Tag: Rebecca Nurse

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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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Indictment v. Candy for afflicting Mary Walcott

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

Tony Fels responds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Continue to Part 4.

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

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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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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.

———

*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

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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.

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Sidney Perley at Proctor’s Ledge

The year 2017 marked the 325th anniversary of the Salem witch trials in which 19 people were found guilty of witchcraft and were hanged between June and September 1692. 

Lessons and legacies of 1692 symposium

On June 10, the anniversary of the hanging of Bridget Bishop, hundreds gathered at Salem State University for a special symposium, Salem’s Trials: Lessons and Legacies of 1692, sponsored by Salem State University’s history department, the Voices Against Injustice, and the Essex National Heritage Area. C-SPAN recorded four of the six sessions.

Proctor’s Ledge dedicated

In January 2016, the Gallows Hill Project team announced it had confirmed historian Sidney Perley’s theory that Proctor’s Ledge was the site of the hangings, not the summit of Gallows Hill or anywhere else. Using Perley’s research, a 1692 eyewitness account of the hangings, ground-penetrating radar, high-tech aerial photography, and maps, the team reached its conclusion. Fortunately, in 1936 the city had purchased the land between Pope and Proctor streets and in 2017, a memorial was created. The official unveiling of the memorial was held on July 19, with numerous descendants of the victims attending.

Reproduction of the meetinghouse at Rebecca Nurse homestead

Having her day

Governor Charlie Baker declared July 19 Rebecca Nurse Day in Massachusetts. At the Rebecca Nurse homestead in Danvers, archivist Richard Trask spoke on behalf of the five women executed 325 years before, including 71-year-old Nurse. Afterwards, a wreath was ceremoniously placed at the Nurse memorial inside the family cemetery.

Talks and walks

At History Camp: Boston 2017, presentations included Marilynne K. Roach on How Governor Phips Stopped the Salem Witch Trials (sort of); Jeanne Pickering on From Witchcraft to Slavery: The History of the Hoar/Slew Family; and Lori Stokes on Puritans. Margo Burns, project manager for the Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, traveled throughout New Hampshire and parts of Massachusetts with her talk on The Capital Crime of Witchcraft: What the Sources Tell Us. At the North Andover Historical Society, Richard Hite gave a talk on witch trial-related burials at the Old Burial Ground and Char Lyons gave a tour of the cemetery. Kelly Daniell spoke at the Peabody Historical Society on the Life and Death of John Proctor. Emerson Baker gave a Salem Witch Trials Walking Tour. And Intramersive debuted its game theater experience, Daemonologie, in Salem.

World bewitch’d exhibit

On October 31, Cornell University opened its The World Bewitch’d: Visions of Witchcraft from the Cornell Collections exhibit. With 3,000+ items, Cornell owns the largest collection of books, manuscripts, and ephemera in North America about witchcraft, spanning from the 15th to 20th centuries. The exhibit, open through August 31, 2018, focuses on the spread of witchcraft beliefs in Europe, which ultimately caused the deaths of tens of thousands of people.

PEM library access

In December, the Peabody Essex Museum announced most of the Phillips Library collection will be moved to its new collections center in Rowley. People have been protesting the news, especially since much of the archives and materials form the backbone of Salem’s historical past, from documents of the Salem witch trials and seafaring ventures to local organizations’ records. The museum said it could not procure a Salem building fit for a climate-controlled space for storage and research facilities.