Category: History

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For almost 10 years, Thomas Carrier lived unobtrusively in Billerica, Massachusetts. And then he met Martha—and his life dramatically changed.

In May 1674, 47-year-old “Thomas Carrier, vulgarly called Thomas Morgan, of Billerikey” confessed to fornication with Martha Allen, daughter of Andrew Allen of Andover, in the Middlesex Court. Old Mrs. Johnson, midwife of Woburn, admitted she examined Martha, while Elizabeth Chamberlain, George Chamberlain, and John Drinker served as witnesses. The couple married and their first child Richard was born two months later.

Settling into married life was a struggle though. Before Richard’s second birthday, “the [Billerica] selectman ordered the constable to give notice to Thomas Carrier, alias Morgan, Welchman, that the town was not willing he should abide here, as an inhabitant, and that he forthwith depart with his family, or give such security as shall be to the content of the selectmen on peril of 20 shillings per week, while he abide without leave, first had and obtained, which is according to the ancient town order amongst us.” The Carriers remained in town.

In the fall of 1677, their prospects improved. Thomas and his man were assigned to cut brush in the southeast part of Billerica. The following February, he took the oath of fidelity to the government of Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1679, Thomas paid the third highest taxes (9 shillings) in Billerica after Captain Jonathan Danforth (9 s. 10 d.) and Job Lane (13 s.).

Their family grew. With two teenage boys (Richard, b. 1674; Andrew, b. 1677), three children under 9 (Thomas, b. 1682; Sarah, b. 1684; Hannah, b. 1689), and one infant buried (Jane, b. 1680), life was hard. Thomas didn’t have any relatives in Massachusetts Bay. Martha’s sister Mary, who also lived in Billerica, had “many things amiss in [her] family,” according to the selectmen, and her husband, Dr. Roger Toothaker, had a habit of wandering off and forgetting about his family. Plus Martha’s parents, Andrew and Faith (Ingalls) Allen of Andover, were getting older.

The Carriers moved to Andover in the summer or early fall of 1690. Although Martha grew up in the town, the Andover selectmen “took care when [the Carriers] first came to town to warn them out again and have attended the law therein.” (A “warning out” gave notice that the town would not be held liable for their support, even if the family remained in town.)

By mid-October Martha “and some of her children [were] smitten with that contagious disease, the smallpox.” In a notice dated 14 October 1690 and sent to Samuel Holt, Andrew Allen, and John Allen, the selectmen wanted to make sure the Carriers “do not spread the distemper with wicked carelessness, which we are afraid they have already done: You had best take what care you can about them, nature and religion requiring it.”

On 4 November 1690, the selectmen wrote to Walter Wright, constable: “Whereas it has pleased God to visit those of the widow Allen’s family which she hath taken into her house with that contagious disease the smallpox, it being as we think part of our duty to prevent the spreading of said distemper we therefore require you in their Majesties’ names to warn said family not to go near any house so as to endanger them by said infection nor to come to the public meeting till they may come with safety to others: but what they want let them acquaint you with: which provide for them out of their own estates.”

The Carriers survived smallpox. Unfortunately, Martha’s Allen-Ingalls family was not so lucky. All 10 people who died of the disease in Andover* were related to Martha:

  • 24 Oct. 1690: Andrew Allen Sr., Martha’s father
  • 26 Nov. 1690: Andrew Allen Jr., Martha’s brother
  • 26 Nov. 1690: John Allen, Martha’s brother
  • 9 Dec. 1690: Francis Ingalls, Martha’s cousin
  • 13 Dec. 1690: James Holt, Martha’s sister Hannah’s son
  • 14 Dec. 1690: James Holt, Martha’s sister Hannah’s husband
  • 18 Dec. 1690: Thomas Allen, Martha’s brother Andrew’s son
  • 22 Dec. 1690: Sarah (Holt) Marks, sister of Martha’s two Holt brothers-in-law
  • 25 Dec. 1690: Mercy (Peters) Allen, Martha’s brother John’s widow
  • 15 Jan. 1690/1: Stephen Osgood, Martha’s uncle Henry Ingalls’ brother-in-law

The townspeople may have wondered how Martha could survive smallpox when it killed her father, two brothers, two nephews, and five close relations. They may not have known the virus spread through coughing or sneezing as well as touching clothing or bedding that comes in contact with the sores. Nursing the sick—as “nature and religion” required—put the entire household at risk. But that’s what families do.

Fortunately, by isolating the Carriers and their kin, the selectmen kept smallpox from spreading throughout Andover. Yet it’s clear they blamed Martha Carrier for bringing the deadly disease to Andover. Records, however, show the three smallpox deaths in Billerica happened late in December 1690, months after the Carriers left. Two of those deaths were the brother and niece of John Rogers’ first wife, Mary Shedd (1647-1688).

Not surprisingly, when rumors of witchcraft swirled in Andover, people looked suspiciously at Martha Carrier.

In 1692, John Rogers of Billerica deposed against Martha Carrier, claiming seven years prior his three cows went missing or stopped providing milk. Why? He said, “Martha Carrier was the occasion of those ill accidents by means of witchcraft, [she] being a very malicious woman.” He didn’t mention smallpox.

On 19 August 1692, Martha (Allen) Carrier was executed for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts. She was not a witch.

*A few other deaths may be attributed to smallpox but are not labeled as such in the Andover vital records. No data exists for how many Andover residents had smallpox and survived.

For more about Martha (Allen) Carrier, I highly recommend the historical novel The Heretic’s Daughter by Kathleen Kent.

Notes:

See also: Smallpox in Massachusetts Bay 1689-1692 (my blog at Genealogy Ink)

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On 28 July 2022, Elizabeth Johnson Jr. was officially exonerated by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for the crime of witchcraft.

During the Salem witch trials, Andover neighbors and afflicted accusers claimed 22-year-old Elizabeth Johnson Jr. was a witch. At her examinations on August 10-11, 1692, Elizabeth confessed to signing the Devil’s book, participating in a mock sacrament, and afflicting numerous people. On 5 January 1693, the grand jury indicted her for afflicting Ann Putnam Jr. Elizabeth was convicted of witchcraft less than a week later. Fortunately, Governor William Phips gave a temporary reprieve to several condemned witches, including Elizabeth, shortly before their execution date (RSWH, pp. 541, 543-544, 771-772, 811).

However, those convicted of a capital crime lost their civil rights and liberties. On 13 September 1710, Francis Johnson petitioned for restitution for his sister Elizabeth Johnson Jr. He also submitted a claim for 3 pounds for providing Elizabeth with provisions during her six-month imprisonment. His request was noted but ignored.

In 1711, a Reversal of Attainder nullified all witch trial judgments against George Burroughs, John Proctor, George Jacobs, John Willard, Giles Corey, Martha Corey, Rebecca Nurse, Sarah Good, Elizabeth How, Mary Easty, Sarah Wildes, Abigail Hobbs,* Samuel Wardwell, Mary Parker, Martha Carrier, Abigail Faulkner,* Ann Foster,* Rebecca Eames,* Mary Post,* Mary Lacy,* Mary Bradbury,* and Dorcas Hoar.*

Omitted from the 1711 act, on 19 February 1711/2, Elizabeth petitioned on her own behalf for a reversal of attainder and for restitution. No action was taken. When Elizabeth Johnson Jr. died on 3 January 1746/7, the weight of her conviction remained (RSWH, pp. 875-876, 887-888, 901).

In the 20th century, six more victims of the Salem witch trials were vindicated. Finally, in the 21st century, students from the North Andover Middle School took on Elizabeth Johnson Jr.’s case and she finally was acquitted of witchcraft.

Resolve relative to the indictment, trial, conviction, and execution† of Ann Pudeator, Bridget Bishop, Susannah Martin, Alice Parker, Margaret Scott, Wilmot Redd, and Elizabeth Johnson Jr. for “Witchcraft” in the Year Sixteen Hundred and Ninety-Two.

Whereas, Ann Pudeator, Bridget Bishop, Susannah Martin, Alice Parker, Margaret Scott, Wilmot Redd, and Elizabeth Johnson Jr. were indicted, tried, found guilty, sentenced to death, and executed† in the year sixteen hundred and ninety-two for “Witchcraft”; and

Whereas, The above named may have been illegally tried, convicted, and sentenced by a possibly illegal court of Oyer and Terminer created by the then governor of the Province without authority under the Province Charter of Massachusetts Bay; and

Whereas, Although there was a public repentance by Judge Sewall, one of the judges of the so-called “Witchcraft Court,” and by all the members of the “Witchcraft” jury, and a public Fast Day proclaimed and observed in repentance for the proceedings, but no other action taken in regard to them; and

Whereas, The General Court of Massachusetts is informed that certain descendants‡ of Ann Pudeator, Bridget Bishop, Susannah Martin, Alice Parker, Margaret Scott, Wilmot Redd, and Elizabeth Johnson Jr. are still distressed by the record of said proceedings; therefore be it

Resolved, That in order to alleviate such distress and although the facts of such proceedings cannot be obliterated, the General Court of Massachusetts declares its belief that such proceedings, even if lawful under the Province Charter and the law of Massachusetts as it then was, were, and are shocking, and the result of a wave of popular hysterical fear of the Devil in the community, and further declares that, as all the laws under which said proceedings, even if then legally conducted, have been long since abandoned and superseded by our more civilized laws no disgrace or cause for distress attaches to the said descendants or any of them by reason of said proceedings; and be it further

Resolved, That the passage of this resolve shall not bestow on the Commonwealth or any of its subdivisions, or on any person any right which did not exist prior to said passage, shall not authorize any suit or other proceeding nor deprive any party to a suit or other proceeding of any defense which he hitherto had, shall not affect in any way whatever the title to or rights in any real or personal property, nor shall it require or permit the remission of any penalty, fine, or forfeiture hitherto imposed or incurred.

Resolve of 1957, chapter 146 (approved 28 August 1957) as rewritten after amendments on 31 October 2001 and 28 July 2022 incorporated.

For related stories on Elizabeth Johnson Jr., see:

Footnotes:
RSWH: Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt by Bernard Rosenthal et al.
* not executed
† Elizabeth Johnson Jr. was found guilty but not executed for the crime of witchcraft.
‡ Elizabeth Johnson Jr. had no descendants and remained unmarried during her long life.

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Want to learn more about Charter Street Cemetery? Pick up If These Stones Could Speak: The History and People of the Old Salem Burying Point by Daniel Fury. Learn about the people who lived and died in Salem. Black-and-white grave photographs accompany profiles of some of the dead, along with their gravestone inscriptions.

Compiled from many sources and checked against extant gravestones and vital records, the burial index is the most comprehensive list yet. To help you find your way around the burying ground, the book is divided into family groups and sections, with maps included. And if you’re unfamiliar with the symbols, terminology, and funeral practices of early Salem inhabitants, Daniel added helpful information on those topics too.

While none of the victims executed during the Salem witch trials are buried at Old Salem Burying Point, their memory lingers there. Behind the Samuel Pickman House, now the Charter Street Cemetery Welcome Center, the 1992 Salem Witch Trials Memorial features stone benches engraved with each victim’s name and death date. Every time I visit, I whisper their names as I follow the path. Near Bridget Bishop’s stone, you’ll find an entrance into the cemetery.

Besides an overview of the witch trials and the memorial, the book provides biographies of the 20 witch-hunt victims executed and those who perished in jail as well.

A resident of Salem, author Daniel Fury is a proprietor of Black Cat Tours and a founding member of Friends of the Downtown Salem Historic Cemeteries.

Read more: Salem’s Old Burying Point: Old photos by Frank Cousins

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While researching Thomas Danforth (1623-1699), I discovered Paige’s History of Cambridge and Hutchinson’s Witchcraft Delusion of 1692 quoted from Samuel Sewall’s Diary on Danforth’s illness, death, and burial. Sewall visited Danforth on 28 October 1699 and recorded in his diary that Elizabeth (Danforth) Foxcroft informed Sewall that her father “was much indisposed the 22 inst., which was the beginning of his sickness.” Danforth was “much troubled with the Palsie”—which caused paralysis and involuntary tremors. Two entries later in his diary, Sewall wrote:

“Lord’s Day, Novr. 5, Tho. Danforth Esq. dies about 3 post merid. [p.m.] of a fever. Has been a magistrate 40 years. Was a very good husbandman, and a very good Christian, and a good Councilor: was about 76 years old.”

“…Sixth day, Nov. 10, 1699. Mr. Danforth is entombed about 1/4 of an hour before 4 p.m. Very fair and pleasant day; much company. Bearers on the right side Lt. Governor, Mr. Russell, Sewall; left side, Mr. W. Winthrop, Mr. Cook, Col. Phillips. I helped lift the corpse into the tomb, carrying the feet. Had cake and cheese at the house. Col. Hathorne, Mr. Corwin, Bro. Sewall were there from Salem. Councilors had rings, ministers gloves, Mr. Mather and Brattle scarfs and rings: so had the bearers.”

Both books ended their quotes with the list of mourning gifts the family gave to honored guests and casket bearers. But wait. Where was Danforth buried? Even though Danforth lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I searched Boston’s Historic Burying Grounds Initiative database first. Ten Danforths were listed, but not the Thomas who died in 1699. So I tried the Find a Grave database, narrowing down the search to Cambridge. Still nothing.

But what if Sewall said something more in his diary? And he did!

The entry continued: “Cambridge Burying Place is handsomely fenced in with boards, which has not been done above a month or six weeks.”

Thanks to Samuel Sewall’s diary, we know where Hon. Thomas Danforth’s mortal remains lie. While it doesn’t explicitly say which tomb Danforth is in, and none are labeled with his name, he’s definitely buried in an unmarked tomb at Old Burying Ground in Cambridge. His wife and possibly other family members may be buried there too. I added a memorial for Danforth at Find a Grave, not knowing one already existed with an “unknown location.” The duplicate listings were merged into Memorial 240442382.

Danforth and the Salem witch trials

As deputy governor, Thomas Danforth observed the examinations of accused witches Elizabeth Proctor and Sarah Cloyce at a meeting of the Court of Assistants in Salem in April 1692. Local magistrates, John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin, handled the questioning, while Rev. Samuel Parris transcribed the session.* This experience no doubt led to Danforth’s disapproval of the judicial proceedings.

In a letter dated 8 October 1692, Thomas Brattle, an outspoken opponent of the witch trials, wrote: “But although the chief judge, and some of the other judges, be very zealous in these proceedings, yet this you may take for a truth, that there are several about the Bay, men for understanding, judgment, and piety, inferior to few, if any, in [New England], that do utterly condemn the said proceedings, and do freely deliver their judgment in the case to be this, viz., that these methods will utterly ruin and undo poor N. E. I shall nominate some of these to you, viz., the Hon. Simon Bradstreet Esq.; the Hon. Thomas Danforth Esq.; the Rev. Mr. Increase Mather, and the Rev. Mr. Samuel Willard….”

With the Court of Oyer and Terminer disbanded, Tuesday, 6 December 1692—“a very dark cold day,” Sewall reports—was “the day appointed for choosing of Judges.” William Stoughton was unanimously chosen Chief Justice of the new Superior Court of Judicature with 15 votes, while Thomas Danforth received 12 votes, and John Richards, Waitstill Winthrop, and Sewall received 7 votes each. Only 15 Assistants were present. Apparently, Danforth didn’t want anything to do with the witch trials, which would be a significant focus of the new court with so many accused witches still in jail. Two days later, Sewall’s diary says, “Mr. Danforth is invited to dinner, and after pressed to accept his place.” After Lecture on Thursday, December 22, Stoughton, Richards, Winthrop, and Sewall received their commissions as Judges and took their oaths. Danforth, having been “pressed,” later joined them on the bench.

The Salem witch trials started again in January 1693. Of the 56 indictments for witchcraft, true bills were found against 26 but only three were found guilty—Elizabeth Johnson Jr., Sarah Wardwell, and Mary Post. Without the use of spectral evidence in court and possibly because of Danforth’s influence, the court quickly brought the trials to an end. Then, Governor Phips issued pardons for the three convicted women as well as others convicted from the previous court.

Thomas Danforth remained on the supreme court until his death in 1699. On November 7 of that year, Sewall wrote, “Mr. Stoughton, in his speech to the Grand Jury, takes great notice of Judge Danforth’s death. Saith he was a lover of religion and religious men; the oldest servant the country ever had; zealous against vice; and if had any detractors; yet was so much on the other as to erect him a monument among this people.” Then there was a sharp reminder from the Puritan minister, Mr. Willard, who “in his prayer mentioned God’s displeasure in his removal; and desired the Judges might act on the bench as those who must shortly go to give their account.”

Salem’s End

Thomas Danforth is also known for giving 800 acres of land to families who wanted to escape Salem and memories of the witch trials. Previously known as Danforth’s Farms, the town was incorporated in 1700 as Framingham, Massachusetts, named after Framlingham, Suffolk, England, where Danforth was baptized in 1623. The section where the Salem refugees lived is still known as Salem End.

*This line has been edited from the original post. Based on several 19th-century authors, I had written: “Rev. Samuel Parris was in charge of the interrogations that day, and Danforth recorded the session.” After Marilynne K. Roach commented, and I replied back, I went back to the books and revised my thinking. See Comments, below, for more details.

Examination of Elizabeth Johnson Jr.

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By Tony Fels

On July 28, 2022, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts formally exonerated the last innocent victim of the infamous 17th-century Salem witch hunt. Elizabeth Johnson Jr., known to her contemporaries as Betty, was a 22-year-old resident of Andover, Massachusetts, when she got swept up in the frenzy of accusations, judicial examinations, jailings, trials, and executions that convulsed the communities of Essex County in 1692. All of the witch hunt’s other victims had already been exonerated by previous legislation. For some, the process began shortly after the trials ended. By 1711, 14 of the 20 who were executed at Salem had had their names cleared and their legal rights restored. A 1957 state law added one more name, and the act’s 2001 amendment added the remaining five executed suspects. 

But Betty Johnson fell into a different category of victims. She was one of 11 individuals who had been convicted of witchcraft but, for a variety of reasons, never executed. Betty’s trial occurred in January 1693, at the first proceedings of a new court established to take the place of the original but now discredited witchcraft court and to dispense with the remaining witchcraft accusations. Just three individuals were convicted under the revised rules of this later court, but the governor granted them last-minute reprieves, and they were soon pardoned and released along with those convicted by the earlier court who were still alive. In subsequent years, two of the three witchcraft suspects convicted in January 1693, along with the other eight convicted by the earlier court, had their names cleared and their legal rights restored. Despite petitioning herself to the Massachusetts legislature for legal restitution in 1712 (paralleling a claim filed two years earlier by her brother, Francis, for monetary compensation for her six months spent in jail), Betty Johnson, alone among all those convicted at Salem, never did receive such a simple declaration of justice—until now.

Confessions of witchcraft

What larger lessons does Betty Johnson’s story hold for understanding the Salem witch hunt? The most interesting one for me stems from the fact that Johnson had confessed. Over the course of roughly a year, the panic yielded over 150 suspects who were formally accused of witchcraft, fully one-third of whom confessed to the crime, some before they were even arrested. Since it is well established that nobody in eastern Massachusetts at that time was practicing witchcraft in any meaningful sense of the term (attempting to harness supernatural power to harm others), the question arises why so many of these individuals falsely admitted to committing a felony that carried the death penalty.

In Betty’s case, her two statements of confession were made back to back on August 10 and 11, 1692, the first to the local Andover justice of the peace, Dudley Bradstreet, and the second to an examining board led by John Hathorne, the Salem town magistrate who sat on the colony’s special witchcraft court and who was one of the prime movers in the witch hunt. What is most striking about Betty’s confessions is how stereotypical they are. She simply drew from the known lore about witchcraft, including being baptized by Satan, who appeared to her in the form of two black cats, in order “to pull down the kingdom of Christ and to set up the Devil’s kingdom,” taking these common notions on herself as if she were an avid follower. She claimed she had hurt a number of her neighbors by having her invisible specter sit on one’s stomach, by pinching or sticking pins in cloth likenesses of several others, and by invisibly attacking yet another with a spear made of iron or wood (though she wasn’t sure which). She said she had a “familiar” (left undescribed but typically thought to be an invisible animal) who nourished itself by sucking on her knuckle and at two other places, one behind her arm, that examining women corroborated by noting two little red specks on her body.

Throughout her confession, Betty cited as her criminal accomplices individuals who had already been named as suspects, including her relative Martha Carrier, the most prominent of the Andover suspects, a woman long believed to be a witch by many of her neighbors, and George Burroughs, the former minister from Salem village, who was widely regarded during the panic to be the witches’ ringleader. Carrier and Burroughs were both tried and convicted in early August, just one week before Betty’s confession, and both were executed on August 19, a little more than a week after Betty turned herself in.

Reasons for a false confession

Why did she take this step of falsely accusing herself? Although Betty came from a prominent Andover family—she was the granddaughter of the town’s elder minister, Francis Dane—the extended Dane family, itself part of the larger and more significantly targeted Ingalls clan, had already been attacked by the young and middle-aged people who began accusing their Andover neighbors of witchcraft starting in mid-July. Even more directly, Betty’s confession was preceded (on the same day, August 10) by those of two of Martha Carrier’s children, 8-year-old Sarah and 10-year-old Thomas, both of whom implicated Betty Johnson as a member of the witches’ “company.” 

Most likely, Betty knew that she would be named by her second cousins, the Carrier children. All three may have thought, in the context of accusations that were wildly whipping around their community, that by confessing they might increase the chances of being treated with leniency. This was not an unreasonable assumption, since the Puritans valued repentance, even as they also showed determination to rid their communities of those they believed had allowed the Devil to grant them the power to practice witchcraft. Twenty were executed before the witch hunt effectively came to an end in mid-October, but significantly none of these 20 came from the ranks of those who had confessed, even though this association was probably not discernible until mid-July and, even so, could never be guaranteed.

Confessions also tended to deflect blame. In Betty’s case, she made clear that it was the 42-year-old Martha Carrier who had “persuaded her to be a witch.” Carrier, Betty said, had also “threatened to tear [her] in pieces,” if she didn’t do as she was told. Betty probably hoped that this aspect of her statements would also be protective, even though she must have equally known that confessions were regarded as the highest form of legal proof of actual witchcraft.

The role of Puritanism

Beneath all these likely strategic motives, however, lies the fact that members of the Puritan communities of early Massachusetts could readily convince themselves that in some way or other, perhaps at a moment of weakness, they really had allowed Satan into their lives. A form of strict Calvinism, Anglo-American Puritanism held out virtually impossible standards of piety for its followers to live up to. Puritans sought to live in the truest, loving fellowship of Christ but one in which even a stray thought to get back at someone for a perceived grievance or to fail to carry out one’s dutiful role as husband, wife, parent, or child might occasion deep anguish. 

There is no explicit sign of such religious self-doubt in Betty’s own confessions, but other confessions during the witch hunt were filled with such self-recriminations. Fourteen-year-old Abigail Hobbs, for example, began her witchcraft confession with the admission, “I have been very wicked. I hope I shall be better if God will help me.” Collateral evidence suggests that Hobbs was referring to having been disobedient to her parents, lying out in the woods at night, pretending to baptize her mother, and not caring what anybody said to her.

When Abigail (Dane) Faulkner, Betty’s aunt, confessed at the end of August, she acknowledged that all the accusations made against her kinsfolk had led her to “look with the evil eye” on those doing the accusing, “consent that they should be afflicted,” and “kn[o]w not but that the Devil might take that advantage,” even as she asserted that it was he, not her, who had done the afflicting. In one of the saddest examples of self-recrimination leading to a witchcraft confession (though this episode was not part of the Salem events), Mary Parsons of Springfield, Massachusetts, imagined that she had entered into a pact with the Devil so she could see her deceased child again.

As the power and momentum of the Salem panic began to recede, many of those who had confessed to the crime of witchcraft recanted their earlier confessions. While there is no remaining record of Betty taking this step, as there is for a number of the Andover confessors, we do know that she pleaded not guilty at her January trial, proof that she no longer held to her confession of August 10-11. The people of Essex County were coming back to their senses. Historical records suggest that Betty did well in her later years, apparently successfully selling lands in 1709 and 1716 that she had inherited from her father and living until the age of 77. By that time—the 1740s—Puritanism itself was well on its way toward softening its spiritual message through on the one hand the rise of evangelical piety and on the other hand the emergence of the Enlightenment’s rational faith that would soon become Unitarianism.

updated 31 August 2022

To learn how middle school students pushed for Betty Johnson’s exoneration, see also: Civics in action: Exonerating Elizabeth Johnson Jr. and Last witch’s conviction. For the legal case, see: Last convicted Salem witch exonerated.

Tony Fels is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of San Francisco, where he taught for 29 years. At USF he taught, among other courses, American religious history and historical methods, the latter of which centered on the historiography of the Salem witch hunt. His book, Switching Sides: How a Generation of Historians Lost Sympathy for the Victims of the Salem Witch Hunt, was reviewed on Witches of Massachusetts Bay. For more about Tony Fels, go to https://www.tonyfels.com/.

Rev. John Higginson grave in Salem, Massachusetts

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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.

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On 10 August 1692, 22-year-old Elizabeth Johnson Jr. of Andover, Massachusetts, was arrested for witchcraft. Probably influenced by 7-year-old Sarah and 10-year-old Thomas Carrier’s confessions, she told Justice Dudley Bradstreet that she too was baptized by Martha Carrier and participated in the big witch meeting in Salem Village. The daughter of Lieut. Stephen Johnson (b. c. 1640, d. 1690) and Elizabeth Dane (b. c. 1643, d. 1722), Elizabeth Jr. was called “simplish at best” by her grandfather Rev. Francis Dane. Along with many other Dane relatives, she was jailed for months.

On 11 January 1693, Elizabeth was found guilty of covenanting with the devil and three days later Judge William Stoughton signed her death warrant. Fortunately, Elizabeth and several others were reprieved at the last minute by Governor William Phips. Today, she remains the only condemned witch who was not exonerated from the 1692 witch trials in the last 300-plus years.

Civics in action

While researching his book, In the Shadow of Salem: The Andover Witch Hunt of 1692, Richard Hite discussed with Carol Majahad of the North Andover Historical Society how Elizabeth Johnson Jr. was never cleared like the other convicted—but innocent—witches from 1692. Working with local teacher Carolyn LaPierre, they put hundreds of 8th-grade students in North Andover Middle School on the case during 2020-2021. The students were involved in research and in the process of creating a bill to propose that Elizabeth’s guilty verdict be lifted.

Presented by Senator Diana DiZoglio (D-First Essex), Bill S.1016 seeks to add to chapter 145 of the Resolves of 1957 of the General Court of Massachusetts, as amended by chapter 122 of the Acts of 2001, the name of Elizabeth Johnson Jr. The original title from 1957 reads: “Resolve Relative to the Indictment, Trial, Conviction, and Execution of Ann Pudeator and Certain Other Persons for ‘Witchcraft’ in the Year Sixteen Hundred and Ninety-Two.” Without specifically naming “certain other persons,” the 1957 resolve did not provide the reversal of attainder for the five “other” women. In 2001, the words “one Ann Pudeator and certain other persons” were replaced with “Ann Pudeator, Bridget Bishop, Susannah Martin, Alice Parker, Margaret Scott, and Wilmot Redd.”

As of late October 2021, the bill remains referred to the Joint Committee on the Judiciary. From there, it will go before the Senate and House to be voted on before the governor signs it. It’s not expected to be a contentious issue, since the previous one was signed in 2001, but it’s just one bill among many for the 192nd Session. The bill needs to be approved by the end of July or else the whole process of submitting it will need to be done again. Richard Hite and others would like to get the bill signed on a significant date, like January 11, when the court said Elizabeth Johnson Jr. was convicted of witchcraft, or February 1, when she and the other last convicted witches were scheduled to be hanged.

Like many other victims of the Salem witch trials, under pressure, Elizabeth did confess to witchcraft but she was innocent of the charges. Elizabeth died, unmarried and without descendants, on 3 January 1746/7 in Andover. No headstone or memorial remains to tell her story. It’s time to clear Elizabeth Johnson Jr.’s name.

Stay tuned for more!

Written with information from the 28 October 2021 Zoom session, Civics in action: Exonerating Elizabeth Johnson Jr., hosted by the North Andover Historical Society with Carol Majahad, and featuring Richard Hite and Carolyn LaPierre.

Chapter 145, Resolves of 1957:

Massachusetts, 1957 Resolve, Chapter 145
Charter Street Cemetery, Salem, Massachusetts, photo by Frank Cousins

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With the new Welcome Center now open inside the circa 1665 Samuel Pickman house and after the major restoration work on headstones, box tombs, and landscaping at the Charter Street Cemetery, let’s look back at this historic burying ground through the eyes of Frank Cousins (1851-1925).

In 1868, Cousins opened a general store at 170-174 Essex Street in Salem, Massachusetts. Besides the necessities of local Salemites, his shop carried photo postcards and other knickknacks for tourists. At first, he bought other photographers’ images, but then he became interested in photography and sold his own images. (He also was interested in the colonial architecture of Salem and wrote a book about it.)

The Old Burying Point (or Charter Street Cemetery) was first used in 1637, though the earliest surviving gravestone dates to 1673.

Just inside the Charter Street gate.
In the center of this photo, you can see the box tomb of Governor Simon Bradstreet (1604-1697). He was acting governor at the beginning of the witch accusations until May 1692, when Rev. Increase Mather returned from London with the new Massachusetts charter and the new governor, William Phips.
The plaque on Governor Simon Bradstreet’s box tomb.
At the time of Nathaniel Mather’s death at age 19 in 1688, his father Rev. Increase Mather (1639-1723) was in London lobbying the king for the Massachusetts Bay Colony charter. Increase first visited his son’s grave while in Salem for the 1692 witch trials.
At two years old, Samuel Shattock (1678-1695) suffered from fits and catatonia. By 1692, his health issues were unresolved. During the Salem witch trials, people said he was bewitched. His parents, Samuel and Sarah Shattock, testified against accused witch Bridget Bishop.
Mary Corey was the second wife of accused witch Giles Corey. In 1678, she was charged with cursing & swearing, being drunk, and using abusive speech. She died in 1684, aged 63 years. Giles and his third wife Martha were executed as witches in 1692, Giles by peine forte et dure (stone weight torture) and Martha by hanging.
This dual headstone, featuring a death head and an urn, is for William Hollingsworth (1655-1688) and his mother Eleanor (1630-1689). Eleanor’s daughter Mary married the prosperous merchant Philip English (1651-1736) in 1675. Mary and Philip English were arrested for witchcraft in 1692. They escaped from the Boston jail and returned home after the trials were over.
This is my favorite Frank Cousins’ image from Charter Street Cemetery, and not because it’s the gravestone for Col. John Hathorne (1641-1717). This stone was encased in cement after being seriously damaged many years ago. (I’d guess the damage happened in the 1930s, based on a postcard.) Hathorne was the magistrate who handled the early arrests of accused witches and depositions of their accusers. He also became a judge on the Court of Oyer and Terminer in 1692.

No convicted witches executed at Proctor’s Ledge in 1692 are buried at Charter Street Cemetery. Their remains were taken from the shallow graves near the gallows and buried in secret by their family and friends. Their burial locations remain unknown. Requiescat in pace.

Digital Commonwealth features 2,669 images of the Frank Cousins Collection of Glass Plate Negatives 1890-1920, courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum. The original negatives are located at PEM’s Phillips Library in Rowley, Massachusetts.

Read more: If these stones could speak

Examination of George Burroughs

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A conversation between Tony Fels and Margo Burns about the confessions during the Salem witch trials. Read the original post, part 1, part 2, and part 3.

Margo Burns responds:

Tony: Thanks for your thoughtful reply, but I still don’t accept your claim that my argument is based on the “straw man.” It is very common in popular explanations of the trials to claim that people consciously confessed to save themselves. As for “No serious historian of the Salem witch hunt believes that the confessors thought that, in confessing, they had obtained a ‘get out of jail free card’ or had ‘caught on to the deal’ about how to handle the witchcraft interrogators,” here are four—Norton, Rosenthal, Baker, and Ray—who suggest that the confessors themselves believed that confession would spare their lives:

1) Mary Beth Norton, In the Devil’s Snare, p. 303: “By [August and September], as other scholars have pointed out, it had become clear to the accused that confessors were not being tried.”

2) Bernard Rosenthal, Salem Story, p. 151: “Some did manage to escape; those who could not generally opted to save their lives by confession.” p. 155: “On September 1, [Samuel] Wardwell, in a move that he had every right to believe would protect him, confessed to his witchcraft.”

3) Emerson W. Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, p. 154: “So when [Samuel] Wardwell was questioned about witchcraft on September 1, he and others appear to have believed that confessing would at least delay their trial and execution, and might possibly even spare their lives.” p. 155: “[B]y the time [George] Burroughs was executed on August 19, it was clear that straightforward denials would be no use. Anyone who had pled not guilty was quickly convicted and executed .… Confession and cooperation at least gave the advantage of delay and offered some hope that the individual might ultimately be spared.”

4) Benjamin Ray, Satan & Salem, p. 123: “[Sarah] Churchill never formally retracted her confession. She almost certainly realized that to have done so would have forced the judges to put her on trial.” p. 125: “Hobbs and [Mary] Lacey clearly believed themselves to be free from trial because of their confessions.”

When I return to my original post in this thread, the point I was trying to make is that I do not accept the popular portrayal of those executed as martyrs. A martyr, by definition, is “a person who sacrifices something of great value and especially life itself for the sake of principle.” For this to be true, those who hanged would have felt or known that they had a choice that could affect whether they lived or died. That is just not true. This is all part of the general origin myth of America portraying our ancestors as noble. Then of course there had to be a reason why the condemned didn’t confess and save themselves, right? Maybe they were really principled Puritans, not willing to “belie” themselves. Really? This is not the case. Part of dismantling this whole portrayal is careful examination of what the accused could actually have known and when they could possibly have known it. The timelines of prosecutions and confessions don’t have any correlation, then or now. The confessions were coerced, which removes the possibility that the confessors knew what they were doing. The people who were executed are not martyrs, including my own ancestor, Rebecca Nurse. They were victims and it was tragic what happened to them, but they had no more agency in the outcome than the people who confessed had.

You are correct, Tony, that I put the blame and responsibility for the whole episode on the judges, because they controlled everything. They decided which legal precedents to follow and which to reject. From the start, local magistrates John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin made multiple decisions to accept all accusations. They entertained spectral evidence as valid, and then held everyone over in jail without the option of being released on bond, against legal precedent. These and other local magistrates were the ones coercing the false confessions. As for the assertion that the judges were all elected, that was not the case. William Phips and William Stoughton received their commissions as Governor and Lt. Governor from King William & Queen Mary in the new charter. Phips handed the management of the legal system over to Stoughton—when precedent would have had put the Governor himself in charge of such a court. Stoughton processed all these cases rapidly and left no opportunity for the convicted to appeal their sentences to the General Court, again, against precedent. Stoughton had been a judge on a variety of courts across Massachusetts and Maine for two decades and had served on the bench during numerous witchcraft cases before this, and he chose to handle things differently in 1692.

Margo Burns is the associate editor and project manager of Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt (2009), the most complete compendium of the trial documents. She’s been the expert featured on several Who Do You Think You Are? TV episodes and regularly speaks on the Salem witch trials at History Camp, historical societies, and libraries. Check out her 17th-Century Colonial New England website.

Indictment v. Candy for afflicting Mary Walcott

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A conversation between Tony Fels and Margo Burns about the confessions during the Salem witch trials. Read the original post, part 1, and part 2.

Tony Fels responds.

Margo, I’m afraid you have posited a straw argument concerning the confessors in order to knock it down. No serious historian of the Salem witch hunt believes that the confessors thought that, in confessing, they had obtained a “get out of jail free card” or had “caught on to the deal” about how to handle the witchcraft interrogators. Nor would any serious historian contend that simply because no suspect who confessed was executed, that this fact alone meant the authorities had decided on a policy to spare those suspects’ lives. Indeed, we know that the witchcraft court convicted five confessed suspects (leaving aside Samuel Wardwell, who recanted his confession) at the court’s fourth and last session in mid-September. These individuals might have met their deaths if events had turned out differently.

The whole Salem witch hunt process was a terrifying ordeal that unfolded without any certain outcome. As you point out, confession was nothing anyone would take lightly, since the last person who had confessed to witchcraft, Goody Glover in Boston just four years earlier, had been put to death for the crime. For strictly religious reasons alone, no pious Puritan—and nearly all of the adult confessors could be classified as such—would have casually acknowledged such terrible acts of blasphemy in their own behavior. And yet, of the 150 or so accused in the Salem witch hunt, roughly one-third of these suspects confessed to the crime, and none of these confessors was ultimately executed. Plenty of evidence, much of which is included in your own 2012 article (“‘Other Ways of Undue Force and Fright’: The Coercion of False Confessions by the Salem Magistrates,” Studia Neophilologica 84: 24-39), suggests why this outcome was not purely coincidental: confessing increased one’s chances of survival.

I agree with you that such a likelihood could not have been discerned before the trials themselves got underway with the court’s first session on June 2-3. Eight people had confessed by this point (Tituba, Dorothy Good, Abigail Hobbs, Deliverance Hobbs, Mary Warren, Sarah Churchill, Margaret Jacobs, and Rebecca Jacobs). In your post, you mention 11 confessors before the first trial, but I’ve never seen the names of the three additional people you are referring to. You know the examination and related records better than I do, and these additional names may have surfaced since the publication of your own article. But just focusing on these eight, while one (Good) was a young child and two (Warren and Churchill) quickly recanted their confessions, the other five were all people who could have been selected to be tried at the court’s first session (June 2-3) or its second session (June 28–July 2), but none was. Instead, one non-confessing suspect (Bridget Bishop) was tried and convicted at the first session and on June 10 hanged, followed by five non-confessing suspects (Sarah Good, Susannah Martin, Rebecca Nurse, Elizabeth How, and Sarah Wilds) tried and convicted at the second session and hanged on July 19. At this point (roughly mid-July; there were no confessions in June) it seems possible to imagine that some of the remaining suspects and others still to be named might have begun to see an advantage to confessing.

One (the Salem slave Candy) did so on July 4, followed by five people (Ann Foster on July 15, and then Mary Lacey Sr., Mary Lacey Jr., Richard Carrier, and Andrew Carrier, all on July 21-22), all from Andover, the town to which the witch hunt had by now spread. These latter five were all linked to Martha (Allen) Carrier, an Andover woman strongly suspected of witchcraft by many of her neighbors and who had been accused and arrested at the end of May. It is reasonable to believe, though we have no direct evidence to this effect, that all five, which included two of Carrier’s children, confessed in the hope that their confessions might insulate them from sharing in what appeared to be the impending fate of Martha Carrier. The non-confessing Carrier was indeed tried first at the court’s third session (August 2-5) and was hanged along with the session’s four male convicted suspects, all also non-confessors (John Willard, George Jacobs Sr., John Procter, and George Burroughs) on August 19.

The approach and aftermath of the court’s third session opened a floodgate of further confessions coming from Andover or Andover-related suspects: two more relatives of Martha Carrier on July 23 (niece Martha Emerson) and July 30 (sister Mary Allen Toothaker); a middle-aged woman (Mary Bridges Sr.) on July 30 and her five daughters on August 3 (Mary Post) and August 25 (Mary Bridges Jr., Sarah Bridges, Susannah Post, and Hannah Post); two more of Martha Carrier’s children (Sarah and Thomas) on August 11; Rebecca Eames on August 19; and at least seven more Andover individuals (Elizabeth Johnson Jr., Mary Barker, William Barker Sr., Mary Marston, Elizabeth Johnson Sr., Abigail Johnson, and Abigail Dane Faulkner) by the end of the month. September brought perhaps another 22 confessions along with the court’s fourth session (September 6-17), during which some of the first confessing suspects (Abigail Hobbs, Ann Foster, Mary Lacey Sr., Rebecca Eames, and Abigail Dane Faulkner) were convicted based either on their guilty pleas or by a jury’s decision after a trial. Still, even these convicted confessing suspects avoided execution on September 22, on which date eight more convicted non-confessors (Martha Cory, Mary Esty, Alice Parker, Ann Pudeator, Margaret Scott, Wilmot Redd, Mary Parker, and Samuel Wardwell) were hanged.

(I have checked all of the above names and dates with the authoritative Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, ed. Bernard Rosenthal, Margo Burns, et al., 2009. The same information may be found in Margo’s article, referenced above. Most historians, including Margo, seem to use Thomas Brattle’s assertion, written on October 8, 1692, that there were 55 confessors among the accused. Nobody, so far as I know, has published a complete list of these names. Based on data found in Records, I include Abigail Dane Faulkner among the August confessors. When she, along with Elizabeth Johnson Sr., and Abigail Johnson, are added to the other August confessors, the total for that month reaches 15, not 12, as noted in Margo’s Table 2 on p. 26 of her article. If 55 is the correct total for the overall number of confessors, then 22 additional suspects must have confessed in September.)

Why did all these individuals confess to crimes we know now they had never committed? We cannot expect the suspects themselves to have explained their motives at the time, because a confession by definition offered an admission of guilt. To the examiners and their surrounding communities, these people acknowledged they had entered into a pact with the Devil to hurt others through witchcraft. In your own article on the subject, Margo, you have emphasized the role played by judicial intimidation, which included everything from intense questioning and incarceration under harsh conditions to the occasional use of physical torture. This is undoubtedly a part of the story. For myself, I would emphasize the role played by guilt for these highly religious people. Under the frenzied conditions of a witch hunt, it was not hard for many of them to imagine that in some way or other they had allowed Satan to enter into their lives by wishing someone harm or hoping to gain personal advantage in some way that the Puritan community frowned upon. There is explicit evidence of this motivation in the confessions of Abigail Hobbs, Margaret Jacobs, Abigail Dane Faulkner, and others.

But confession also carried the hope that the Puritan belief in public repentance might take precedence over the Biblical injunction to “not suffer a witch to live.” Most confessions, beginning with Tituba’s, included anguished portions in which blame was shifted to someone else, typically to suspects who had previously been named. Confessors claimed that these other persons—for example, Sarah Good and Sarah Osburn for Tituba, Martha Carrier for many of the Andover confessors, George Burroughs for nearly all of them—had forced them to carry out the Devil’s wishes. In so doing, they likely hoped to elicit some sympathy for their plight as victims. Family members and friends also played key roles in exerting pressure on suspects to confess, believing that this might be the only way to save their lives. Andover resident Mary Tyler’s brother insisted repeatedly that she do so, both because he thought she must be a witch if so many people had said so and also because “she would be hang’d, if she did not confesse.” A petition submitted in January 1693, urging the newly reconstituted court to ignore the confessions made earlier by some of the Andover suspects, acknowledged the same motivation when it stated, “Confessing was the only way to obtain favor, [and] might be too powerful a temptation for timorous women to withstand, in the hurry and distraction that we have heard they were then in.” That these desperate strategies probably worked to some degree is suggested by the facts that it took until the witchcraft court’s fourth session before any of the confessing suspects were brought to trial, and that when the first group of confessors were finally convicted, this step seems to have been forced on the justices, who were coming under criticism for apparent hypocrisy in overlooking such “obviously” guilty suspects in favor of going after only those who had forthrightly proclaimed their innocence. Even after their conviction, these confessed suspects were still shown a final, and, as it turned out, decisive bit of leniency in receiving temporary stays of sentencing or execution, which Thomas Brattle stated, “for two or three [of them] because they are confessours.” (Abigail Faulkner received a stay of execution by reason of her pregnancy, and Dorcas Hoar, convicted during the same fourth session of the court, also received an unusual stay of execution following her confession just after her sentencing.)

Confession also had a larger impact on the overall course of the witch hunt. From Tituba’s admission of guilt at its start all the way up through the first group of Andover confessors in mid-July, confessions gave credence to the accusations of witchcraft and accelerated the drive to uncover more witches in the communities. Only toward the witch hunt’s end did the sheer number of confessions serve to undermine the credibility of the charges and help bring the panic to a close.

As I see it, the crux of the dispute between you, Margo, and me, lies, as with so many of the controversies generated by the study of the Salem witch hunt, in the question of where blame should be placed. In rejecting what you see as a “nice [but fictitious] story” that draws a moral distinction between those suspects who went to their deaths upholding the truth that they were not witches and those suspects who confessed to crimes they had not committed, you appear to want to concentrate all of the blame for the witch hunt on the Puritan judicial establishment, making sure that nobody gets distracted into thinking that confessors bear at least part of the blame. Hence your emphasis as well on the coerced nature of these confessions. There really was no meaningful choice for a suspect to make, you assert, since all were headed for execution anyway. Confessors did no greater harm than truth-tellers at Salem.

But the Salem magistrates, it’s worth remembering, were not autocrats but elected officials. The Puritan colony of Massachusetts, from top to bottom, fully supported the witch hunt when it was at its height, and even after the English-appointed governor in early October had abolished the first witchcraft court (which the Massachusetts House of Representatives endorsed only in a very close vote of 33-29), it took years for most residents to recognize that a serious miscarriage of justice had been done. In 1695, three years after the witch hunt’s end, a majority of Salem villagers could still sign a petition in support of Rev. Samuel Parris, perhaps the chief instigator of the panic.

In my view, the colony as a whole bears the lion’s share of the blame for the witch hunt, chiefly because of the extremism of its religious views, which lent themselves to picturing the world as a Manichean struggle between Christ and Satan, good and evil. In this context, the determination of thoroughly average people like Rebecca Nurse, Martha Carrier, and George Jacobs Sr. to tell the truth about themselves at all costs—itself one of the great virtues taught by Puritanism—may be seen as genuinely heroic, because it was the accumulated truth-telling of those 20 martyred individuals that did more than anything else to put an end to the catastrophe Massachusetts had brought on itself. The confessors, too, ironically testified to the great power of telling the truth, because when they later recanted their confessions after the witch hunt was over, the aspect of their behavior that they regretted most was that they had “belied themselves” before God.

Continue to Part 4.

Tony Fels is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of San Francisco, where he taught for 29 years. At USF he taught, among other courses, American religious history and historical methods, the latter of which centered on the historiography of the Salem witch hunt. His book, Switching Sides: How a Generation of Historians Lost Sympathy for the Victims of the Salem Witch Hunt, was reviewed on Witches of Massachusetts Bay. For more about Tony Fels, go to https://www.tonyfels.com.