Standard history of Essex county, Massachusetts, embracing a history of the county from its first settlement to the present time, with a history and description of its towns and cities. The Most historic county of America., Part 7

Author: Tracy, Cyrus M. (Cyrus Mason), 1824-1891, et al. Edited by H. Wheatland
Publication date: 1878
Publisher: Boston, C. F. Jewett
Number of Pages: 450

USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Standard history of Essex county, Massachusetts, embracing a history of the county from its first settlement to the present time, with a history and description of its towns and cities. The Most historic county of America. > Part 7

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On April 30th, warrants were granted against Philip English, of Salem, Sarah Morrel and Dorcas Hoar, of Beverly. Marshal Herrick, the officer entrusted with the serving of the warrants, returned that for English with the indorsement, "Mr. Philip English not to be found. G. H." The others were duly taken into custody. On the 6th of May, English was arrested in Boston, examined, and committed to jail, from which he and his wife escaped, and fled to New York. After the delusion had run its race, they returned to Salem, and con-

HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

tinued to reside there. He was one of the leading men of the town, a merchant, owning twenty-one vessels, beside much real estate. Just what became of Sarah Morrel is not known. She did not suffer the death penalty, and was probably one of those long imprisoned, but finally discharged. Dorcas Hoar was a widow, and among other accusations brought against her in court was the killing of her hns- band. She protested her innocence of all charges, and reproached her accusers by crying out in court, " Oh, you are liars, and God will stop the mouths of liars." She suffered the common fate of imprison- ment. Susanna Martin, of Amesbury, was arrested on a warrant bearing date of April 30, and was examined on May 2d, and she too was added to the list of the imprisoned. In the letter, previously referred to, written by Sergeant Thomas Putnam to Judges Corwin and Hathorne, reference was made to "high and dreadful " things to be disclosed that would make " cars tingle." This proved to be the arrest, probably planned long before it was made, of the Rev. George Burroughs, who was settled in Salem in the fall of 1680, but who was at this time preaching in the frontier settlements of Maine. He was a graduate of Harvard College in the class of 1670, and is known to have been a man of great ability and of sterling worth. The plans looking to his arrest go to show what a deep and firm hold the super- stition had taken among the people, else the arrest of a former pastor would not have been tolerated. The order for his arrest was issued in Boston by Elisha Hutchinson, a magistrate in that place, and was addressed to John Partridge, of Portsmouth, field-marshal of the provinces of New Hampshire and Maine. It bore date April 30, 1692, and commanded his arrest on suspicion of "confederacy with the devil." The "afflicted children " became as if influenced by him, and various charges of bewitching were brought against him. One deposition, that of Ann Putnam, taken by her father, and sworn to, is as follows : - " The Deposition of Ann Putnam, who testifieth and saith, on the 20th day of April, 1692, at evening, she saw the appa- rition of a minister, at which she was grievously affrighted, and cried out, 'Oh, dreadful, dreadful ! here is a minister come! What! are ministers witches too? Whence came you, and what is your name ? for I will complain of you, though you be a minister, if you be a wizard.' Immediately I was tortured by him, being racked, and al- most choked by him. And he tempted me to write in his book, which I refused with loud outeries, and said I would not write in his book though he tore me all to pieces, but told him that it was a dreadful thing, that he, which was a minister that should teach children to fear God, should come to persuade poor creatures to give their souls to the devil. 'Oh, dreadful, dreadful ! tell me your name that I may know who you are.' Then again he tortured me, and urged me to write in his book, which I refused. And then, presently, he told me that his name was George Burroughs, and that he had had three wives, and that he had bewitched the two first of them to death ; and that he killed Mrs. Lawson because she was so unwilling to go from the village, and also killed Mr. Lawson's child because he went to the castward with Sir Edmon and preached so to the soldiers ; and that he had bewitched a great many soldiers to death at the eastward when Sir Edmon was there ; and that he had made Abigail Hobbs a witch, and several witches more. And he has continued ever since, by times, tempting me to write in his book, and grievously torturing me by beating, pinching, and almost choking me several times a day. He also -told me that he was above a witch. He was a conjurer.

[Signed]

ANN PUTNAMI."

Burroughs was brought to Salem, May 4. On the 9th, his examina- tion was held before a special sitting of the magistrates, Judges William Stoughton, of Dorchester, Samuel Sewall, of Boston, and Hathorne and Corwin, of Salem, being on the bench, the former acting as chief justice. A private examination was first held before the magistrates and ministers alone, and then he was taken into the public court ; and, as he entered, "many, if not all the bewitched, were grievously tortured," according to the records. As a matter of course, he was

committed. George Jacobs, Sr., and his grand-daughter, Margaret Jacobs, were the next victims, and were arrested May 10. They were examined at the house of Thomas Beadle. On the same day of their examination, a warrant was issued for John Willard ; but he had fled from the town, and was subsequently arrested in Groton. About the same time, Alice Parker and Ann Pudeator, of Salem, were taken into custody. They were examined July 2, the same sort of evi- dence - in fact, no evidence at all - being offered. On May 14, the following parties were subjects of warrants : Daniel Andrew, George Jacobs, Jr., his wife Rebecca Jacobs, Sarah Buckley, and Mary Whittredge, of Salem; Elizabeth IIart and Thomas Farrar, Sr., of Lynn; Elizabeth Colson, of Reading, and Bethiah Carter, of Woburn. Andrew, with Jacobs, Jr., heard of warrants for their arrest, and fled from the country. Sarah Buckley and her daughter, Mary Whit- tredge, were not tried till January, 1693, when they were acquitted. Mary Easty, who had been arrested April 22, and discharged May 18, was again arrested May 20, as one Merey Lewis asserted that she was "afflicted," and could not be delivered from her tortures till Mary Easty was again in irons. Testimony was given that Mercy Lewis's afflictions ceased the same afternoon that her " witch " was incarcerated. The following parties were next " charged " and arrested : On May 21, the wife of William Basset, of Lynn, Susanna Roots, of Beverly, Sarah Procter, of Salem. A few days later, Benjamin Procter and Mary Derich, of Lynn, and wife of Robert Pease, of Salem. On the 28th, Martha Carrier, of Andover, Elizabeth Fosdick, of Malden, Wilmot Read, of Marblehead, Sarah Rice, of Reading, Elizabeth How, of Tops- field, Captain John Alden, of Boston, William Procter, of Salem, Capt. John Flood, of Rumney Marsh (now Chelsea), Mrs. Toothaker and her daughter, of Billerica, and - Abbot, of Topsfield or Wen- ham. On the 30th, Elizabeth Paine, of Charlestown. On June 4, Mary Ireson, of Lynn. Many others were complained of, and war- rants for them issued; among them Mary Bradbury, of Salisbury, Lydia and Sarah Dustin, of Reading, Ann Sears, of Woburn, Job Tookey, of Beverly, Abigail Somes, of Gloucester, Elizabeth Carey, of Charlestown, and Candy, a negro woman.

In commenting on the trials, Mr. Upham calls special attention to the fact that "every idle rumor; everything that the gossip of the credulous, or the fertile imaginations of the malignant could produce ; everything gleaned from the memory or the fancy that could have an unfavorable bearing upon an accused person, however foreign or irrelevant it might be to the charge, was allowed to be brought in evi- denee before the magistrates, and received at the trials." That "chil- dren were not only permitted but induced to become witnesses against their parents, and parents against their children. Husbands and wives were made to criminate each other as witnesses in court." The Rev. Cotton Mather, a clergyman of Boston ; a man who, according to his own declaration, believed that " no place has got such a spell upon it as will always keep the devil out," gave an account of the proceedings of the courts. In the conclusion of his report of the trial of Martha Carrier, he wrote as follows : "This rampant hag was the person of whom the confessions of the witches, and of her own children among the rest, agreed that the devil had promised her that she should be queen of hell." John Alden, mentioned above, was a son of John Alden, of Plymouth, one of the founders of the Colony there. IIc made his escape from jail in September of the eventful year, and fled to Duxbury, telling his relatives there that he was fleeing from the devil.

An Andover woman, who was sick with a fever, became the cause of a terrible outbreak in that town. Her husband was informed by the "afflicted girls " at Salem, that she was suffering from witchery, and, once alarmed, Andover became the scene of another act in the sad tragedy. More than fifty people were imprisoned, and several of them were hanged. Dudley Bradstreet, the local magistrate, commit- ted forty or thereabouts, and then refused to act further, which so exasperated the people that they threatened the judge and his family

HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

with punishment for his refusal to assist in banishing the evil ones, and they were obliged to flee from the vicinity. The prisons at Salem, Ipswich, Boston, and Cambridge were full of parties awaiting trial for the crime of witchcraft. About this time Sir William Phips became governor under the royal charter, and a special court of oyer and terminer was created for witchcraft trials. William Stoughton, of Dorchester, was chief justice, and Nathaniel Saltonstall, of Haverhill, Maj. John Richards, of Boston, Maj. Bartholomew Gedney, of Salem, Wait Winthrop, Capt. Samuel Sewall, and Peter Sargent, of Bos- ton, his associates on the bench. Saltonstall resigned, and Jonathan Corwin, of Salem, succeeded him. Before this court the final trials and convictions occurred, though a doubt has been raised as to the legality of the court, as it is referred to as a question whether the governor and council under the charter had power to create it without the con- currence of the General Court. The new government did away with the office of marshal, held by George Herrick, and created that of sheriff, to which George Corwin, of Salem, was appointed. The jail at Salem, where many of the victim's were lodged, was located on " Prison Lane," now St. Peter Street, and the court-house, where the trials took place, was on "Town-house Lane," now Washington Street. The meeting-house, where examinations had been held, was at what is now the south-east corner of Essex and Washington streets, the present site of the "First Church." The "old witch- house," which every stranger to Salem asks to see, appears not to have played so prominent a part in the scenes of the day as many have sup- posed, being only used for conferences or sessions of the grand jurors, being the residence of Judge Corwin. It is still standing at the cor- ner of Essex and North streets. The trials opened in June, 1692. The attorney-general, Thomas Newton, had located at Salem to con- duct the trials in behalf of the government. He addressed a letter to the secretary of the Province, in which he expressed the idea that progress would probably be slow, "as the afflicted cannot readily give their testimonies, being struck dumb and senseless for a season at the name of the accused." No complete records of the doings of this special court are in existence, but several depositions are on file in the county records. At the first session of the court, Bridget Bishop was the only " witch " tried. She was dragged before the assembled crowds through Prison Lane, un Essex Street, into Town-house Lane, to the court-house. Cotton Mather relates that "there was one strange thing with which the court was newly entertained. As this woman was, under a guard, passing by the great and spacious meeting- house, she gave a look towards the house, and immediately a demon invisihly entering the meeting-house, tore down a part of it, so that though there was no person to be seen there, yet the people, at the noise, running in, found a board which was strongly fastened with several nails, transported into another quarter of the house." Owing to the lack of records of the testimony in this and other cases tried before this special court, no exact account of the trial can he given. By diligent research on the subject, our hest authority, Mr. Upham, collected many interesting facts from various documents of the day now preserved in the archives of Essex County. The Rev. John Hale, of Beverly, appeared in court, and testified that he had examined the body of the woman whose death was' attributed to the influenced acts of Bridget Bishop, and that, in his judgment, it was " impossible for her, with so short a pair of scissors, to mangle herself so without some extraordinary work of the devil, or witchcraft." The "bewitched " woman was evidently a victim of suicide. She was known to have been an insane person. Samuel Shattuck and his wife swore to a deposition, which asserted the belief that a child of theirs was hewitched through this woman. They testified that the child, a young boy, had been afflicted. with fits ; had acted strangely, as if controlled by an evil spirit, and had lost power over himself, so that he fell into fire or water, or laid as if dead. These things occurred and strengthened as the Bishop woman "came oftener to the house," according to the testimony offered. A son of Mr. John Cook, who lived on the same

street with Shattuck, testified, that "about five or six years ago, one morning, before sun-rising, as I was in bed, before I rose, I saw good- wife Bishop, alias Oliver, stand in the chamber, by the window ; and she looked on me and grinned on me, and presently struck me on the side of the head, which did very much hurt me ; and then I saw her go out under the end window at a little crevice, about so big as I could thrust my hand into. I saw her again the same day, - which was the Sabbath day, -about noon, walk across the room ; and having at the time an apple in my hand, it flew out of my hand into my mother's lap, who sat six or eight foot distance from me, and then she dis- appeared. And though my mother and several others were in the same room, yet they affirmed they saw her not."

John Bly, who had purchased a hog of Bridget Bishop, testified to strange actions of that animal, and to his belief "that said Bishop had bewitched the sow." William Stacy swore that on his way to mill, " being gone about six rods from her, the said Bishop, with a small load in his cart, suddenly the off-wheel slumped, or sunk down into a hole upon plain ground ; that this deponent was forced to get one to help him to get the wheel out. Afterwards, this deponent went back to look for said hole, where his wheel sunk in, but could not find any hole." He also testified that on another occasion, "after he had passed by her, this deponent's horse stood still with a small load going up the hill ; so that the horse striving to draw, all his gears and tack- lings flew to pieces, and the cart fell down." John Louder, who lived with John Gedney, Sr., as a servant, gave lengthy testimony, includ- ing the following absurd declarations: "I, going to bed about the dead of the night, felt a great weight upon my breast, and, awakening, looked. and, it being hright moonlight, did clearly see Bridget Bishop, or her likeness, sitting upon my stomach, and, putting my arms off of the bed to free myself from the great oppression, she presently laid hold of my throat, and almost choked me, and I had no strength or power in my hands to resist or help myself; and in this condition she held me to almost day. Some time after that, I, being not very well, stayed at home on a Lord's Day ; and on the afternoon of said day, the doors being shut, I did see a black pig in the room coming towards me ; so I went towards it to kick it, and it vanished away." He also claimed that a " black thing " appeared to him, and assured him that if he would " be ruled by him he should want for nothing in this world." He brings Bridget Bishop into connection with this apparition, by affirming that just after its appearance to him he saw her, and, "seeing her, had no power to set one foot forward." John Bly, Sr., and Wil- liam Bly, a lad of fifteen, testified that in working in the removal of a cellar-wall of the house where Bridget Bishop lived, that they found " several puppets made up of rags and hogs' bristles, with headless pins in them, with the points outward."

Such is a fair sample of the loose and utterly unconvincing testimony on which this poor woman was convicted and executed in those dark days of 1692. It is but natural in these later days, to condemn en masse, at first thought, the actors in those terrible tragedies, hut more deliberate reflection, after a careful examination of the history of the affair as it comes down to us, tends to more charitable thoughts. We of to-day can form no definite iden of the feelings of the people who lived amidst those scenes. They were of Puritan stock, with the deepest reverence for their Maker, and a holy horror of neglecting to do all they were able to drive out any emissaries of the dark power that might oppose the right. Let us have only pity for those who were drawn into the whirlpool of public sentiment and publie action of the day, and charitable thoughts and free forgiveness for those who, evidently from some unexplained reason, sought to establish and per- petuate such horrible delusions.

Bridget Bishop was executed the week after her trial, and her death- warrant is the only one preserved. The original document is framed, and hangs in the office of the clerk of the courts, at Salem. The court re-assembled June 29, and tried and sentenced Sarah Good, Sarah Wildes, Elizabeth How, Susanna Martin, and Rebecca Nurse,

HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

and these were hanged July 19. Quite a general opposition occurred to the execution of the last named. Nathaniel Putnam, Sr., at the solicitation of Francis Nurse, husband of the condemned, wrote a defence of her character, and a similar document was drawn up for public approval. This was signed by thirty-nine of the towns-people.

It was customary, under order of the court, to canse an examination to be made of the entire bodies of the accused, that any " witch mark " on them might be found. Marshal Herrick, after examining George Jacobs, reported that he found a "witch teat " about a quarter of an inch long or better, with a sharp point drooping downwards, so that I took a pin, and run it through the said teat, but there was neither water, blood or corruption, nor any other matter. This was regarded as the " devil's mark," but it may readily be supposed that some infir- mity of the fleshi would be found on a man advanced in years as Jacobs was. ' These declarations were received in court as evidence. On Angust 5, George Burroughs, John Procter, Elizabeth Procter his wife, George Jacobs, Sr., John Willard, and Martha Carrier were tried and condemned. With the exception of Elizabeth Procter, they were executed August 19. Thirty-two inhabitants of Ipswich addressed a petition to the Court of Assistants, at Boston, in behalf of John Procter. This petition was headed by the Rev. John Wise, and the list of signers contained many of the best people of that town. Another document in his favor was presented, and in court evidence was offered to prove that one of the witnesses against him had sworn con- trary to what she had stated outside. These facts furnish evidence that the persecutions did not receive universal sanction and approval. A tradition exists to the effect that the body of George Jacobs was buried on his own farm, about a mile from the present city of Salem. Remains, undoubtedly his, were exhumed in 1864, and were re-interred in the same place.

The court sat again, the last time, on the 9th of September. On that day *Martha Corey, *Mary Easty, *Alice Parker, *Ann Pudeator, Dorcas Hoar, and Mary Bradbury were condemned and sentenced ; and on the 17th *Margaret Scott, *Wilmot Reed, *Samnel Wardwell, *Mary Parker, Abigail Faulkner, Rebecca Eames, Mary Lacy, Ann Foster, and Abigail Hobbs were also sentenced. [Those whose names are indicated by a star were executed on the 22d. ] By order of the governor, Sir William Phips, Abigail Faulkner, daughter of the Rev. Francis Dane, of Andover, was pardoned, having laid in jail under sentence of death for thirteen weeks. The reason assigned for the pardon (the only one granted during the proceedings ) was "insufficient evidence." The nineteen, who have been chronicled in the above brief narrative as suffering the death penalty, were the only ones who were executed ; for, though it was some time before the excitement died away, there was an abatement in its violence that saved the other con- demned persons suffering the sad fate of their neighbors and fellows. Without a single exception the executed protested their innocence to the very last, most of them making dying declarations on the scaffold. The hangings took place on a slight eminence, just removed from the town, and now known as Gallows Hill, from the sad tragedies whose final acts were enacted there. One of the most remarkable cases on record, of heroic perseverance and unbroken persistence, is that of Giles Corey, husband of one of the executed, himself in jail at Ipswich, charged with witchcraft. He determined that his lips should remain sealed when arraigned in court, and that he would not answer to the inquiry, "guilty or not guilty." There are no records of the proceedings taken by the court when the prisoner failed to answer, but tradition has it that he was crushed to death. In a field somewhere between Howard Street Cemetery and Brown Street, Salem, is the locality designated by Mr. Upham. It is related that Corey urged that the weight might be increased, for his death was the only way to end the matter, as he should not answer; and he did not. Not a word bordering on an acknowledgment of guilt, or an attestation of innocence, escaped his lips. He knew that death was the penalty, if he pleaded not guilty, and he would not confess to what he was inno-

cent of. This man was eighty-one years old ; and the barbarous death penalty inflicted on him by the officers of the law, tended to awaken the people to a realization of the terrible responsibility resting on them as a Christian community. Doubts began to be felt in the public mind as to the justice of the prosecutions, and the inevitable sentence and execution. But the delusion had not reached its end. The leaders in the prosecutions did not delay a new method of attempting to sustain the popular opinion in the course it had been running. The day after the death of Giles Corey, Thomas Putnam addressed a letter to Judge Sewall, reading as follows : "Last night, my daughter Ann was griev- ously tormented by witches, threatening that she should be pressed to death before Giles Corey ; but through the goodness of a gracious God she has had, at last, a little respite. Whereupon there appeared unto her (she said) a man in a winding-sheet, who told her that Giles Corcy had murdered him by pressing him to death with his fect; but that the devil there appeared unto him, and covenanted with him, and promised him that he should not be hanged. The apparition said God hardened his heart, that he should not hearken to the advice of the court, and so die an easy death ; because, as it said, it must be done to him as he has done to me. The apparition also said that Giles Corey was carried to the court for this, and that the jury had found the murder; and that her father knew the man, and the thing was done before she was born."

" This revelation" had some effect ; but the tide had turned, and the delusion was destined to die away as suddenly as it had appeared. The court adjourned the latter part of September, never to meet again. Though public opinion cannot be proved to have been the direct agent in causing the cessation of the prosecutions, yet it doubtless exerted a telling influence. Mr. Upham says that the sudden quieting down has been generally attributed to the fact that the "afflicted children " became over-confident of their power, and struck too high. Even the excited community could not tolerate hints against the Rev. Samuel Willard, the wife of the governor, and Mrs. Hale, the wife of the pastor of the Beverly flock. The latter's husband had heretofore acted with the accusers, but when the girls cried out against his wife, he took a noble stand in her behalf. The universal belief in the com- munity soon was that the girls at Dr. Parris's had perjured themselves, and as soon as this feeling became fixed in the public mind, the storm subsided. It is a wonder, perhaps, that the reaction did not lead to the prosecution, or at least to the moral arraignment of the "afflicted children," but it did not, no doubt fortunately, for the reign of blood had been full terrible enough. Sir William Phips, by his executive authority, divested the court of its power, and that legal ( ?) tribunal was stricken from the list of courts in the Colony. It was superseded by a new court known as the Superior Court of Judicature. Its judges were William Stoughton, chief justice, Thomas Danforth, John Richards, Wait Winthrop, and Samnel Sewall, associates. This court sat at Salem in January of 1693, and acquitted Rebecca Jacobs, Mar- garet Jacobs, Sarah Buckley, Job Tookcy, Hannah Tyler, Candy, a negro woman, Mary Marston, Elizabeth Johnson, Abigail Barker, Mary Tyler, Sarah Hawkes, Mary Wardwell, Mary Bridges, Hannah Post, Sarah Bridges, Mary Osgood, Mary Lacy, Jr., and condemned Sarah Wardwell, Elizabeth Johnson, Jr., and Mary Post. These three were not executed, however, being discharged by order of the governor in the following May. After this many others were tried, but all were acquitted, and the number released in May, 1693, was about one hundred and fifty. Two, Ann Foster and Sarah Osburn, had died in jail ; others may have, and probably did, and the fact not been handed down. Several had escaped from prison, and the whole number arrested and committed :nust have been several hundred, according to Mr. Upham's estimate. Those acquitted, or released by the governor, were obliged to pay all charges.

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Standard history of Essex county, Massachusetts, embracing a history of the county from its first settlement to the present time, with a history and description of its towns and cities. The Most historic county of America., Part 7

Author: Tracy, Cyrus M. (Cyrus Mason), 1824-1891, et al. Edited by H. Wheatland Publication date: 1878 Publisher: Boston, C. F. Jewett Number of Pages: 450

Author: Tracy, Cyrus M. (Cyrus Mason), 1824-1891, et al. Edited by H. Wheatland
Publication date: 1878
Publisher: Boston, C. F. Jewett
Number of Pages: 450