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Salem witchcraft trials scrapbook at the Superior Court in Salem, Massachusetts, 1973 (AP photo)

by Margo Burns, associate editor, Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt

On January 11, 2023, the Peabody Essex Museum turned over 527 original documents from the 1692 Salem witchcraft trials to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Archives in Boston. Owned by the Commonwealth, these documents had been on deposit with the Phillips Library since 1980.

In 1980, the entire collection of the records in the colonial Essex County Court Archive, from 1636 to 1800, moved from the basement of the Salem Superior Court building into the care of the renowned Essex Institute in Salem, Massachusetts. Ellen Mark, manuscript librarian at the Essex Institute, described the courthouse in an AP news story in December 1980 as “a typical old building basement, complete with dripping heating pipes. It was a very poor place to store old documents.”

Fortunately, the Salem witchcraft trials records were still in their scrapbooks, on display upstairs. Upon being deposited at the Essex Institute, the two scrapbooks were disassembled, de-acidified in alkaline baths, and earlier hinges used to mount them in the albums were carefully removed. A minimal amount of conservation work was done to support their physical integrity, aside from being ironed flat. In January 1982, the records went to the Northeast Document Conservation Center in Andover to be microfilmed.

Afterwards, the Essex Institute—whose collection concentrated its focus on local history, genealogy, and art—hosted the exhibit Salem Witchcraft: Documents of an Early Colonial Drama (June 1 to Oct. 31, 1982). In addition to a selection of original documents, the exhibit included George Jacobs Sr.’s cane and John Procter’s brass sundial, which were owned by the Institute. Admission was $1.50. The first item listed in all newspaper promotions was that “original documents of the Salem witch trials” could be seen at the Essex Institute by the public.

At the tercentenary of the Salem witchcraft trials in 1992, the Essex Institute opened the Days of Judgment exhibit in Plummer Hall, which included 33 documents and some of the objects in its collections related to people involved in the 1692 trials. That same year, the Essex Institute and the Peabody Museum merged to become the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM).

Direct access to the Phillips Library collections was in a reading room in Daland House, where I first started my own research, in what I recall as a tiny, dim room with only a few tables. In 1997, the library closed for nine months for a “massive restoration project, including climate control and modern archival storage” (PEM press release). In May 1998, the reading room reopened next door on the second floor of Plummer Hall: “Lined with columns and illuminated by chandeliers, it manages to be both formal and comfortable. The room is right out of the 19th century, complete with antique globe, oil paintings of Saltonstalls on the walls, and busts of Peabodys framing the door,” according to a January 14, 1999, article in the Boston Globe. On the first floor, the Essex Institute also featured a small display, The Real Witchcraft Papers “permanent exhibit,” with the canes, sundial, and a few original documents, including the warrant to arrest my ancestor Rebecca Nurse.

Transcriptions in process

In the 2000s, our team for Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt visited these documents frequently, working on making the most accurate transcriptions of them that we could, correcting a variety of previous errors in Boyer and Nissenbaum’s Salem Witchcraft Papers (1977), and including 71 more documents previously uncollected. Published in 2009, Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt was part of a National Endowment for the Humanities grant that also supported a website at the University of Virginia, where a hypertext version of Salem Witchcraft Papers and digitized images from the 1982 microfilm could be accessed by anyone online. The website reduced the demand for access to the original documents, which was better in general for the integrity documents—but if one wanted to consult them, it was still possible.

From left: Marilynne K. Roach, Bernard Rosenthal, Margo Burns, Richard Trask, and Benjamin Ray, editors of Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, working at the Phillips Library in Plummer Hall, June 2005.

On November 24, 2011, the Phillips Library again closed for “preservation and renovation work on Plummer Hall and Daland House (expected completion 2013).” That meant the entire collection—42,000 linear feet of historical documents—was moving off-site to a temporary location, where PEM announced there would still be access to the records until the work was completed. At this time, Elizabeth Bouvier, from the Supreme Judicial Court Archives, collected the 150-shelf-feet of the colonial court documents—still folded in docketed bundles, tied with string—but again, not the witchcraft trials documents. The word—whether true or not—was that out of deference to Salem, the witchcraft trials documents belonged in Salem and so they would stay.

Time wore on, and the off-site location remained a mystery, concerning a lot of us. More than 20 months later, the temporary location opened August 1, 2013, in an industrial building in the next town of Peabody. Although access was once again possible, the stark white walls and absence of windows had none of the charm of the resplendent reading room in Plummer Hall.

In 2015, Peabody Essex Museum announced a “$20 million renovation and improvement of PEM’s Phillips Library … housed in two noted 1850s architectural treasures, the John Tucker Daland House and Plummer Hall, both of which are being renovated by Schwartz/Silver Architects.”

What wasn’t clear to the public, of course, is the hard work that was happening behind the scenes: The entire collection of the Phillips Library was now physically on a single level, and the re-organization of the materials—which had at least four different cataloging systems—was under way, to produce what a 2017 press release would call “a consistent catalog of the entire Library collection and to make the catalog of the collection accessible online.” PEM’s website announced that the temporary location was going to be closed another six months (Sept. 1, 2017 through March 31, 2018), to move to the “new location,” which was assumed to be back in Salem.

Rumors bring people together

At a public meeting of the Salem Historical Commission on December 6, 2017, the architectural firm of Schwartz/Silver, with Bob Monk and Phillip Johns of the Peabody Essex Museum, submitted an application for renovations to Plummer Hall and Daland House. They revealed that the Museum had “no current plans to move the library collections back into this building.” The size of the growing collection was already twice as large as the capacity of the Stacks, but also that it was “not code compliant for staff use.” The cost would be enormous.

This was news. Everything that the public had heard before was that the two buildings were going to be renovated and the collection would be returning there. What was going on? It turned out that the plan was to move the Phillips Library holdings to PEM’s new Collection Center in Rowley, a building that had once been a toy factory and was now being re-fitted to store items from PEM’s vast collections in a climate-controlled space. The plan to move the library holdings away from Salem upset a lot of people, and the witchcraft documents were the prime example held up of why people felt the library needed to be IN SALEM. 

Frankly, it was a public relations fiasco that did not have to happen. CEO Dan Monroe did little to help the situation at a hastily called public forum in the atrium of the Peabody Essex Museum on January 11, 2018, which attracted “hundreds of people” working in the tourist industry, local academics, historians, and lovers of Salem, according to the Boston Globe coverage of the event. Monroe told the Globe, “There was an expectation by a number of people that we had a responsibility to consult with them about what would be done with the Phillips collection. That’s an expectation that we didn’t particularly share or understand.” Clearly. Donald Friary, Salem resident and President of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, summed up the biggest issue: “No one in Salem knew this was happening. No one knew that they were looking for other sites… There is a very high level of mistrust.”

It seemed like Monroe was there to just show up and just get through the evening and keep doing what he had already planned anyway. There were heated exchanges. Monroe explained that it was going to be impossible to redo the buildings, and that the existing archival storage addition was deemed unsound and really was “condemned.” The audience offered many suggestions and questioned why different options had not been considered. Monroe just stood there and took it, looking impatient and petulant as he did, rebuffing it all. There was a claim that the witchcraft documents had “all been digitized” and were at the website. This was not entirely accurate: At that time only the 30 documents owned by the Phillips Library had been digitized.

Monroe was quoted in the Boston Globe stating, “History doesn’t reside in a specific state or a specific set of documents.” Except that when it comes to the Salem witchcraft trials, history is all about that place and those original documents.

Bottom line: Had Monroe been transparent ahead of time and let the public know that there turned out to be a severe structural problem with the building and PEM was very concerned about how to best preserve and protect such an important historical collection, things could have gone smoother. Yes, there still would have been lots of public discussions and sundry opinions, but with a shared goal of figuring out what was best for the collection—even though the final decision would always be PEM’s.

The newly formed group, “Save the Phillips Library,” collected over 5,000 signatures on a petition at change.org, appealing to Monroe not to move the collection out of Salem, but in vain. In July 2018, four months longer than originally announced, the Collection Center (recently renamed the James B. and Mary Lou Hawkes Collection Center) opened with great fanfare, with PEM-hired buses taking people on the 15-miles-plus drive from Salem to Rowley that weekend. Finally, the new Reading Room was available to researchers again. The collection was in an excellent state of organization and preservation. Although the room had windows, it had all the atmosphere of an open-plan industrial office, despite being designed by Schwartz/Silver. Access was restored.

All disputes about the move were resolved by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on October 20, 2020, when it ruled in the case of Peabody Essex Museum v. Maura Healey, Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, that the relocation was “consistent with equitable deviation from the terms of the founding statutes establishing the Essex Institute, an organizational forebearer of PEM,” but, even now, as a recent article in The Salem News observed, “there’s still lingering feelings back home from local historians over the Phillips Library’s distance from Salem.”

Reparations

Dan Lipcan, PEM’s Head Librarian since 2019, gets it, telling the Boston Globe in 2020, “The move to Rowley was very hurtful to people. One of the charges when I arrived was, ‘You need to repair relations with the community.’”

After years of ignoring its local history archival and artifacts collections, PEM opened its rotating Salem Stories and Highlights from the Phillips Library exhibits. In PEM’s main gallery, the Salem Witchcraft Trials 1692 exhibit opened, featuring the original documents in exquisite public displays, along with associated historical objects. Even with COVID rules keeping people six feet apart, the witchcraft exhibit drew thousands of visitors during its six-month run (Sept. 26, 2020–April 4, 2021).

In 2021, the Salem Witchcraft Trials: Reckoning and Reclaiming exhibit cross-curated original documents with a gown by fashion designer Alexander McQueen from his 2007 collection inspired by his ancestor, “Memory of Elizabeth How, 1692,” plus selections from photographer Frances F. Denny’s series Major Arcana: Portraits of Witches in America (Sept. 18, 2021–March 20, 2022). There was something for everyone, including a board for visitors to post their own thoughts and responses to what had happened in 1692.

Then in 2022, there was the surprise pop-up exhibit, The Salem Witchcraft trials: The Towne Sisters with more original documents about the cases of sisters Rebecca Nurse, Mary Esty, and Sarah Cloyse (Sept. 10, 2022–Nov. 28, 2022). This small exhibit was featured in the Phillips Library rotating exhibits space at PEM.

Meanwhile, the entire collection of the Salem witchcraft trials documents on deposit at Phillips Library has been professionally scanned and indexed on its website, paired with references to the transcriptions in Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt. Plus, if you missed any of the witchcraft trials exhibitions at PEM, you can select the exhibitions at the website—including the 1992 one—to see what was in each, along with photos of all these installations.

With the recent expansion and modernization of the Massachusetts Archives facility in Boston, the Supreme Judicial Court called for the return of the Salem witchcraft trials documents to the Judicial Archives. This was done in January 2023 at a ceremony at the Massachusetts State Archives with Peabody Essex Museum CEO Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, Director of the Phillips Library Dan Lipcan, Judicial Court Chief Justice Kimberly Budd, and Essex County Clerk-Magistrate Thomas Driscoll. PEM also presented another 30 Salem witchcraft records from the Phillips Library’s own collection to the Archives, from donations it had received over the years.

In an article in the Salem News, Hartigan said, “PEM is committed to telling the story of these events through exhibitions, lectures, and public programs as well as by making reproductions of the Salem Witch Trial documents available to the public on our website.” Driscoll summed it up about the documents, “These things belong to the people. I think it’s the right place for them to go.”

These 1692 witchcraft trials documents are now at the Massachusetts Judicial Archives located in the Massachusetts Archives building at Columbia Point in Boston. They are not the only original records from the witchcraft trials. More are in the Massachusetts Archives, as well as the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Boston Public Library, and a few at various historical societies and libraries.

This post is a part of a more detailed presentation on the history of all the witchcraft manuscripts, to be presented at History Camp Boston 2023, on August 12, 2023, at the Suffolk Law School in Boston.

Many thanks to the numerous people who kindly answered my questions and made connections for me during my research: Dan Lipcan and Jennifer Hornsby (Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum), Michael Comeau (Massachusetts State Archives), Donna Segar and Emerson Baker (Salem State University), Marilynne K. Roach, and Robin Mason, who sent me down this path.

See also:

Salem witch trials documents return to SJC

Why go to Rowley? Salem’s PEM research library of course

A tribute to the Essex Institute—and Mary English’s chair

Teaching the everyday & the extraordinary: Salem in 1692

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On 25 May 2023, the Connecticut General Assembly approved the Resolution Exonerating the Women and Men Convicted for Witchcraft in Colonial Connecticut. The resolution reads:

“WHEREAS, the courts in the early British colonies of Connecticut and New Haven indicted at least thirty-four women and men for the alleged crimes of witchcraft and familiarities with the devil and convicted twelve of them, executing eleven, and it is now accepted by the historical profession and society as a whole that all the accused were innocent of such charges, and

“WHEREAS, legal procedures differed at the time and many practices of the Colonial courts would not meet modern American standards of proof, so that the miscarriage of justice was facilitated by such procedures, and

“WHEREAS, the status of women was radically different than it is today, and misogyny played a large part in the trials and in denying defendants their rights and dignity, and

“WHEREAS, community strife and panic combined with overwhelming fear and superstition led to these accusations of alleged witchcraft and the subsequent suffering of those accused.

“NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that all of the formally convicted and executed are absolved of all crimes of witchcraft and familiarities with the devil. The legislature specifically absolves the following people believed to have been convicted and executed for the crimes of witchcraft and familiarities with the devil: Alice Young in 1647, Mary Johnson in 1648, Joan Carrington in 1651, John Carrington in 1651, Goodwife Bassett in 1651, Goodwife Knapp in 1653, Lydia Gilbert in 1654, Mary Sanford in 1662, Nathaniel Greensmith in 1663, Rebecca Greensmith in 1663, and Mary Barnes in 1663; and one Elizabeth Seager convicted and reprieved in 1665.

“BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that those who were indicted for the crimes of witchcraft and familiarities with the devil, forced to flee, banished or even acquitted continued to live with their reputations destroyed and their family names tarnished, will have their reputations restored and no longer have disgrace attached to their names, now, being in good standing in the state of Connecticut. The following indicted for the crimes of witchcraft and familiarities with the devil who were not convicted but still suffered greatly after indictments were: Goodwife Bailey in 1655, Nicholas Bailey in 1655, Elizabeth Godman in 1655, Elizabeth Garlick in 1658, Margaret Jennings in 1661, Nicholas Jennings in 1661, Judith Varlet in 1662, Andrew Sanford in 1662, William Ayers in 1662, Judith Ayers in 1662, James Wakely in 1662, Katherine Harrison in 1668 and 1669, William Graves in 1667, Elizabeth Clawson in 1692, Hugh Crosia in 1692, Mercy Disborough in 1692, Mary Harvey in 1692, Hannah Harvey in 1692, Mary Staples in 1692, Winifred Benham in 1697, and Winifred Benham Jr. in 1697.

“BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the State of Connecticut apologizes to the descendants of all those who were indicted for the crimes of witchcraft and familiarities with the devil, convicted and executed and for the harm done to the accused persons’ posterity to the present day, and acknowledges the trauma and shame that wrongfully continued to affect the families of the accused.”

Thanks to the Connecticut Witch Trial Exoneration Project and others who supported and voted for this long-overdue resolution.

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In January 2023, the Peabody Essex Museum’s Phillips Library returned 527 Salem witch trials (SWT) documents to the Judicial Archives at the Massachusetts State Archives facility in Boston.

Established in 1692 after the dismissal of the Court of Oyer and Terminer, the Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature heard the final witch trials in Salem. However, the court papers apparently did not depart with the judges. Over the years, some SWT documents ended up at other repositories or in private collections, though the majority stayed in Salem. Due to lack of storage space in the old Superior Court building on Federal Street, in December 1980 the SWT documents were temporarily reposited with the Essex Institute (EI) at Plummer Hall. The SWT papers remained in the custody of EI’s Phillips Library after the Essex Institute merged with the Peabody Museum of Salem in 1992 to form the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM). In 2018, the Phillips Library collections moved to Rowley.

Once in its new location, the Phillips Library team digitized all of the SWT documents in its possession before the transfer. In addition to the 527 SWT documents owned by the Commonwealth, PEM digitized 31 SWT papers that had been donated to the Essex Institute.

Access to the original documents from the Judicial Archives is limited. Years ago, I was able to get access to my ancestor’s 1721 probate only because the microfilm was missing a few pages. With the digital scans online, few valid reasons exist for being able to touch the fragile originals. And it’s not likely that being a descendant will give you access, since millions of people can say the same!

Related links

Salem Witch Trials Collection, Phillips Library Digital Collection, Peabody Essex Museum (images of SJC/PEM documents)

Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt by Bernard Rosenthal, et al. (book, transcription of all known documents, totaling 977)

Judicial Archives at the Massachusetts State Archives, 220 Morrissey Blvd., Boston, Massachusetts

The Phillips Library reading room, 306 Newburyport Turnpike, Rowley, Massachusetts

SWT holdings from various archives (2002)

Treasures of the Salem court house

Why go to Rowley? Salem’s PEM research library of course

press release: Peabody Essex Museum and Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Announce Return of Historic Salem Witch Trial Documents, 12 January 2023

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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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Examination of Elizabeth Johnson Jr.

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/.

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On 26 May 2022, the Massachusetts State Senate passed Amendment 842, part of the process to clear the name of Elizabeth Johnson Jr., the last convicted witch from the Salem witch trials. Now it will go to a conference committee made of senators and representatives who will create a compromise budget.

Twitter, 26 May 2022

Watch: The Last Witch: A Documentary 330 Years in the Making

Watch: Diana DiZoglio’s Senate Floor Speech on the Exoneration of Elizabeth Johnson Jr.

Read previous post: Civics in action: Exonerating Elizabeth Johnson Jr.

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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

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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/.

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My Zazzle shop is a complement to the Witches of Massachusetts Bay history and travel website. I wanted it to be different from the stores in Salem, not only because I’m showcasing the WitchesMassBay brand and logo, but because I wanted to create something personal for people who are connected to the past.

After creating the obligatory logo t-shirt (since I need “work shirts”), I designed three mugs: the Historian, the Descendant, and the Author. I liked the concept so much that I included the titles on circle-, square-, and heart-shaped ornaments. And while my shop doesn’t include the rods needed, I imagine using these shapes to create a mobile, with names of ancestors written on the backs—a kinetic family sculpture.

One of the objectives of my website is to make history real and relatable. These 17th-century folks caught up in the witch hunts were ordinary people with flaws, just like you and me. I’m not much of an artist, but I can pick a good quote. Their words still resonate with power and conviction, from Martha Corey saying, “I cannot help people talking about me,” to Rebecca Nurse declaring that “God will clear my innocency.” Just think of the conversation starters when your coffee mug makes such a statement.

One of my favorite lines from the Salem witch trials comes from Tituba—pertinent and impertinent as it is—so I included her words on a t-shirt in my Halloween, etc., collection. Don’t get me wrong: I have a deep connection to the witch trials but I also love Halloween.

The WitchesMassBay shop is a work in progress. (I have so many good quotes to discover!) If you have suggestions, let me know.

Oh, and here’s a Zazzle secret: There are special sale codes every day, whether it’s a sitewide discount or a product type.

Shop WitchesMassBay now.

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Witch trial display, Essex County Court library
Witch trial display, Essex County Court library (photo credit: THD)

The Supreme Judicial Court celebrated its 325th anniversary in Salem in January 2018. Previously known as the Superior Court of Judicature, this high court took over after the Court of Oyer and Terminer was dismissed by Governor William Phips in the fall of 1692. Appropriately enough, the law library inside the Essex County Superior Court building at 56 Federal Street, Salem, features a small witch trials display case.

The glass-topped pedestal display case contains a copy of the death warrant for Bridget Bishop, the first person hanged for witchcraft; a copy of the examination of Rebecca Nurse, in Rev. Samuel Parris’ handwriting; pins the afflicted accusers claimed were used by the “witches” to injure them in court; and the county seal used on the warrants. While there’s a debate whether the pins were used as 17th century staples to hold court papers together or if they were admitted as evidence, the county seal is genuine. First used in 1687, the seal affixed wax to documents, stamping them with the monogram “Essex.”

Note: To visit the library, you must go through security screening. Visitors are not allowed to bring cell phones and other electronic devices inside the building. Cameras require pre-approval from the security department.