Sophie Saint Thomas’ latest book* tackles reproductive rights, systemic injustices, and lack of bodily autonomy issues for women throughout the ages. According to an old medical papyrus, she writes, it’s been proven that ancient Egyptians used birth control and emmenagogues or abortifacients. Through withdrawal, suppositories, barrier methods, and nature’s own herbal pharmacy, earlier peoples learned by trial and error how to limit or encourage pregnancies as needed.
While misogyny certainly existed back then, it grew exponentially with the Roman Empire converting to Christianity—and controlled by (purportedly) celibate, cloistered men. After all, German monk Martin Luther (95 Theses) said “let [women] bear children to death. … They were created for that.” Although Catholic church policy was against birth control, some leaders like Saint Augustine of Hippo believed abortion was acceptable before a clearly human shape formed or the “ensoulment” of a fetus occurred.
For witches, Saint Thomas includes French midwife, abortion provider, and fortuneteller Catherine Monvoisin, who also provided deadly poisons and performed Black Masses for her clients. She was burned at the stake for witchcraft in 1680. In more modern times, Laurie Cabot (b. 1933) was designated the Official Witch of Salem in 1977 by the Massachusetts governor.
For witch hunts, Saint Thomas relies on Stacy Schiff’s The Witches: Salem 1692—a book lambasted by Jane Kamensky in the New York Times—causing her to repeat debunked information. For example, trial documents refer to Tituba as an Indian servant. After being released from jail, she disappears from the historical record yet later becomes known as Tituba the Black Witch of Salem. Saint Thomas says, “this indicates that she was associated with black magic … [but] it could also have a more straightforward explanation: her skin color.” Fifty years ago, Chadwick Hansen proved that Tituba’s metamorphosis from an Indian to a Black person occurred and was based on prevalent 19th-century racism, which in turn made Tituba the scapegoat for the Salem witch trials (New England Quarterly, March 1974).
For centuries, witches have been associated with Satan, since the (female) witch’s power comes from her pact with the (male) Devil. Between Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan and the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, Saint Thomas shows how wild ideas about devil-worshipping sex groups, Black Masses, and child sacrifices became rampant in the news. And that’s how the Christian right uses Americans’ fears to demonize any person or movement supporting reproductive rights.
Written in a pop-history style, Saint Thomas makes accessible 4,000 years of health care. With Roe v. Wade overturned in 2022, reproductive justice is on the ballot in 2024. The difference between the Republican and Democratic platforms are starkly different. As a reminder, Saint Thomas points out that Justice Samuel Alito cited 17th-century jurist Matthew Hale when announcing the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision: “Hale asserted that marital rape could not constitute a crime.” Your vote matters.
Thanks to Running Press for ARC.
*This book covers political issues, bodily autonomy, and religion framed within the historical and contemporary witch hunts context. It is a book review, not a political opinion piece.
In Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials, Marion Gibson argues that witch trials from the late Medieval period to today were motivated not by the Bible but by demonology.
In the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the 1641 Body of Liberties laws do draw from the Bible, including “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (KJV, Exodus 22:18). But devils were destructive forces frequently mentioned in witch trials. Demonology mostly focused on women—the weaker sex—succumbing to the forked-tongue lies of Satan’s minions. Misogyny was rampant, especially in male-dominated arenas like religion and government. Over the last 700 years, in fact, the most common trait of a witch was being female (though not all the accused were).
As Gibson discusses, German churchman and demonologist Heinrich Kramer (c. 1430-1505) failed in his first attempt to destroy the “witches” of Innsbruck, Austria. But afterwards, he wrote the exceptionally popular Malleus Maleficarum in 1487, also known as The Hammer of Witches. By 1600, about 45 demonology titles were published in Western Europe, including one by King James VI of Scotland (later James I of England). These books were widely circulated among churchmen, rulers, the upper classes, and scholars—including Judge William Stoughton and ministers Cotton Mather and Samuel Parris, all of whom influenced the Salem witch trials in 1692.
For the Salem story, Gibson focuses on “Tatabe,” Parris’ Indian servant who had a prominent but short-lived role early in the Salem witch trials. Under duress, Tituba (falsely) confessed to practicing witchcraft but was not executed, while the ones who claimed their innocence at trial were. Instead of the power of Tituba’s testimony and its many parallels to British witchcraft beliefs, Gibson concentrates on the hypothetical Arawak birth story from Elaine Breslaw’s Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem. Highlighting those parallels would have helped to debunk the voodoo myths surrounding Tituba, often told by misguided writers and tour guides who haven’t delved into the original records.
Thirteen Trials includes cases from Europe, Africa, and the Americas, covering a wide variety of situations, cultures, and time periods. It’s a fascinating read, with each history connected to the underlying premise of misogyny and violence against women.
Today, in Salem and elsewhere, “people who have redefined witchcraft and embraced the identity of ‘witch’” embody the medieval demonologists’ worst nightmares (ch. 13).
Dorothy Good had a little mark on her finger, perhaps a flea bite, that she attributed to a little snake her mother had given her. Instead of a sweet memory between Sarah Good and her child exploring the outdoor world, it prodded outcries of witchcraft.
Dorothy was only four years old. Her mother Sarah had been locked up in prison for witchcraft for weeks. And Dorothy was too young to understand some people considered her own words were tantamount to a confession of having an animal familiar, and would later judge her mother of a capital crime. Dorothy spent eight and a half months in jail before Samuel Ray paid a 50-pound recognizance bond for her release. She never faced trial, but losing her mother and the nightmare of those dark times had a profound effect on her mental health. In his 1710 petition for restitution, her father William Good declared that Dorothy, “being chained in the dungeon was so hardly used and terrified that she has ever since been very chargeable having little or no reason to govern herself.”
By 1699, William Good, his second wife Elizabeth, and daughter Dorothy were living with Lieut. Benjamin Putnam (1664-1715), who was compensated by the town for their expenses. By 1708, when she was of age, Dorothy’s name was recorded separately in the Salem Town Records, though she continued to live with the Putnams at least through 2 January 1716. Dorothy reappeared on record 5 September 1720, when she was “warned out of this town.” She didn’t leave. Instead, Dorothy lived in several villager households and occasionally in the House of Correction partway through 1738.
Rambling About
Dorothy Good disappears from the Salem records after 1738, though she turns up in the Bristol county, Massachusetts, court records the same year: “To the Constables of Swansey [Swansea]… Whereas Dorothy Good late of Beverly hath come to dwell in said Swansey the sixth day of July last … warn the abovesaid Dorothy Good to depart this town … August 23d, 1738.” (Some of her aunts and cousins lived in Beverly.)
Based on the records, it also appears Dorothy had three children. In the fall of 1720, the town paid Nathaniel Putnam “for 11 weeks keeping & nursing Dor[othy] Good … & child.” In November 1722, Benjamin Gillingham, late master of ye House of Correction, claimed 18 weeks for “keeping of Doro Good & for sireing.” Salem selectmen paid the town of Concord because in June 1725, Dorothy “strayed hence & lay’d in there of a bastard child.” In March 1727, Jonathan Batchelder agreed “to keep Doro Good at his house … and keep Doro Good from straying and rambling about as formerly.”
In August 1761, a newspaper article published by the New London News and picked up by other papers, including the New York Mercury, Boston News-Letter, Boston Evening Post, and New Hampshire Gazette reported: “Dorothy Good, a transient, vagrant person, was found dead in a bog meadow near New London last Friday [7 August 1761]…. As decent a burial was given her as the circumstances would admit.”
The uncommon name and the description fit Dorothy Good. Plus, the death notice was picked up by numerous newspapers in New England, suggesting a sort of notoriety beyond her poverty. With almost no doubt, this was the end of Dorothy Good, the poor little girl imprisoned for witchcraft in 1692.
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
William Good first appears in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, in 1672, when he was warned for not living under family government. This didn’t mean William had a tendency of wandering away from his home and family like Roger Toothaker (1634-1692). The Puritans had a neighborhood watch system whereby single men and women were prohibited from living alone in case they got into ungodly mischief. William was an “able-bodied man” who paid his minister’s rate, bought gunpowder, and then in December 1675 he joined Capt. Mossely’s military company in Dedham. Some time after he returned, in 1677, Chelmsford selectmen provided William with four acres of land to build a house and to follow his trade, expecting him to settle down and become a good citizen. He apparently did not, for in December 1682, he was living in Andover.
Several years later, William married the widow Sarah (Solart) Poole. It’s likely that he knew of Sarah’s 40-pound inheritance due from her father’s estate (but not her dead husband’s debts) before they married. After all, Sarah clearly suffered from melancholia and grief, being known for living in barns and outhouses, suffering from “extreme foolishness or incomposure of mind,” and incapable of taking care of herself—all strong reasons why not to wed! In late March 1686, William Good of Salem Village, weaver, sold his wife Sarah’s inherited land to Freeborn Balch. By 1692, he’s called a laborer, but William didn’t make enough money to secure his small family with food, shelter, and other essentials. Between the stresses of survival, the seeming lack of her own relatives’ compassion and support, hunger and probable mental illness, Sarah Good was a cantankerous woman. In December 1691, she gave birth to her second child, which made her situation more dire.
In February 1692, when asked to name the witches who caused their strange afflictions, the minister’s nine-year-old daughter Betty Parris and her 11-year-old cousin Abigail Williams pointed at Sarah Good. She must have been scary, unkempt—an outsider who was ungracious when receiving alms and belligerent when denied much-needed support. William quickly turned against her when he told the magistrates “he was afraid that she either was a witch or would be one very quickly.” Sarah Good was executed for witchcraft on 19 July 1692.
On 7 June 1693, William Good married Elizabeth Drinker, daughter of John and Elizabeth Drinker of Beverly. They had a son born 18 January 1695/6 in Salem Village, who died young.
Supporting the Goods
The selectmen paid local residents to house, feed, and clothe a destitute person or family. By 21 November 1699, William Good and his family were receiving help (again) from the town. On that date, Benjamin Putnam received £3 for the relief of William Good and family for the upcoming winter.
In 1712, the Massachusetts Bay Colony answered petitions to pay reparations to the victims or their families for expenses related to the Salem witch trials. William Good petitioned for “the damage sustained by him in the year 1692 by reason of the sufferings of his family upon the account of supposed witchcraft”: for his wife Sarah who was imprisoned and executed; a suckling child who died in prison; and daughter Dorothy who was imprisoned (RSWH, 871). Although William did not specify a specific amount—since he no doubt did not pay any jail fees (food, blankets, shackles, confinement)—his caretaker, Benjamin Putnam, received £30 on William’s behalf. The amount was higher than many others; it may have taken into account William’s situation and his long-term dependency on public funds.
William died before 20 November 1714, on which date the Salem selectmen gave “to our neighbors of the village 20 shillings towards Wm Good’s funeral.” His widow Elizabeth died, age 73, on 3 January 1728/9. The selectmen made a final payment to David Judd for keeping and caring for Elizabeth Good until her death.
updated 27 May 2024
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
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
After her father John died in June 1672, several events happened that affected Sarah Solarte’s life and her future. In December 1672, her mother Elizabeth became Ezekiel Woodward’s second wife. Her brother John, who had been in England, died by early 1675. Mother Elizabeth died on 3 February 1677/8, followed by 20-year-old brother Joseph in the fall of 1678. In 1679, stepfather Ezekiel married his third wife, Sarah. Woodward continued to live at the Solarte family’s inn and he still held onto their inheritances.
Sarah meets her match
On 27 June 1661, the Salem court bound six-year-old Daniel Poole* as an apprentice to John Rowden of Salem, planter, for fourteen and a half years (EQC 2:311). After his term was over, Daniel continued to live with the Rowdens, who had no children of their own. Daniel even pledged to take care of Rowden’s wife after John’s death. In his will, dated 21 April 1682, John Rowden gave most of his estate to “Daniel Poole who hath been brought up by me from his childhood being mine by adoption and given me by his natural parents” (EQC 9:127).
By the fall of 1682, the courtship between Sarah Solarte and Daniel Poole was in full swing. On 1 November 1682, the couple went on a spending spree, charging—on John Cromwell of Salem’s account—kersey, canvas, serge, and other materials, plus a suit of clothes for him and two petticoats for her. For Sarah, it must have been a thrill to have someone lavish attention and gifts on her.
Perhaps in expectation of upcoming nuptials for sister Sarah, the Solarte sisters (and husbands) asked the Court on 30 November 1682 to divide their dead brother Joseph’s share of their father’s estate. Also filed but undated was another petition that must have been written for the March 1683 court held in Ipswich, based on the line: “your honors have declared at the last court at Salem that his portion shall be divided amongst us.” This second document more forcefully claimed, “Ezekiel Woodward that married with our mother did refuse to enter into any obligation to pay our portions.” In fact, “our sister Sarah the wife of Daniel Poole, she is now 28 years of age and she is yet without her portion.” At issue was the need for a legal instrument to require Woodward to comply to the ruling on the earlier case.
From these two petitions, we know Sarah Solarte married Daniel Poole after 30 November 1682 and before the Court convened on 27 March 1683.
Sarah’s sorrows
On 12 October 1683, John Rowden wrote a second will. This time he left his estate to Nathaniel Felton Sr. of Salem, who was to keep and provide for wife Mary Rowden (EQC 9:127). The change was made because, by that date, Daniel Poole had died. To confirm it, in the next action against Ezekiel Woodward in November 1683, Sarah is referred to as the widow of Daniel Poole.
The loss was too much for Sarah. After Daniel’s death, “Sarah disposed of his whole estate, viz., a horse, two cows, and all his moveables.” John Price, speaking for the selectmen of Salem to the Court, declared Sarah Poole, widow, formerly of Wenham, “was not capable of governing herself, but either through extreme foolishness or incomposure of mind, exposed herself to hazard and suffering, lodging in barns and outhouses, without anything to relieve her necessities. Being informed that there was an estate of 40 pounds belonging to her in Wenham, they requested that someone be appointed to take care of the estate and also have charge of her person that she be kept in good order, for they thought that the town should not be charged with it, so long as she had an estate of her own.”
In response, “the Court considering the motion of the selectmen of the town of Salem relating to Sarah Poole, widow, finding that she not capable of providing for herself or improving what belonged to her, ordered the selectmen to dispose of her both for employment and maintenance and also to take into their hands what belongs to her in Wenham or elsewhere and sell or otherwise dispose of it for her use” (EQC 9:486-487).
Instead of being a dependent of her stepfather Ezekiel Woodward in Wenham or living with a sibling, Sarah became a ward of Salem.
Sarah and Daniel had no children.
*Daniel Poole may be the son of William Poole. At the general town meeting in Salem on 1 March 1655/6, a William Poole petitioned to become a resident but he was denied (Salem Town Records 1:156). Other men named Poole do not seem to fit, including the well-to-do John Poole of Lynn, though an unrecorded man is possible too.
Continue to Part 3.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
On 29 February 1691/2, two warrants signed by magistrates John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin put into motion the Salem witch trials. Sarah Good was on one warrant, while Sarah Osborne and Tituba were on the other. The three women had one thing in common: villagers questioned their belief in the Puritan faith. Sarah Good, the beggar, insulted “the godly” who gifted her with alms. Sarah Osborne, bedridden for 14 months, skipped religious services. Tituba, the Indian servant of Rev. Samuel Parris, probably came from Barbados so who knew what islanders believed. However, their stories ended three different ways: Sarah Osborne died in the Boston jail on 10 May 1692; Sarah Good was hanged for witchcraft 19 July 1692; and Tituba was released from jail sometime after the 9 May 1693 grand jury declined to convict her for covenanting with the devil.
Several notable items in the Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt include: William Good saying he feared his wife was a witch due to her bad carriage to him; Sarah’s siblings neither testifying for or against her; and Samuel and Mary Abbey testifying that the Good family lived with them because they were “destitute of a house to dwell in” but it didn’t last long because Sarah was “so turbulent a spirit, spiteful, and so maliciously bent” that the Abbeys had to kick the family out (p. 423).
By studying her birth family and two marriages, we learn much about Sarah’s temperament before she was accused of witchcraft, and what may have led her to being one of the first accused.
Solarte family
Sometimes called “Frenchman,” Sarah’s father John Solarte purchased a house and 10 acres of land in Wenham in 1652, where he became an ordinary keeper. It was a lucrative business. In the spring of 1672, however, John declared his will before two men because “I being often troubled with fainting fits and do apprehend I have not long to live.” On 24 June 1672, John drowned—by suicide, according to a jury of inquest. His estate was worth 500 pounds, and was divided 165 pounds to the widow; 84 pounds to son John; two daughters already had their shares; and 42 pounds to each of the other six children—including Sarah.
Widow Elizabeth Solarte married six months later to widower Ezekiel Woodward (1625-1699), who took up the ordinary license and held onto his stepchildren’s inheritance even after his wife Elizabeth died and he had remarried.
John Solarte, born say 1625, died in Wenham 24 June 1672 (recorded as “John Soolard, Frenchman”). He married about 1650 to Elizabeth (–), who was born say 1630 and died in Wenham 3 February 1677/8. Elizabeth married second, Wenham 20 December 1672, Ezekiel Woodward (1625-1699). He married first, about 1650, Ann Beamsley (1633-1671), and third, in 1679, to Sarah, widow of Nathaniel Piper.
John and Elizabeth (–) Solarte’s children were:
Mary Solarte, d. bef. 30 November 1682 when husband claimed her portion of father’s estate for her heirs; m. Beverly May 1666 John Edwards (c. 1644-1697), son of Rice Edwards.
Elizabeth Solarte m. c. 1672 Joseph Lovett (b. 1650), son of John and Mary Lovett. Lived in Beverly.
Sarah Solarte b. c. 1654; d. Salem 19 July 1692 hanged as a witch; m1. 1682 Daniel Poole; m2. William Good.
John Solarte, mariner, d. betw. 26 Sept. 1672 (will, EPR 25862) and 1 Sept. 1675 (wife’s remarriage) m. bef. Sept. 1672 Sarah Cocke (1655-1739). Lived in England.
Hannah Solarte, b. 1658; d. Lexington 12 April 1722; m. c. 1681 John Trask of Beverly (d. 1735).
Joseph Solarte, b. c. 1658, d. bef. 3 March 1679 (inventory, Early EPR 3:294), unmarried. In November 1682, his siblings petitioned the court for their shares of his estate.
Martha Solarte, b. Wenham 25 Aug. 1659; m. c. 1680 Thomas Kilham (1654-1725), son of Corp. Daniel Kilham (d. 1700) and Mary Safford.
Abigail Solarte, b. Wenham 15 Aug. 1664; d. 1741-1742; m. Beverly 10 Nov. 1681 Mordecai Larcom (1658-1717), son of Mordecai Larcom (d. 1713) and Elizabeth.
Bethia Solarte, b. Wenham 28 Feb. 1666, d. Wenham 4 Aug. 1729; m. Beverly 21 April 1684 John Herrick of Beverly (b. 1662), son of Ephraim Herrick (1638-1693) and Mary Cross.
Continue to Part 2. 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
On January 11, 2023, the Peabody Essex Museum turned over 527 original documents from the 1692 Salem witchcraft trials to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Archives in Boston. Owned by the Commonwealth, these documents had been on deposit with the Phillips Library since 1980.
In 1980, the entire collection of the records in the colonial Essex County Court Archive, from 1636 to 1800, moved from the basement of the Salem Superior Court building into the care of the renowned Essex Institute in Salem, Massachusetts. Ellen Mark, manuscript librarian at the Essex Institute, described the courthouse in an AP news story in December 1980 as “a typical old building basement, complete with dripping heating pipes. It was a very poor place to store old documents.”
Fortunately, the Salem witchcraft trials records were still in their scrapbooks, on display upstairs. Upon being deposited at the Essex Institute, the two scrapbooks were disassembled, de-acidified in alkaline baths, and earlier hinges used to mount them in the albums were carefully removed. A minimal amount of conservation work was done to support their physical integrity, aside from being ironed flat. In January 1982, the records went to the Northeast Document Conservation Center in Andover to be microfilmed.
Afterwards, the Essex Institute—whose collection concentrated its focus on local history, genealogy, and art—hosted the exhibit Salem Witchcraft: Documents of an Early Colonial Drama (June 1 to Oct. 31, 1982). In addition to a selection of original documents, the exhibit included George Jacobs Sr.’s cane and John Procter’s brass sundial, which were owned by the Institute. Admission was $1.50. The first item listed in all newspaper promotions was that “original documents of the Salem witch trials” could be seen at the Essex Institute by the public.
At the tercentenary of the Salem witchcraft trials in 1992, the Essex Institute opened the Days of Judgment exhibit in Plummer Hall, which included 33 documents and some of the objects in its collections related to people involved in the 1692 trials. That same year, the Essex Institute and the Peabody Museum merged to become the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM).
Direct access to the Phillips Library collections was in a reading room in Daland House, where I first started my own research, in what I recall as a tiny, dim room with only a few tables. In 1997, the library closed for nine months for a “massive restoration project, including climate control and modern archival storage” (PEM press release). In May 1998, the reading room reopened next door on the second floor of Plummer Hall: “Lined with columns and illuminated by chandeliers, it manages to be both formal and comfortable. The room is right out of the 19th century, complete with antique globe, oil paintings of Saltonstalls on the walls, and busts of Peabodys framing the door,” according to a January 14, 1999, article in the Boston Globe. On the first floor, the Essex Institute also featured a small display, The Real Witchcraft Papers “permanent exhibit,” with the canes, sundial, and a few original documents, including the warrant to arrest my ancestor Rebecca Nurse.
Transcriptions in process
In the 2000s, our team for Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt visited these documents frequently, working on making the most accurate transcriptions of them that we could, correcting a variety of previous errors in Boyer and Nissenbaum’s Salem Witchcraft Papers (1977), and including 71 more documents previously uncollected. Published in 2009, Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt was part of a National Endowment for the Humanities grant that also supported a website at the University of Virginia, where a hypertext version of Salem Witchcraft Papers and digitized images from the 1982 microfilm could be accessed by anyone online. The website reduced the demand for access to the original documents, which was better in general for the integrity documents—but if one wanted to consult them, it was still possible.
From left: Marilynne K. Roach, Bernard Rosenthal, Margo Burns, Richard Trask, and Benjamin Ray, editors of Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, working at the Phillips Library in Plummer Hall, June 2005.
On November 24, 2011, the Phillips Library again closed for “preservation and renovation work on Plummer Hall and Daland House (expected completion 2013).” That meant the entire collection—42,000 linear feet of historical documents—was moving off-site to a temporary location, where PEM announced there would still be access to the records until the work was completed. At this time, Elizabeth Bouvier, from the Supreme Judicial Court Archives, collected the 150-shelf-feet of the colonial court documents—still folded in docketed bundles, tied with string—but again, not the witchcraft trials documents. The word—whether true or not—was that out of deference to Salem, the witchcraft trials documents belonged in Salem and so they would stay.
Time wore on, and the off-site location remained a mystery, concerning a lot of us. More than 20 months later, the temporary location opened August 1, 2013, in an industrial building in the next town of Peabody. Although access was once again possible, the stark white walls and absence of windows had none of the charm of the resplendent reading room in Plummer Hall.
In 2015, Peabody Essex Museum announced a “$20 million renovation and improvement of PEM’s Phillips Library … housed in two noted 1850s architectural treasures, the John Tucker Daland House and Plummer Hall, both of which are being renovated by Schwartz/Silver Architects.”
What wasn’t clear to the public, of course, is the hard work that was happening behind the scenes: The entire collection of the Phillips Library was now physically on a single level, and the re-organization of the materials—which had at least four different cataloging systems—was under way, to produce what a 2017 press release would call “a consistent catalog of the entire Library collection and to make the catalog of the collection accessible online.” PEM’s website announced that the temporary location was going to be closed another six months (Sept. 1, 2017 through March 31, 2018), to move to the “new location,” which was assumed to be back in Salem.
Rumors bring people together
At a public meeting of the Salem Historical Commission on December 6, 2017, the architectural firm of Schwartz/Silver, with Bob Monk and Phillip Johns of the Peabody Essex Museum, submitted an application for renovations to Plummer Hall and Daland House. They revealed that the Museum had “no current plans to move the library collections back into this building.” The size of the growing collection was already twice as large as the capacity of the Stacks, but also that it was “not code compliant for staff use.” The cost would be enormous.
This was news. Everything that the public had heard before was that the two buildings were going to be renovated and the collection would be returning there. What was going on? It turned out that the plan was to move the Phillips Library holdings to PEM’s new Collection Center in Rowley, a building that had once been a toy factory and was now being re-fitted to store items from PEM’s vast collections in a climate-controlled space. The plan to move the library holdings away from Salem upset a lot of people, and the witchcraft documents were the prime example held up of why people felt the library needed to be IN SALEM.
Frankly, it was a public relations fiasco that did not have to happen. CEO Dan Monroe did little to help the situation at a hastily called public forum in the atrium of the Peabody Essex Museum on January 11, 2018, which attracted “hundreds of people” working in the tourist industry, local academics, historians, and lovers of Salem, according to the Boston Globe coverage of the event. Monroe told the Globe, “There was an expectation by a number of people that we had a responsibility to consult with them about what would be done with the Phillips collection. That’s an expectation that we didn’t particularly share or understand.” Clearly. Donald Friary, Salem resident and President of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, summed up the biggest issue: “No one in Salem knew this was happening. No one knew that they were looking for other sites… There is a very high level of mistrust.”
It seemed like Monroe was there to just show up and just get through the evening and keep doing what he had already planned anyway. There were heated exchanges. Monroe explained that it was going to be impossible to redo the buildings, and that the existing archival storage addition was deemed unsound and really was “condemned.” The audience offered many suggestions and questioned why different options had not been considered. Monroe just stood there and took it, looking impatient and petulant as he did, rebuffing it all. There was a claim that the witchcraft documents had “all been digitized” and were at the website. This was not entirely accurate: At that time only the 30 documents owned by the Phillips Library had been digitized.
Monroe was quoted in the Boston Globe stating, “History doesn’t reside in a specific state or a specific set of documents.” Except that when it comes to the Salem witchcraft trials, history is all about that place and those original documents.
Bottom line: Had Monroe been transparent ahead of time and let the public know that there turned out to be a severe structural problem with the building and PEM was very concerned about how to best preserve and protect such an important historical collection, things could have gone smoother. Yes, there still would have been lots of public discussions and sundry opinions, but with a shared goal of figuring out what was best for the collection—even though the final decision would always be PEM’s.
The newly formed group, “Save the Phillips Library,” collected over 5,000 signatures on a petition at change.org, appealing to Monroe not to move the collection out of Salem, but in vain. In July 2018, four months longer than originally announced, the Collection Center (recently renamed the James B. and Mary Lou Hawkes Collection Center) opened with great fanfare, with PEM-hired buses taking people on the 15-miles-plus drive from Salem to Rowley that weekend. Finally, the new Reading Room was available to researchers again. The collection was in an excellent state of organization and preservation. Although the room had windows, it had all the atmosphere of an open-plan industrial office, despite being designed by Schwartz/Silver. Access was restored.
All disputes about the move were resolved by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on October 20, 2020, when it ruled in the case of Peabody Essex Museum v. Maura Healey, Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, that the relocation was “consistent with equitable deviation from the terms of the founding statutes establishing the Essex Institute, an organizational forebearer of PEM,” but, even now, as a recent article in The Salem News observed, “there’s still lingering feelings back home from local historians over the Phillips Library’s distance from Salem.”
Reparations
Dan Lipcan, PEM’s Head Librarian since 2019, gets it, telling the Boston Globe in 2020, “The move to Rowley was very hurtful to people. One of the charges when I arrived was, ‘You need to repair relations with the community.’”
After years of ignoring its local history archival and artifacts collections, PEM opened its rotating Salem Stories and Highlights from the Phillips Library exhibits. In PEM’s main gallery, the Salem Witchcraft Trials 1692 exhibit opened, featuring the original documents in exquisite public displays, along with associated historical objects. Even with COVID rules keeping people six feet apart, the witchcraft exhibit drew thousands of visitors during its six-month run (Sept. 26, 2020–April 4, 2021).
In 2021, the Salem Witchcraft Trials: Reckoning and Reclaiming exhibit cross-curated original documents with a gown by fashion designer Alexander McQueen from his 2007 collection inspired by his ancestor, “Memory of Elizabeth How, 1692,” plus selections from photographer Frances F. Denny’s series Major Arcana: Portraits of Witches in America (Sept. 18, 2021–March 20, 2022). There was something for everyone, including a board for visitors to post their own thoughts and responses to what had happened in 1692.
Then in 2022, there was the surprise pop-up exhibit, The Salem Witchcraft trials: The Towne Sisters with more original documents about the cases of sisters Rebecca Nurse, Mary Esty, and Sarah Cloyse (Sept. 10, 2022–Nov. 28, 2022). This small exhibit was featured in the Phillips Library rotating exhibits space at PEM.
Meanwhile, the entire collection of the Salem witchcraft trials documents on deposit at Phillips Library has been professionally scanned and indexed on its website, paired with references to the transcriptions in Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt. Plus, if you missed any of the witchcraft trials exhibitions at PEM, you can select the exhibitions at the website—including the 1992 one—to see what was in each, along with photos of all these installations.
With the recent expansion and modernization of the Massachusetts Archives facility in Boston, the Supreme Judicial Court called for the return of the Salem witchcraft trials documents to the Judicial Archives. This was done in January 2023 at a ceremony at the Massachusetts State Archives with Peabody Essex Museum CEO Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, Director of the Phillips Library Dan Lipcan, Judicial Court Chief Justice Kimberly Budd, and Essex County Clerk-Magistrate Thomas Driscoll. PEM also presented another 30 Salem witchcraft records from the Phillips Library’s own collection to the Archives, from donations it had received over the years.
In an article in the Salem News, Hartigan said, “PEM is committed to telling the story of these events through exhibitions, lectures, and public programs as well as by making reproductions of the Salem Witch Trial documents available to the public on our website.” Driscoll summed it up about the documents, “These things belong to the people. I think it’s the right place for them to go.”
These 1692 witchcraft trials documents are now at the Massachusetts Judicial Archives located in the Massachusetts Archives building at Columbia Point in Boston. They are not the only original records from the witchcraft trials. More are in the Massachusetts Archives, as well as the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Boston Public Library, and a few at various historical societies and libraries.
This post is a part of a more detailed presentation on the history of all the witchcraft manuscripts, to be presented at History Camp Boston 2023, on August 12, 2023, at the Suffolk Law School in Boston.
Many thanks to the numerous people who kindly answered my questions and made connections for me during my research: Dan Lipcan and Jennifer Hornsby (Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum), Michael Comeau (Massachusetts State Archives), Donna Segar and Emerson Baker (Salem State University), Marilynne K. Roach, and Robin Mason, who sent me down this path.
On 25 May 2023, the Connecticut General Assembly approved the Resolution Exonerating the Women and Men Convicted for Witchcraft in Colonial Connecticut. The resolution reads:
“WHEREAS, the courts in the early British colonies of Connecticut and New Haven indicted at least thirty-four women and men for the alleged crimes of witchcraft and familiarities with the devil and convicted twelve of them, executing eleven, and it is now accepted by the historical profession and society as a whole that all the accused were innocent of such charges, and
“WHEREAS, legal procedures differed at the time and many practices of the Colonial courts would not meet modern American standards of proof, so that the miscarriage of justice was facilitated by such procedures, and
“WHEREAS, the status of women was radically different than it is today, and misogyny played a large part in the trials and in denying defendants their rights and dignity, and
“WHEREAS, community strife and panic combined with overwhelming fear and superstition led to these accusations of alleged witchcraft and the subsequent suffering of those accused.
“NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that all of the formally convicted and executed are absolved of all crimes of witchcraft and familiarities with the devil. The legislature specifically absolves the following people believed to have been convicted and executed for the crimes of witchcraft and familiarities with the devil: Alice Young in 1647, Mary Johnson in 1648, Joan Carrington in 1651, John Carrington in 1651, Goodwife Bassett in 1651, Goodwife Knapp in 1653, Lydia Gilbert in 1654, Mary Sanford in 1662, Nathaniel Greensmith in 1663, Rebecca Greensmith in 1663, and Mary Barnes in 1663; and one Elizabeth Seager convicted and reprieved in 1665.
“BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that those who were indicted for the crimes of witchcraft and familiarities with the devil, forced to flee, banished or even acquitted continued to live with their reputations destroyed and their family names tarnished, will have their reputations restored and no longer have disgrace attached to their names, now, being in good standing in the state of Connecticut. The following indicted for the crimes of witchcraft and familiarities with the devil who were not convicted but still suffered greatly after indictments were: Goodwife Bailey in 1655, Nicholas Bailey in 1655, Elizabeth Godman in 1655, Elizabeth Garlick in 1658, Margaret Jennings in 1661, Nicholas Jennings in 1661, Judith Varlet in 1662, Andrew Sanford in 1662, William Ayers in 1662, Judith Ayers in 1662, James Wakely in 1662, Katherine Harrison in 1668 and 1669, William Graves in 1667, Elizabeth Clawson in 1692, Hugh Crosia in 1692, Mercy Disborough in 1692, Mary Harvey in 1692, Hannah Harvey in 1692, Mary Staples in 1692, Winifred Benham in 1697, and Winifred Benham Jr. in 1697.
“BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the State of Connecticut apologizes to the descendants of all those who were indicted for the crimes of witchcraft and familiarities with the devil, convicted and executed and for the harm done to the accused persons’ posterity to the present day, and acknowledges the trauma and shame that wrongfully continued to affect the families of the accused.”
A few of my short reviews of witch trial-related books, both fiction and nonfiction.
Nonfiction
Death in Salem: The Private Lives behind the 1692 Witch Hunt by Diane E. Foulds. Victims, accusers, clergy, judges, the elite all receive a 1-to-3-page biography. Author used a lot of secondary sources, some of which have been updated by other witch-hunt experts and genealogists, and she didn’t track that. The bios read like stories. No source citations for facts or conclusions, so not useful as a resource book.
Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt by Bernard Rosenthal, et al. Painstakingly transcribed by experts in their field, RSWH includes all 977 Salem witch trial records known to exist in all known repositories. It easily surpasses the Boyer and Nissenbaum Salem-Village Witchcraft transcriptions. If you’re serious about the Salem witch trials, this book is a must-have. Plus, the first 100 pages with the general introduction, legal procedures, and principles (linguistical, editorial, and chronological) behind the project are not to be skipped. My much-used copy is always within reach.
Witch-Hunt: Mysteries of the Salem Witch Trials by Marc Aronson. Young Adult (YA) title that succinctly explains the events of 1692 and reviews the various theories and books written on the subject. I often recommend this book to people who are learning about the Salem witch trials.
Fiction
Conversion by Katherine Howe. The high-pressure, competitive life of senior girls at a posh private school manifests itself into physical illnesses, much like the 1692 outbreak in Salem Village. I really enjoyed this book.
Deliverance from Evil by Frances Hill. Deliverance from Evil is an interesting yet frustrating novel centered on accused witch George Burroughs and his third wife Mary. Author Frances Hill admits she “invented [Mary’s] story, personality, and appearance. The part of the novel concerning her journey from Salem to Albany is pure fiction, as is the relationship between her and Peter White.” (And Peter White is a totally made up character.) Having written several nonfiction books on the Salem witch trials, I’d expect Hill to have done better research. Years before she wrote this book, well-respected genealogist David L. Greene discovered George Burroughs and wife Mary had a daughter Mary (b. 1690-1692) and after his death, his widow married (second) Boston, 13 July 1693, Michael Homer, and married (third) Cambridge, 5 February 1699/1700, Christopher Hall Jr. (The American Genealogist, January 1980). So much for the fictional Peter White and their happy ending!
The Heretic’s Daughter by Kathleen Kent. My top recommendation for fiction is this richly detailed, historical novel on the life of accused witch Martha Carrier. Well written and researched. In the end, you’ll wish that little red book was real.
The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry. Set in Salem, this is one of those books where I reached the end and I wanted to read it again, immediately.
The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe. This book answers the question: What if some of the accused were witches during the Salem Witch Trials? (BTW, they weren’t!) I really enjoyed this book. But I was disappointed that the author decided to change history and have Deliverance hanged with the other witches. In real life, she was released from prison and survived.
Tituba: The Intentional Witch of Salem by Dave Tamanini. Since Rev. Parris’ servant, Tituba, was Native American—not Black as portrayed in this book—I couldn’t get past that fact, especially for a book published in 2020. Curiously, this novel won an award from the Afro American Historical and Genealogical Society.
The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare. Reading this Newbery Award-winning novel again, I was struck by the stark differences between Kit Tyler’s life in Barbados compared to hers in Connecticut: The colors, the beautiful and stylish clothing, the sunny attitude and freedom of island life compared to the austere, forboding disapproval of the countryfolk. It made me think: How did Samuel Parris adjust as he moved from Barbados to Boston and Salem? This story is vibrant with 17th-century details, memorable characters, and swirling accusations.
