Sarah Good’s families, part 3

On 30 March 1672, William Good of Chelmsford was “warned for living from family government” (Middlesex Co.: Abstracts of Court Records 1643-1674, 2:144). Besides married people who deserted their spouses, this charge was given to single men and women of marriageable age who were not allowed to live alone because they could be tempted into unclean acts or ungodly behavior. That same year, Good’s minister’s rate was 1s 8d, and he owned no animals (Waters, History of Chelmsford, 617).

On 1 September 1674, Good was one of “Chelmsford’s able-bodied men” who purchased 1s 6d of gunpowder (Waters, 89). During King Philip’s War, he was recorded in Dedham as part of Capt. Mossely’s Company on 9 December 1675 (NEHGR 8:242). On 26 February 1677[/8?], the town of Chelmsford gave him 4 acres of land “to build a house on it to follow his trade” (Waters, 578). In 1682 and 1683, however, Good appears in the Andover Tax and Record Book.

Woo the widow?

The selectmen of Salem failed to secure widow Sarah (Solarte) Poole’s inheritance being held by her stepfather Ezekiel Woodward in Wenham, as demanded by the Essex County Court in June 1685. The skeptic in me wonders if that money may have been the incentive for bachelor William Good to meet Sarah. The couple married sometime after that court date but before 30 March 1686, when Good and his wife were sued for debt by John Cromwell—for Sarah and her late husband Daniel Poole’s November 1682 spending spree (his suit, her two petticoats, and yards of cloth).

The Court seized three acres in Thorndike’s meadow recently acquired from Woodward to satisfy judgment. Four months later, William Good sold what appears to be the last bit of Sarah’s inheritance, one and three-quarters of an acre of meadow in Wenham to Freeborn Balch for 5 pounds (EQC 9:579-580; Boyer & Nissenbaum’s SV Witchcraft 139-147).

About 1689, Sarah and William Good, “being destitute of a house to live in…they being poor,” boarded with Samuel and Mary Abbey in Salem Village until Sarah became “so turbulent a spirit, spiteful, and so maliciously bent” that the Abbeys turned them out of their house. Afterwards, Sarah behaved “very crossly and maliciously to them and their children, calling their children vile names and have threatened them often” (RSWH 423). Sarah also begged door to door, and was known for cursing and muttering, especially when she went away empty-handed.

On 29 February 1692, 38-year-old Sarah Good was one of the first to be charged with witchcraft that year. She was executed in Salem on 19 July 1692.

William and Sarah Good had the following children:

• Dorothy Good, born about 1687/8; died in New London, Connecticut, 7 August 1761. She was arrested for witchcraft 24 March 1692 and released 10 December 1692 upon recognizance paid by Samuel Ray.
• [female] Good, born in Salem Village 10 December 1691. As a suckling child, she was imprisoned with her mother Sarah and died before 2 June 1692 in Boston prison. (She was not born in prison and her first name is not recorded.)

William Good married second, Chebacco/Ipswich 7 June 1693, Elizabeth Drinker (1654-1729). He died shortly before 20 November 1714 when the Salem selectmen paid Salem Village 20 shillings for his funeral.

Continue to Part 4.

Missed a post? Sarah Good’s families: Part 1 Sarah Solart | Part 2 Sarah Poole | Part 3 Sarah Good | Part 4 William Good | Part 5 Dorothy Good (coming soon!)