Forces behind Salem witch trials

While Massachusetts Bay ministers were lamenting the lack of devotion to the Puritan ideal and dwindling numbers of covenanted members in the late 17th century, everyday people were struggling with forces beyond their control. Between 1645 and 1715, the Little Ice Age was wreaking havoc in the North Atlantic region, which already was one of the most climatically unstable areas in the world. Bitter cold winters and hot summers not only impacted farming but fishing as well. Two of the biggest exports in Mass Bay were wood and codfish. Crop failures and early frosts, unexpected livestock deaths, and smallpox ravaged many communities. On top of that, political instability without a charter, high taxes, and inflation cut deep at every economic level.

Also struggling to survive from territory loss, famine, and cultural clashes, the Wabanaki attacked villages on the edges of the frontier. They sometimes teamed up with the French, who had a different motive but the same agenda to banish the English settlers. The seas weren’t safe either, with prowling pirate ships ready to attack fully loaded vessels.

One family’s story

In 1629, John Higginson (1616-1708) arrived in Salem on the Talbot with his parents. John grew up to become a minister like his father and married a minister’s daughter in Guilford, Connecticut. In 1659, his family decided to sail from Connecticut to England, but bad weather caused the vessel to shelter at Salem, where his father had first built a congregation. Perhaps it was fate when the town asked him to preach there for a year. He never left, though his sons ventured to Barbados, England, Arabia, and the East Indies.

While his son Nathaniel flourished in the employ of the East India Company (living in London and Fort St. George, Madras, India), his family in Salem struggled. Letters could take a year or longer to find their intended recipients if they arrived at all, but we’re fortunate some of the Higginson letters survived.

Rev. John Higginson was not of the upper echelon of society—like Samuel Sewall who married the mint master’s daughter—but he made a comfortable living. With the arrival of Sir Edmund Andros and his new government in 1686, however, political instability and economic factors infringed upon Mass Bay lives, including Higginson’s. In one letter to son Nathaniel, he writes about his ministerial salary: “almost 500 pounds of arrears [are] due to me from the town since 1686 and I saw no hope of receiving it” in his lifetime.

Higginson letters

“The French and Indian war, with other calamities, have greatly impoverished, diminished, and brought low New England,” Rev. Higginson writes to son Nathaniel in India. As a father, he’s concerned about his son Col. John Higginson, who lives in Salem:

“By his singular prudence and industry, [John] had attained a competent estate; but by the misery of these times, he has met with great losses, by the French, &c.; and so put out of his way as to be disenabled from making any use of the fishing trade; and been worsted in his estate, I believe, above a thousand pounds: and yet he is a Major and a Justice of the Peace, and the show of public occasions lies much upon him.”

Col. John Higginson writes to his brother in 1697:

“In the year 1689, when the war first broke out, I had obtained a comfortable estate, being as much concerned in the fishing trade as most of my neighbors. But since that time, I have met with considerable losses; and trade has been much decayed. Of 60-odd fishing catches belonging to this town but about six are left. I believe that no town in this Province has suffered more by the war than Salem.”

And in 1699:

“The late war with France and the Indians, which held almost 10 years, has greatly impoverished this town; by which means my Father’s salary has been much abated…. The war has also damnified me, not only by losses, but by being put out of a way. I have had a pretty large family of my own, and relations; and the several places I have held in civil and military concerns, have taken up much of my time, and not been advantageous to my estate…. The marrying and settling my children has much abated my quick stock; though I have an estate in house and land, &c.”

Several times Nathaniel sends money to his family in Salem, but it doesn’t always arrive. In 1695, for example, “the ship being taken, the money was lost.” Col. John explains:

“At this time, there are many men in our gaol for piracy; namely, Captain Kidd, who went from England with a ship and commission to take pirates, but turned pirate himself, and robbed many ships in the East Indies, and thence came into the West Indies, and there disposed of much of his wealth; and at last came into these parts with some of his stolen goods; who was here seized, and some of his men, and goods, who are in irons, and wait for a trial. And there was one [Joseph] Bradish, a Cambridge man, who sailed in an interloper bound for India, who, in some parts of the East Indies, took an opportunity, when the captains and some of the officers were onshore, to run away with the ship, and came upon our coast, and sunk their ship at Block Island, and brought much wealth ashore with them; but Bradish, and one of his men, broke prison and run away against the Indians; but it is supposed that he will be taken again.”

In the end it’s all about survival

What’s curious about these letters is that there’s no mention of witchcraft or the devil among them in Salem, even though Rev. John Higginson’s daughter Ann Dolliver was accused in 1692. Unlike his colleague Rev. Nicholas Noyes (1647-1717), with whom he shared the pulpit in Salem, Rev. John Higginson had little involvement in the Salem witch trials. His mentions of Ann are all about survival, like what provisions he made for her (since she was abandoned by her husband and “crazed in her understanding”) and her three children, who were apprenticed to learn trades “whereby they may get a livelihood when grown up.”

Read more “Higginson Letters” from Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, series 3, Vol. 7, pp. 196-222.