ocean. The witch was not the invention of the Puritans. The belief in a veritable devil of ponderable shape was general in the seventeenth century. The Bible accounts of devils dwelling in earthly habitations were its justification. Men and women, it was believed, made a league with familiar spirits, entering into secret compacts with them, and for the price of their souls secured for a time a diabolical control over the laws of nature. These persons


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SPRINGFIELD, 1636-1886.


were called witches. Personal ugliness was a characteristic of the witch in the popular mind. When the Shakespearean Gloucester said to Queen Margaret :


" Foul wrinkled witch, what makest thou in my sight?"


he linked a current superstition of personal ugliness to a deed of blood. Witchcraft was a statute crime in England, where no less than thirty thousand lives had been sacrificed upon the gibbet and at the stake to crush it out. The league of Mephistopheles and Faust, which was poetry to the Germans, was to the English a vulgar offence against law.


In the lower part of Main street, which in 1648 must have resembled somewhat a forest road, with clearings on the river-side to make room for log-cabins, barns, and young orchards, lived Rice Bedortha and his wife Blanche. They had as neighbors upon the Mill river side, Benjamin Cooley, Jonathan Burt, Hugh Parsons, and John Lombard ; while to the north dwelt Griffith Jones and John Matthews. Five doors above was George Langton. In this remote part of the town the witch fever started. These houses were situated on the border of the wet meadows, and it is quite likely that at times marsh lights were seen after dark. Mrs. Bedortha, at any rate, so asserted ; and there were things happening in that part of the town, mysterious things, that were enough to make the cold moisture stand upon the brow of the bravest.


Skulking lights at dead of night out on the marshes were not the worst. Blanche Bedortha told all along the street how Hugh Par- sons, her neighbor three doors below, had called at the house one day to see her husband about some bricks. While the two men were talking she joined in the conversation. " Gammer," exclaimed Par- sons sharply, "you needed not have said anything. I spake not to you ; but I shall remember you when you little think on it." Mr. Bedortha was naturally offended at Parsons's outburst, and declared


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that it was " no good speech." The situation was in no way extraor- dinary. A woman says an unnecessary thing, a man retorts with feeling, and things get involved.


The men probably soon forgot the circumstance, but Mrs. Bedortha did not : she treasured the threat of Hugh Parsons. She thought of it at her work ; she told of it when out among her neighbors ; and she trembled with secret fear when she retired at night. "I shall re- member you when you little think on it!" These were the words that rang in her ears. One night, as she was retiring, she was star- tled by three flashes of light. They appeared to come from the inside of her red shag cotton " waistcoat," which she had just taken off and was about to hang upon a peg. She quickly held up the garment between her hands a second time, but there was no flash. A double Indian mat was between her and the fire, so that no light could have been cast from that. For several nights she held up the red waist- coat, but no flash of light was seen.


A month later Mrs. Bedortha was delivered of a child. Before her recovery she became afflicted in a strange, mysterious way. She felt upon her left side sharp pains as though pierced by knives in three different places. "Suddenly after," she said, "my thoughts were that this evil might come upon me from the said threatening speech of Hugh Parsons. I do not apprehend that I was sick in any other part of my body, but in the said three places only, and by the extremity of these prickings only." Those who are familiar with Cotton Mather's elaborate accounts of how the little "gentleman in black " was in the habit of pinching and pricking people, will at once see the drift of such evidence. Her nurse was a widow, Mrs. Marshfield, who had once lived at Windsor, herself a character not free from rumored connection with witchcraft. It is within the possi- bilities that the widow at once went all through the neighborhood, and while the good matrons were carding or spinning (for it was then win- ter) described the prickings as well as the threatening's of Hugh Par- sons. And it is not at all improbable that Mrs. Parsons (Mary Lewis)


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heard of the reflections upon her husband's character with high re- sentment. Widow Marshfield and Goody Parsons at any rate fell ont. "There are divers strange lights seen of late in the meddow that were never seen before ye Widdow Marshfeild came to towne," said Mrs. Parsons by way of a home-thrust at Mrs. Marshfield. Mrs. Parsons also went along the street and elaborated her case against the widow Marshfield. She charged that the widow envied every child born at Windsor until her daughter became a mother, but that the child soon died,-and so did her cow ! "It was publicly known," whispered Goody Parsons, "that the devil followed her at her house in Windsor, and for ought I know follows her here." This talking match between the two goodies culminated in a suit for slander, brought by Mrs. Bedortha's widowed nurse against Mrs. Parsons ; and William Pynchon, after due deliberation, con- demned Mrs. Parsons to twenty lashes, to be administered by the constable after lecture, or to pay to Mrs. Marshfield £3 damages " towards the reparation of her good name."


The payment of this fine to the widow was in Indian corn, twenty- four bushels, and when it was offered Hugh asked her to abate one- third ; but she refused, because Hugh had said after the trial that her witnesses had given false testimony. Thereupon Parsons ex- claimed in his usnal recklessly mysterious way, "Take it!" and he added, " It will be but as wildfire to this house and as a moth to your garment I'll warrant you, and make account it is but lent you !" Mrs. Marshfield secured her corn, but with it the fatality of some overhanging machination.


Mrs. Marshfield, who was the sister of Samuel Marshfield, so often figuring in our early history, was continually on the watch. Her danghter was presently taken with fits. The threats and the fits ran hand in hand all over the excited plantation. They visited every household, and frightened the godly folk half out of their wits ; but no one seemed called upon to secure the arrest of Parsons. Martha Moxon and her sister, daughters of the minister, had previous to this


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SPRINGFIELD, 1636-1886.


also been taken down with fits, and the reverend father at once recalled the fact that Parsons had grumbled because compelled to build his chimney according to contract, and had even made a mysterious re- mark that the bricks would do Moxon no good.


Public opinion now ran strongly against the Parsonses. No devi- ation from the dead prose of life could take place, but it was mys- teriously connected with the quarrelsome family in the lower part of the street. Whenever the red coat of Hugh Parsons appeared, women trembled and ching to their children. The terrible fact was whispered in every kitchen, - Springfield had a witch !


Five months after the Marshfield-Parsons slander case the wife of Hugh Parsons gave birth to a child, which lived but a year. The mother's condition now became serious. Her husband was calcu- lated by nature to irritate and annoy her. When he was about the house frequent disagreements occurred, and his long absences she considered heartless neglect of his family. These strained relations, the eye of suspicion and the finger of the gossip turned upon them by the community, and finally the death of the child, worked Mrs. Mary Parsons's highly-strung organism into a flighty, hysterical con- dition. She was being pushed down one more step in the long stair- case that led her from vivacious maidenhood to the level of a social outcast and the inmate of prisons.


Sarah, the wife of Alexander Edwards, added to the fear of Hugh Parsons by telling how he had called at their house for milk, and how, after she had refused to give him more than a pennyworth, the cow ahnost " dried up," and the next day the milk was as " yellow as saffron," and each day it turned to some other " strange odd color." Neighbor Griffith Jones, not to be ontdone in the relation of wonders about the doings of Parsons, told the Bedorthas, who lived next door, that upon the Lord's day he had left his wife at a neigh- bor's house after the first sermon, and gone home. He proceeded to " take up " his dinner and to put it " on a little table made on a cradle head." He then looked for a knife, he having two, but they


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SPRINGFIELD, 1636-1886.


were both missing, and so he was compelled to use at dinner an old rusty knife in a basket " where I had things to mend shoes withall." After clearing away his dinner dishes he laid the rusty knife on the corner of the table " to cutt a Pip of Tobacco wthall," fed his pig, which had come up close to the door, and returned, only to find three knives on the table, " weh made me blush !" He had presence of mind to cut his pipe of tobacco, however, and at that very instant Parsons came in and asked if he was ready to return to the meeting- house. They smoked together, and Jones told all through the neigh- borhood that Parsons had bewitched the knives.


Anthony Dorchester, employed by Parsons, had one-fourth interest in a cow which when killed was divided, his employer owning another one-fourth. Both wanted the tongue of the animal, but it fell to Dorchester, and subsequently, when cooking it, it mysteriously dis- appeared from the pot. It was the work of a witch, of course. George Lankton slipped a pudding out of a bag one day after it was cooked, his wife Hannah being indisposed, and the pudding parted from end to end as though cut with a knife. Lankton had previously refused to sell Parsons some hay. Parsons made a bargain for a piece of land of Thomas Miller, and Miller immediately thereafter ent his leg while chopping. Men heard strange noises at night like filing of saws. Blanche Bedortha's child, now two years old, cried out one day that it was afraid of Parsons's dog : Parsons had no dog. Parsons was at Longmeadow at work when he heard of the death of his second child. Several people were near him and heard him say, " I will cut a pipe of tobacco before I go home." The speech was in everybody's month before the day was done, and when appealed to for an explanation for this unfatherly placidity, he re- plied, " I was very full of sorrow for the death of it in private, though not in public." Even the worthy Henry Smith could not with- stand the infection. He had once refused to sell Parsons some peas, and in the summer of 1648 it was remembered that two of his chil- dren had died.


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SPRINGFIELD, 1636-1886.


The effect upon Mrs. Parsons was pitiable. She was already in a decline, suffering from consumption. Her every movement was watched. Disgrace followed close upon her heels, and her wavering mind invited a subtle suspicion : Was not her own husband really a witch? The tragedy had begun, - Mrs. Parsons was becoming in- sane. The suspicion that her husband was in league with the devil became a mania. She watched him with cat-like tenacity. When he lay asleep she would search for the little black marks which in those days the devil was supposed to put upon those making a covenant of witchcraft. She did not find the devil's sign-mannal upon his body, but he talked wildly in his sleep, and had satanic dreams, which he narrated upon waking. So time wore on.


The death of Mrs. Parsons's second child, Joshua, took place March 1, 1651. She was now ready for the worst, and she went before Magistrate Pynchon and made oath that her husband was a witch, and was the cause of the death of her infant. Parsons him- self had been under legal examination some time before.


" Ah, Witch ! Ah, Witch !" cried Goody Stebbins as Constable Mirrick took Parsons past her door, and she fell down in a fit. Miles Morgan had been visiting Thomas Miller when the dreaded man had approached a short time before, and he saw Miller's wife fly into a passion and cry, "Get thee gone, Hugh Parsons ! Get thee gone ! If thou wilt not goe, I will goe to Mr. Pynchon and he shall have thee away !" and she too fell prostrate upon the ground. The red coat of Hugh Parsons was the nightmare of the village.


The examination before Mr. Pynchon only added to the conster- nation of the community. Jonathan Taylor, after listening to Mrs. Parsons's evidence against her husband, saw in his dreams three snakes on the floor, and one of them with black and yellow stripes bit him on the forehead. He then heard a solemn voice cry out, " Death ! " That voice was like the voice of Hugh Parsons. "Death ! That is a lie !" shouted Taylor; "it was never known that such a snake killed a man." But Taylor was by this time shaking so that he


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roused his wife, who did everything to rescue him from his unseemly dreams. After Mary Parsons had made oath to the witcheraft of her husband she was placed in the hands of Thomas Cooper for safe-keeping, and as Cooper watched the wretched, unnerved woman, he could not refrain from asking her questions, either from curiosity, pity, or a desire to extract new evidence. Here is the record of Mr. Cooper's remarkable testimony : -


I said to her why do you speak so of yr Husband ; methinks if he were a witch there would some apparent Signe or Mark of it appeare upon his Body, for they say Witches have Teates uppon some pt or other of their Body, but as far as I heere there is not any such apparent Thinge uppon his Body. She answered, it is not always so; but, said she, why do I say so. I have no Skill in Witchery ; but, said she, why may it not be with him as it was with me; that Night I was at Goodman Ashlies : the Devell may come into his body only like a Wind, and so goe forth againe, for so the Divill tould me that night (for I think I should have bin a Witch afore now but that I was afraid to see the Divill, lest he should fright me. ) But the Divill tould me that I should not Feare that (I will not come in any Apparition, but only come mto thy Body like a Wind, and trouble thee a little While, and prsntly go forth againe ; ) and so I consented ; and that Night I was with my Husband and Goodwife Mericke and Besse Sewell, in Goodman Stebbinges his Lott; and we were sometymes like Catts, and sometymes in our owne shape, and we were a plodding for some good cheere; and they made me to go barefoote and mak the Fiers, because I had declared so much at Mr. Pynchon's.


Wretched woman ! She had been made victim to every relation of life, whether as wife, inhabitant, or church member. Her first mar- riage to a Roman Catholic had brought her into bad odor ; her second marriage to a talkative, happy-go-lucky, pipe-smoking bricklayer, who evidently had a way of appropriating other people's goods on occasion, and maliciously resenting all reflections upon his character, drew her down to a level of life where even her strong points but made fuel for the fires of persecution. This highly-strung creature was forced to lose, first, respect for her neighbors, then respect for her husband, and finally respect for herself. Then her mind gave


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way, but not her self-consciousness ; for her final terror came upon her with all the force of remorse. She had charged her husband with murder and witchcraft. This was her remorse. " They made me to go barefoote, and mak the fires, because I had declared so much at Mr. Pynchon's." These words give the full force of her remorse. Her husband had been carried to Boston (about March 20, 1651), but more evidence was being taken against him at Springfield, to be for- warded to the Bay. Madness and remorse brought a change in the burden of her talk, and Mrs. Parsons finally confessed that the blood of her child was upon her own hands. She went farther, and declared herself to be under the influence of Satan. Her wild words were ac- cepted for the sober truth, and she too was conveyed to Boston under arrest for both murder and witchcraft. If her distracted brain re- sponded in any degree to an appreciation of the situation, shie at least had the sad relief of knowing that the same tongue which had placed her husband under the shadow of the gallows had undone the mis- chief in part by putting her by his side, or rather in his place. Mrs. Parsons's jury in May accepted her crazy confession of child-murder, but refused to believe her a witch. The General Court confirmed the verdict ; she was sentenced to be hanged, and the death watch was placed over her.


Upon the morning named for the execution she was too feeble to be moved from her cell, and she was respited. The second day of doom came, but Mary Lewis Parsons lay dead upon her couch. She is as much a martyr to be held in commiserating memory by us, as many others who fell by the way during the making of Springfield.


The trial of Hugh Parsons in June ended in conviction, but in May, 1652, the General Court refused to confirm the verdict, and he es- caped the gallows. He left Boston, and probably Massachusetts, and was never seen in Springfield again.


While the machinery of local government went steadily on, there are not wanting indications of an unsettled spirit in the community. Many of the inhabitants had shown a decided preference for "the


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longe meddowe," and, foreseeing that that part of the town was des- tined to grow in importance, a request was lodged for a permit to surrender the planting-grounds upon the river-bank, and to take lands back upon the next plantation. This request was granted in 1648. Three years after, lands were apportioned at Pecowsic and Mill river as follows : --


The names of such as have meddow granted ym, & how they are to ly, by lot. On Pacowsick beginning at ye lower end.


Benja Cooly lys


1st


who hath 3 acres


Anthony Dorchester 2d


Widdow Bliss


3d


4 acres 3


Roger Prichard &


4th


1 & ₺


John Lumbard


Nath Pritchard


5th


4


John Harmon 6th


23


On ye Mill River beginning lowermost on ye south east branch, & so going up to ye litle brooke & then upward to ye- 16-acres, and so on to ye North- branch and ye upper end & then come downward & lastly to ye lake or pond.


Wm Clark


1st


4 acres


Nath Bliss


2d


2


Miles Morgan


3d


2


Jno Leanord


4th


2


Rich Exell


5th


1₺


Jonathan Burt


6th


13


Sam Marshfield


7


1


Benja Mun


8


1


James Bridgman


9


2


Mr Moxon


10


2


Jno Drembleton




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