Category: History

Tituba's testimony, 1692

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After publishing “Traditional Understanding Overshadows Academic Explanations at Rebecca Nurse Commemoration” by Tony Fels, a fascinating discussion ensued in the Comments section between Tony Fels and Margo Burns. Since readers often skip the Comments section, I wanted to share this important conversation about the meaning of the Salem confessions. As Tony put it, “The Salem witch hunt is one of those subjects that simply crosses the boundaries between what interests academics and what interests the general public. We’re all involved in its meaning simply as people, as evidenced again and again by events like the 400th anniversary of Rebecca Nurse’s birthday.”

Margo Burns responds to original post:

Something that I can’t get through to people, both those who adhere to the traditional understanding as well as academic explanations, is that the notion that confession somehow spared people is simply not accurate. Just because no confessors were hanged does not mean it was the intention of the Court to spare confessors—that’s a historian’s fallacy. The Chief Magistrate wrote a warrant for the execution for several confessors in January, but they and the rest of the people sentenced to die then were all spared by the Governor.

Confession was the gold standard of convictive evidence in witchcraft cases in that era, mentioned in all the contemporary books about witchcraft, and it was not controversial legally the way spectral evidence was. The belief that a confession, even a false one, could spare one from being hanged in 1692 makes it easier to then cast those who were executed as martyrs. They had a way to save themselves but they refused to tell a lie even though it would save them from hanging. So noble! It’s a nice story, but it is not based on historical facts.

Tony Fels responds:

I can’t agree with Margo Burns on this point. She’s technically correct: Confession was the best of all evidence of witchcraft, and those who confessed would have had no assurance that they would not ultimately be hanged for the crime. Indeed, six confessors were convicted by the first witchcraft court and three later on by the second court. But all those trials and convictions occurred late in the witch hunt (mid-September 1692 and then January 1693).

Meanwhile, Tituba had confessed back in March 1692, followed by Abigail Hobbs in mid-April, Deliverance Hobbs a couple days later, Margaret Jacobs in May, Ann Foster and her daughter Mary Lacey Sr. in mid-July, and then a great many more from Andover. A pattern must have been discerned that the confessors were at least being held temporarily without trial in order to name others or to rid the community of the more dangerous, recalcitrant suspects first. Thus, to confess at least bought a suspect time.

By contrast, those suspects who early on proclaimed their innocence, even as they were brought to the first trials in June, July, and August, refused to take that step of falsely confessing. We can surely sympathize with those who were intimidated into confessing, but the actions of those who resisted such pressures do present us with a noble story!

Continue to Part 2.

Margo Burns is the associate editor and project manager of Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt (Cambridge University Press, 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.

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 (2018), was reviewed on Witches of Massachusetts Bay. For more about Tony Fels, go to https://www.tonyfels.com/.

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By Tony Fels

On June 7, 2021, the NPR show, “Here and Now,” aired a segment on the 400th birthday of Rebecca Nurse, broadcast from the Rebecca Nurse Homestead in Danvers (formerly Salem Village), Massachusetts. Readers of Witches of Massachusetts Bay will doubtless recognize Nurse as one of the most well-known of the 20 individuals executed at Salem for alleged witchcraft.

The radio program struck my interest for revealing the enduring strength of what might be called the “traditional” understanding of the Salem witch hunt over more recent explanations advanced by some of the many scholars who have studied the tragedy. By the “traditional” understanding, I mean the one made famous by Arthur Miller’s 1953 play, The Crucible, though Miller’s play in fact owed practically everything to journalist-historian Marion Starkey’s The Devil in Massachusetts, which appeared four years earlier. As Starkey (and then Miller) saw it, the witch hunt was a product of social hysteria, brought on by a lethal combination of extreme religious values, calling on people to live up to impossible standards of piety, and ages-old communal scapegoating based on personal enmities. When individuals can’t meet their own community’s norms for a life of rectitude, their sense of guilt may lead them either to imagine they have committed terrible transgressions or else to deflect the blame onto others. Intolerance toward oneself in effect breeds intolerance of others. The heroes in both accounts (Starkey’s gripping narrative and Miller’s equally chilling drama) were the 20 martyrs, who, like Rebecca Nurse, went to their deaths rather than confess to the falsehood that they had made a compact with the Devil.

In an early part of the 11-minute segment, “Here and Now” host Robin Young discusses some recent academic explanations for the witch hunt with Kathryn Rutkowski, curator and president of the Rebecca Nurse Homestead. “Historians say the witch trials were to keep women in line,” Young suggests, referring, without naming the source, to the feminist argument advanced especially by Carol F. Karlsen in The Devil in the Shape of a Woman (1987). Young, however, omits the fact that Karlsen’s study actually showed little interest in Rebecca Nurse or any of the other courageous Salem martyrs (14 were women, 6 were men) in favor of concentrating on the young women who, out of the anguish Puritans are said to have foisted onto women in general, did the accusing.

Rutkowski responds by referencing two other recent scholarly interpretations (again without mentioning the names of authors). One, set forth by Mary Beth Norton in her book, In the Devil’s Snare (2002), argued that the Puritans’ continuing conflicts with Native Americans to the north brought on the witch scare, by depositing orphaned victims of Indian attacks in Salem Village, where they reenacted their childhood traumas by accusing other people of attacking them through witchcraft. Another, advanced by Emerson Baker in his A Storm of Witchcraft (2015), proposed a catch-all explanation for the witch hunt under the phrase, “a perfect storm,” said to include the Native American context, the insecurities of a new colonial charter, a harsh winter, village factionalism, and the local pastor Samuel Parris’ rigid orthodoxy. In truth, no such extraneous circumstances or “perfect storms” are needed to account for witch hunting, which occurred with deadly commonality across nearly 300 years of history throughout western Europe, including in its colonial outposts like New England. Indeed, Hartford, Connecticut, was the scene of a lesser version of the Salem events in 1662, when another witch panic led to 14 indictments and four likely executions.

But all these considerations fall by the wayside as soon as the program turns to Beth Lambright, one of a large number of proud Rebecca Nurse descendants who live throughout the United States. As Lambright tells Robin Young, Nurse, age 71 at the time of her death, lived a quite ordinary colonial life, raising eight children and helping with the work on her family farm. “Yet this ordinary life became an extraordinary moment of, really, heroism,” Lambright explains, when by “standing in the truth, [Nurse] paid for that with her life.” Lambright took her family to visit the Danvers homestead a few years ago because she wanted to pass on to her children the important lesson of what their colonial ancestor had accomplished. As Lambright puts it, “No matter what your community might say about you, if you do not believe it’s true, you stand in what you know to be true.” These are lines that Arthur Miller might have included in The Crucible, a work that Lambright knows well, both from having read it and from having watched her daughter perform in a high school production of the play.

Hoping to draw out a political lesson for today’s times, Young asks Lambright if she doesn’t see some parallels to what’s been happening lately, with America menaced by “conspiracy theorists” and “angry mobs” with “pitchforks.” It’s clear from Young’s left-leaning political perspective that she sees these Trumpian manifestations as the equivalent of 1692’s witch hunters. Lambright appears to agree, but I’m not so sure. She observes, “We’re seeing loud voices. They might look like the majority for a while, but it doesn’t mean that they’re always speaking truth. We have to be really careful that we understand who we are and what our truth is.” Most recently, it’s the Democrats, not the Republicans, who have been in the majority. And antiracist zealots on the left are just as capable of trying to enforce conformity of belief on a particular community through scapegoating as are extremists on the right.

Arthur Miller himself might similarly have seen threatening “pitchforks” coming from the margins of both ideological extremes. While it is well known that The Crucible offered up the Salem witch hunt as an allegory for Senator McCarthy’s red scare of the 1950s, in his later life the playwright acknowledged that the lessons of the Salem witch hunt fit the murderous excesses of the Chinese Communists’ Cultural Revolution just as well. The Salem story for good reason continues to resonate with Americans now nearly 330 years after it drew to a close.

(The NPR program may be heard at https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2021/06/07/rebecca-nurse-salem-witch-trials. A popular show like this one naturally comes with some factual errors. In the introduction, Robin Young speaks of about 200 people who were tried at Salem, when she means the number who were accused. The Salem Court of Oyer and Terminer (the special witchcraft court) tried 27 suspects, while the later Superior Court of Judicature (which produced no lasting punishments) handled about 70 remaining cases. Later in the show, Young refers to “one man” who was executed at Salem, when actually there were six men. Beth Lambright meant to say that George Jacobs Sr.’s body, not George Burroughs’, is also buried on the Rebecca Nurse Homestead grounds.)

After this post was published, a fascinating discussion ensued between Tony Fels and Margo Burns. Read the four-part conversation on witch confessions, martyrs, and more.

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/.

Giles Corey pressed to death. Unknown artist.

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A follow-up to the post Richard Francis: From Sewall biographer to Salem witch trials storyteller.

In Olde England as well as New, hangings were a public spectacle. Despite the grim proceedings, executions drew large crowds. In Massachusetts Bay Colony, hangings may not have had a carnival-like atmosphere, with vendors offering meat pasties and barkers selling broadsides of the convicted’s confessions. Still, farmers, clergy, merchants, gentlemen, sailors, servants, housewives, and children attended the Salem witch trials and executions.

Two miles from the prison, Proctor’s Ledge was chosen as a place where crowds could gather and still see the victims swinging from the rope. And if the convicted witches had strong voices, like Rev. George Burroughs, those gathered could clearly hear his perfect rendition of “The Lord’s Prayer.”

Silent protest

Giles Corey was never convicted of witchcraft. He pleaded “not guilty” in the Salem court but would not agree to stand trial. In consequence, the judges chose to inflict peine forte et dure (French for “strong and hard punishment,” or pressing to death with heavy weights). Perhaps after a night or two in the already crowded Salem prison, the judges expected Corey to change his mind. For two days, Samuel Sewall wrote, the Court, Captain Gardner of Nantucket, and other friends begged Corey to agree to be tried by the judges and a jury of his peers. He remained mute.

In Crane Pond: A Novel of Salem, Richard Francis said Corey’s pressing death occurred at Proctor’s Ledge—the site of the witch hangings. Given that at any moment Corey could put a stop to his punishment and agree to be tried, it’s highly unlikely that he was carted all the way to Proctor’s Ledge. Besides, the crowds would not see much of a spectacle from their vantage point, and watching an old man being crushed to death was agonizingly slow. (It was not as slow as two days,* but stubborn and silent Giles Corey may have survived two or three hours as the rocks piled up, his ribs cracked, his lungs collapsed, and his last breath escaped.)

Where did Giles Corey die?

In 1867, Charles W. Upham asserted Corey’s torture occurred “in an open field somewhere between Howard Street Burial Ground and Brown Street.” Other authors—and tour guides—mistakenly claimed Corey was pressed to death at Howard Street Cemetery near the prison. In 1692, however, the land was privately owned and only became a burial ground in 1801. More recently, Marilynne K. Roach suggested Lieutenant Thomas Putnam’s lot bordering the prison yard would be a likely spot, especially agreeable to Thomas since his daughter Ann Jr. was one of the major witchcraft accusers.

Sidney Perley believed rocks were carried inside the prison to be placed on top of Corey’s prone body. I believe the answer is much simpler: In the prison yard. While no contemporaneous writers described the location, the prison yard had enough space—and rocks—to carry out the deed without drawing large crowds. After all, the laws of the colony did not permit such “inhumane, barbarous, or cruel” torture as inflicted on Giles Corey—at least not publicly. While people did witness his punishment, they were not able to stop it. And if they tried, he’d probably die of his internal injuries anyway.

* Thanks to Professor Tony Fels for correcting me in his comment to my previous post, Richard Francis: From Sewall biographer to Salem witch trials storyteller. Tony is the author of Switching Sides: How a Generation of Historians Lost Sympathy for the Victims of the Salem Witch Hunt, which I wrote about here.

“Where Was Giles Corey Pressed to Death?” by Marilynne K. Roach (American Ancestors Magazine, 15.4:36-39)

Diary of Samuel Sewall

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No doubt Samuel Sewall never anticipated his private diaries would be widely read and quoted by historians and others interested in the minutiae of his life. As a family man, merchant, and part-time judge, Sewall faced common challenges that rocked his world, from his fitful children dying young to his religious doubts of being elect. He wrote so often about attending funerals that it seemed like penance for making bad decisions that reverberated beyond hearth and home.

As his biographer, Richard Francis knows Sewall’s daily habits, his relationships, worldly concerns, and eternal worries, all of which were written in his journals. What Sewall rarely mentioned was the Salem witch trials, for which he’s best known. And so, Francis extrapolates from the diaries how Sewall’s character would react by writing Crane Pond: A Novel of Salem as historical fiction. Interspersed with court actions and executions, Francis reminds us that Sewall is not just a judge, he’s a man with a full and busy life. As an author, Francis helps the reader experience Sewall’s world, from the ferry trips from Boston to Salem with a meat pasty in his pocket to his first encounter with witchcraft and how it “was awful to see how the afflicted persons were agitated.”

Though Sewall agreed with the sentencing—there are no court documents that tell otherwise—in his diary he showed ambivalence toward the witch trials. For instance, Sewall participated in a fast and prayer meeting for his friend—and accused witch—Captain John Alden. He was relieved when Alden escaped from jail. On August 19, Sewall wrote: “This day George Burrough, John Willard, Jno Procter, Martha Carrier, and George Jacobs were executed at Salem, a very great number of spectators being present. [Ministers] Mr. Cotton Mather was there, Mr. Sims, Hale, Noyes, Cheever, &c. All of [the convicted] said they were innocent, Carrier and all. Mr. Mather says they all died by a righteous sentence. Mr. Burrough by his speech, prayer, protestation of his innocence, did much move unthinking persons, which occasions their speaking hardly concerning his being executed.” In the margins, Sewall wrote: “Dolefull! Witchcraft.”

Francis succeeds in creating believable dialogue and in building relationships. Judge William Stoughton talked like a formidable ally—or enemy. As expected, Sewall showed him the proper deference. With his daughter Hannah, Sewall was an attentive father, crawling into the closet where she hid to help her deal with her fears. After years of being consumed by his own role in the Salem witch trials, Sewall apparently did not think how the other judges would take his public apology in 1697. As Francis shows, he didn’t expect Waitstill Winthrop to sharply rebuke him outside the meeting house for speaking out of turn. The author also helps us understand Sewall’s struggles to be a noble father, a worthy citizen, a fair judge, and a faithful Puritan.

Using Sewall’s diary definitely adds substance to Francis’ novel. But the author slips on occasion, like referring to Rebecca Nurse—one of the most well-known victims—as a widow, though her husband died three years after she was hanged for witchcraft. He locates the site of Giles Corey’s pressing death at Proctor’s Ledge (where the convicted witches were hanged), though no contemporaneous source suggests it. And Francis claims that if a convicted witch made a confession before the hangman did his job, they would have an immediate reprieve. Ministers asked victims to confess to witchcraft—believing them to be real witches—but only so they could meet their maker with a repentant heart.

By telling the Salem story from a judge’s point of view, Francis offers a multidimensional perspective of the trials. I also suggest reading the author’s award-winning biography on Sewall.

Crane Pond: A Novel of Salem by Richard Francis

Judge Sewall’s Apology: The Salem Witch Trials and the Forming of an American Conscience by Richard Francis

Post edited 15 June 2021 to correct the length of time it took for Giles Corey to die under torture. Thanks, Professor Tony Fels!

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Massachusetts Bay Colony had numerous issues with pirates, from Dixey Bull to Blackbeard. During the interim (post-Andros, pre-Phips) government, the Court of Assistants ruled on a piracy case involving several men from Salem. The final verdicts would reverberate throughout the 1692 witch trials since seven of the nine justices who sat on the Court of Oyer and Terminer had served during the interim government.

For three months, Thomas Pound and his pirate crew captured several ships along the coast from Maine to Virginia. At his trial in January 1690, Pound detailed his travels and pillages. His plan was to head to Curacao to attack French ships, but Capt. Samuel Pease, commander of the sloop Mary, found them first. Outfitted by the government, Mary’s crew went to battle against Pound’s crew, and four pirates died. Capt. Pease died from his injuries a week later, adding murder to the felony and piracy charges.

Back in Boston, the Court of Assistants convicted the pirates and sentenced them to “be hanged by the neck until they be dead.” As the day of execution drew near, Magistrate Waitstill Winthrop sought support to ask Governor Simon Bradstreet to grant the pirates a reprieve. By the time the sheriff received the order, pirate Thomas Johnson had been turned off the scaffold and was dead, and the noose was being prepared for Thomas Hawkins. Since colonials rallied around such spectacles of death—and justice—Magistrate Samuel Sewall wrote in his diary, the last-minute reprieves “gave great disgust to the people; I fear it was ill done.” Sewall’s reluctant agreement with the other magistrates weighed heavily on him as he awaited reprisals from God.

Notably, in court Thomas Pound had pointedly claimed Thomas Hawkins, whose boat was used at the start of their enterprise, was not at any point a prisoner. Hawkins deserted the crew at Tarpaulin Cove, was captured separately, and taken in chains to Boston jail. He was not involved in the battle that killed Capt. Pease. Perhaps Pound wanted to remind the judges that Hawkins was well connected. Hawkins’ sister Elizabeth had married Adam Winthrop (brother of Waitstill) and John Richards, a magistrate; sister Abigail was married to the Honorable John Foster, a justice of common pleas; and sister Hannah was married to Elisha Hutchinson, a magistrate.

Influenced by elite connections instead of the rule of law, the judges failed in their duty to let justice be done. Two years later, these same men failed to respond to neighborly petitions to save victims accused of witchcraft based on spectral evidence. Yet when whispers of witchcraft enveloped elite members of society, those accusations never made it to court.

And as for the pirates? Most were released after paying 20 marks. Bound for England for trial, Thomas Hawkins was slain when the ship was attacked by a French privateer; Pound survived the battle, became captain of a Royal Navy ship, and died a “gentleman” in 1703.

Sources: Pirates of the New England Coast; Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1:309-310; New England Historical Genealogical Register Vol. 45:215-217; Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft.

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A student interview with Professor Emerson W. Baker on the triumph and tragedy of the 1692 Salem witch trials as part of the 2019 National History Day contest. (Missed Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, or Part 5?)

Kayleigh: Why aren’t the accused and condemned Salem witch trial victims considered martyrs?

Dr. Baker: I do see that term martyr thrown around from time to time; I sometimes use that term. I really think they were. I’m not really a religious historian but martyrs are people who willingly accept their fate—usually a gruesome, horrible fate—in the name of maintaining their religious beliefs. They refuse to yield. Let me put it this way. I don’t think anyone gets into the martyr business. It’s not a good career move. I don’t think anyone sets out to become a martyr to make a name for themselves. But they do it because they are such devout believers in their faith that they are willing to die for it rather than in any way malign or give up that faith or lessen it.

Certainly, it seems to me that by the late summer of 1692, it’s becoming increasingly clear that if you confess, you may not save your life but you will at least prolong it. Having said this, I know my friend Margo Burns disagrees with this to some degree. She’d be right in saying, “Tad, we don’t know if Governor Phips had let the Court of Oyer and Terminer meet in November if it would have convicted and sentenced to death even more of the folks who confessed.” In January they did, in fact, start convicting people who had confessed in the September meeting of the court. I think she’s right there. But having said that, by the summer of 1692, if you noticed the people who had gone to trial, those who had pled “not guilty” had a very quick trial and sentence and execution.

If you looked at those who said they were a witch, like Tituba and Abigail Hobbs, months after their confessions they were still alive. So families were starting to beg people to just confess. At the time, did they actually think that they would ultimately be spared? Maybe not. But if you wanted to stick to your strong Christian convictions, that was a real quick path to death in 1692. If you were willing to lie—to put a stain on your soul and your family for eternity—and say that you were a witch, you would still be living, at least for a while. I think that’s a critical thing to understand that went on in Salem, that many people took that way out.

So to me, these victims really are martyrs. Why are they not considered that today? I think it’s a good question; I never really had that question posed to me. I’m still thinking about it. A couple of things. One is that people today don’t really understand what really happened in 1692, they don’t actually understand who was executed and why, and who was not. Whenever I give a talk and I say over a third of the people who were accused confessed and died, people are shocked by it. They just don’t know that. I think part of the issue is just a lack of awareness.

Two, if you think about it, we’re such a secular society today that we really don’t have martyrs. And also, in the Puritan faith, at the time when these people might have been considered martyrs in the 17th century, certainly the church and the authorities didn’t think them to be martyrs because they had been the ones who put them to death. And at the time when you want to consider people that were martyrs in the 19th and 20th centuries. I think we have a much more secular society, so I think that explains it. So, a lack of understanding and also the nature of our society today.

Kayleigh: Salem is most famous for the 1692 witch trials and people still talk about that history, especially during October. Nowadays, there are witch hunts, like in Africa. Why don’t people seem to care that it’s still happening? Or don’t do anything about it? It’s rarely in the news at all.

Dr. Baker: You see a story show up once every year or so. To me, part of it goes back to the fact that every society has its witchcraft. We no longer accuse people of being witches but there are still cases of mob violence today. They are declining. But I think as far as trying to put a stop to it, there are actually some international efforts that are underway between some of the humanitarian relief organizations that are trying to work to address some of these concerns.

But as to why they are not more well known? I think part of it is that witchcraft persecutions we have today in places like Africa are not state-sanctioned trials and executions. This is essentially mob violence. What you’re talking about here, well, there’s no official thing you can do to intervene. Instead what’s really called for is education. I’ve tried to explain to people the reason why we’re having crop failures is because of global weather patterns and it’s not one poor person in town you think is cursing the fields. It’s sort of an insidious situation.

How do you stop hate crimes? How do we stop the mass shootings in the schools? And in the churches? You can’t legislate that. No amount of aid or money will necessarily solve those problems. We have some of these problems in our country and there’s no easy answer, except to solve these problems through education. 

———

Emerson (“Tad”) W. Baker is a historian and professor at Salem State University and the author of A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Witch Trials and the American Experience (2014), The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft & Conflict in Early New England (2007), and The New England Knight: Sir William Phips, 1651-1695 (1998).

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A student interview with Professor Emerson W. Baker on the triumph and tragedy of the 1692 Salem witch trials as part of the 2019 National History Day contest. (Missed Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, or Part 4?)

Kayleigh: Are there any other lessons from the Salem witch trials that people of today should learn?

Dr. Baker: Any other lessons of the trials? Wow. That’s clearly like the big question.

If we can think before we rush to judgment, if we could try to put ourselves in other people’s shoes rather than scapegoating them, it would be nice. The other thing is how our society—well pretty much every society throughout history—has always considered itself to be superior to everyone who lived before. Even in the up-to-date, modern society of 1692 I’m sure they felt the same way: that previous generations were nowhere near as smart or as sophisticated or technologically savvy or you name it. We tend to put down previous generations and assume they were more stupid than we were.

You see it all the time on TV, for example. One of my least favorite shows on television is Ancient Aliens. It’s a show on the History Channel where they look at things from the ancient world that don’t make sense or that we don’t understand. For example, we don’t understand how they built the great pyramids. We don’t understand how they built things to such exacting standards in prehistoric times only using stone tools.

So if we don’t understand it, for some people the answer can’t be that these people had ancient wisdom and knowledge that we are not smart enough to figure out. In some ways, they were our superiors. As a historian, I can accept that and say, “wow, there’s a lot we could probably learn here.” But if you look at a show like Ancient Aliens, the basic premise is people long ago were clearly stupid and inferior compared to us. So if they were able to do things that we cannot explain—like building the great pyramids—the logical answer is that they had help from ancient aliens who flew in from outer space to do these things for them.

Every time I give a talk about the Salem witch trials, someone always says, “How can they be so superstitious?” Well, they weren’t superstitious, they were God-fearing Christians and the Devil was real. “How could they be so foolish and superstitious, so ignorant to execute all these people for witchcraft?” My point is: They weren’t foolish, they weren’t superstitious. They thought they were doing what needed to be done according to the knowledge of the day to protect the individuals and their society. They thought people who were believed to be witches were in league with Satan, and through Satan were using his black power to destroy the earth.

Every society has challenges. People looking back at history are going to judge them and say, “wow they were really stupid. Why did they do it this way? Why wasn’t it so obvious to them that the answer was something else?” If only we could try to be more like a just society, and try to eliminate hatred and discrimination and realize that we don’t have all the answers. We should try to do the best we can under the circumstances, and not judge our fellow people, nor judge people in the past unless we really try to understand their lives.

Emerson (“Tad”) W. Baker is a historian and professor at Salem State University and the author of A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Witch Trials and the American Experience (2014), The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft & Conflict in Early New England (2007), and The New England Knight: Sir William Phips, 1651-1695 (1998).

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Cotton Mather wrote the only government-approved book about the Salem witch trials.

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A student interview with Professor Emerson W. Baker on the triumph and tragedy of the 1692 Salem witch trials as part of the 2019 National History Day contest. (Missed Part 1, Part 2, or Part 3?)

Kayleigh: As you said in your book, A Storm of Witchcraft, Governor William Phips created one of the first large-scale government coverups in American history by curbing free speech [about the Salem witch trials]. This happened again, during World War I, etc. Why do you think the government seems to repeat the same problems over and over again? Is it because they don’t learn from history or they forget about the past?

Dr. Baker: I don’t really think history repeats itself but I do think sometimes it burps itself back up. Part of it is that most politicians are not good historians. I also think too that unfortunately, it’s sort of a self-preservation reaction to try to cover something up. It’s an instinctive thing to muzzle the press, to quiet dissent. It’s weird because on the one hand, you know, it’s such an American thing to have dissent and to have freedom of speech and open opinion. It’s also part of a self-preservation mode to try to quash that, to control that.

Frankly, you can see that today in this whole bit about fake news. The president can’t control free speech, he can’t issue a public speech ban the way William Phips did, but what he can do as much as possible is to control the media by saying they are speaking falsehoods. To me, it’s the same kind of process. What’s interesting to me—and this is where Salem is so fascinating—is that every generation has that version, that incident of Salem: the Red Scare, McCarthyism, or earlier on, the treatment of Loyalists, or the issue of slavery. Every generation has its political fight where one group or multiple groups try to restrict the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, of other groups, for political ends. Ultimately, unfortunately, it almost seems to be part of human nature and it’s something we have to be constantly on guard for and to fight against.

At the end of my previous book, The Devil of Great Island, which is another case of witchcraft in New Hampshire in the 1680s, I say, unfortunately, as long as we have hatred and prejudices and racism and bigotry and persecution and scapegoating, we’re going to have some form of witchcraft. And we’re also going to have some kind of effort to restrict people’s freedoms. It’s not the most optimistic, uplifting note. But to me, it’s why studying this stuff is so important because it rings true today and it alerts us to the dangers of any efforts to restrict a free society.

———

Emerson (“Tad”) W. Baker is a historian and professor at Salem State University and the author of A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Witch Trials and the American Experience (2014), The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft & Conflict in Early New England (2007), and The New England Knight: Sir William Phips, 1651-1695 (1998).

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Proctor's Ledge

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A student interview with Professor Emerson W. Baker on the triumph and tragedy of the 1692 Salem witch trials as part of the 2019 National History Day contest. (Missed Part 1or Part 2?)

Kayleigh: In Salem, they treat history like it’s more of a show than actual history. The museums are kind of terrible. Why do you think that is? Is it because they think people will be more interested in the drama than the truth?

Dr. Baker: I think part of the problem is that Salem has become a dark-tourism community, a witch-trials-tourism community. A large part of Salem’s economy depends on tourists, depends on people coming here to visit the sites associated with the witch trials. And it’s problematic. We have the 1692 deaths of 19 innocent people and we have the people who are promoting dark tourism. I call it the vampire-fangs-and-fried-dough phenomenon. People come here during Haunted Happenings and find this carnival-like atmosphere.

I think the problem is knowledge. One reason I started teaching about Salem witch trials and writing my book was that if you tell people the story, it gives them great pause about what they are doing in Salem. But the other problem is that people are doing this for a living. Most of the museums in Salem that make their money off of witchcraft tourism are not really museums. By definition, museums are nonprofit organizations. And these are all for-profit businesses, and, as you point out by your question, many of these places make their money promoting the spectacular, the morbid, the lurid, rather than trying to tell the story as we historians would like to have it told.

When they dedicated the memorial at Proctor’s Ledge* in July 2017, I was honored to be one of the few people who was asked to say a few words. What I said then was that I was thrilled to see Salem’s reaction when we came forward and told the mayor and her staff that we had confirmed the execution site. Frankly, when we did that I didn’t know what was going to happen. I was thinking, how on earth are we going to raise the money for a memorial? You know, we were just a small group of folks. Immediately, at that first meeting, the mayor and her aide simply said, “thank you for doing this. This is now our duty, our responsibility to help ensure that this site has been properly memorialized and is never forgotten again.” And the city took it upon itself immediately to build a memorial there.

To me, it was something wonderful that the city was willing to confront its past. So when I got to speak at the dedication, I mentioned this and the way the community came together to build this memorial. To me, I hoped it signaled a new beginning for Salem and how it treats the witch trials.

I would like to see in the future less celebration and more communion, dedication, and thought about the events of 1692, rather than celebration and the carnival-like atmosphere. Realistically, we’ll never get rid of that carnival-like element. I think we need more reflection and less celebration. I guess I am mildly optimistic that that can happen.

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*Emerson Baker and the Gallows Hill Team spent five years researching data and analyzing topography to pinpoint the site where 19 victims of the 1692 witch hunt were executed. In 2017, a memorial was dedicated at the location.

Emerson (“Tad”) W. Baker is a historian and professor at Salem State University and the author of A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Witch Trials and the American Experience (2014), The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft & Conflict in Early New England (2007), and The New England Knight: Sir William Phips, 1651-1695 (1998).

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A student interview with Professor Emerson W. Baker on the triumph and tragedy of the 1692 Salem witch trials as part of the 2019 National History Day contest. (Missed Part 1?)

Kayleigh: Danvers, Massachusetts, is almost disassociated with the 1692 Salem witch trials. Of course, Danvers has its memorial but it’s kind of out of place and hidden. Do you think it’s because of the way, like you said earlier, “Gallows Hill cast a large and dark shadow on Salem”?

Dr. Baker: I think Danvers has very deliberately chosen a separate path. Richard Trask, the town archivist of Danvers, has posted on the Danvers Archival Center website various articles and materials. In one he has written about how Danvers became a town. I actually quote it in my book, A Storm of Witchcraft. He talks about the whole process of when Danvers finally was allowed to split off from Salem in 1752. Many historians, like [Paul] Boyer and [Stephen] Nissenbaum, believe—and I would agree too—one of the triggers that caused the Salem witch trials was the inability to split off from Salem in 1692. Ironically, it took another 60 years, until 1752, before the Salem Villagers were allowed to become a separate town, for a number of political reasons. Trask’s article traces that evolution to when the town is named Danvers after an English nobleman, which was a common practice back then. Trask thinks that the town was perfectly happy with that, that they enjoyed the anonymity of no longer being part of Salem.

I think you’re right, part of it is that shame, that humiliation, but Danvers also tried to much more normalize the relationship [to its 1692 past] over the years. Remember, it was Danvers that was the first community that had a memorial [in 1885]. Then they added onto it in 1892. To me what’s really fascinating is: Where was that memorial placed? It’s placed at the Rebecca Nurse farm. When the memorial was placed there, the farm had long been occupied by members of the Putnam family. Have you been to the Rebecca Nurse farm?

Kayleigh: Yes, I have. A couple of years ago.

Dr. Baker: If you go down to the cemetery there, you’ll notice that there are probably more Putnams buried there than Nurses. For me, the fascinating piece is that the Putnams are actually related to the Nurses.* Nowadays this is one big, happy family. What’s neat to me, you know, is that the Putnam family was willing to let the Nurse Family Association erect this memorial to the [witch trials] past in their family cemetery that they also shared with the Nurses.

I think Danvers has always tried early on to atone for what happened in 1692. To me, the very different treatment of the tercentenary is a good example of how Danvers deals with these things. They wanted to build a memorial. But they were much more low-key, they didn’t get [Holocaust survivor and author] Elie Wiesel to dedicate it or stuff like that. If you’ve seen the memorial, it’s right there by the elementary school, it’s across the street from the site of the 1692 meeting house, it’s sitting there amongst the ballfields and elementary school. It’s part of this residential community and it just seems to blend in very nicely.

The other thing Danvers did in 1992, and you see this at the Nurse cemetery, they reburied what they think are [witch trials victim] George Jacobs’ remains. The way they did this was so Danvers. Salem, you know, they unveil this memorial, they have Elie Wiesel, they have all these bells and whistles. Danvers essentially had this private committal service for George Jacobs. They went to great lengths to be historically accurate with this. They built—well, a fellow who is a good carpenter built—a replica of a 17th-century coffin to put the bones in, they did that replica 17th-century gravestone, and recreated a committal service like you would have had in 1692—and they basically did it as a private ceremony. I think there was one reporter they allowed to be there. But there weren’t all these press releases, “Come watch us bury George Jacobs!” So, to me, it was much more an acknowledgment of the past and the wrong, but with absolutely no efforts to commercialize it.

Since 1892, at least, Salem has had this complex relationship. On the one hand, people want to make good on past sins and say “let these things never happen again.” On the other hand, they’re saying, “Would you like to take a tour of haunted Salem for $30?”

Danvers is not like that, it has never been like that. They’ve never tried to commercialize it in any way or draw any publicity to the community. The Danversites are not interested in doing that. They take quiet, humble acts to try to do penance for the events of 1692.

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*In 1692, some of the Putnam family, most notably Ann Putnam Jr. (1679-1716), accused 70-year-old Rebecca Nurse of being a witch. She was hanged on 19 July 1692. A generation or two later, the families intermarried.

Emerson (“Tad”) W. Baker is a historian and professor at Salem State University and the author of A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Witch Trials and the American Experience (2014), The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft & Conflict in Early New England (2007), and The New England Knight: Sir William Phips, 1651-1695 (1998).

Part 1
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6