Tag: Sarah Bishop

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Wicked Salem by Sam Baltrusis covers 300-plus years of history and people in three categories: the Witches, the Murderers, and the Cursed. The book includes stories about Bridget Bishop, George Jacobs Sr., and Mary Estey; self-confessed Boston Strangler Albert DeSalvo, Giles Corey, and Captain White’s murderer, Richard Crowninshield; Rev. Cotton Mather, Sheriff George Corwin, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Harry Houdini. According to Baltrusis—a tour guide and paranormal researcher—each person profiled has a particular “haunt” in Salem.

Despite his scaredy-cat persona, Baltrusis tells intriguing stories filled with detailed information about actual people and places in Salem, intermingled with his personal and professional experiences. He interviews modern-day practicing witches, including Laurie Cabot the Official Witch of Salem and tour guide Thomas O’Brien Vallor. And in case readers get confused, Vallor adamantly explains: “The victims of the witch trials were definitely not witches.” The book also includes sidebars—most notably with Margo Burns, project manager of Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, and Kelly Daniell, archivist for Peabody Historical Society—for historical perspective.

In many instances, Baltrusis judiciously uses the word “allegedly,” especially in reference to oft-repeated “quotes” from long-dead people. In retelling a ghost sighting at the Samuel Pickman House, he admits, “after doing exhaustive historical research, I found no real proof to suggest the story of the murder or the supposed demonic infestation at the house is true” (17). I’m curious why it’s included, even if it’s a hotspot of paranormal activity. Baltrusis said he “made a concerted effort to stick to the historical facts, even if it resulted in debunking an alleged encounter with the paranormal” (235).

Lingering Lore and Legends

Baltrusis claims Wicked Salem is about “correcting the misinformation associated with the witch trials hysteria of 1692. Over the past decade, I have noticed a shift toward untangling these historical inaccuracies, but we still have a long way to go” (240). Yet much of the book, Baltrusis admits, came from updated excerpts from his nine previous books and published articles. (That must be why 18 pages about the U.S.S. Salem’s haunted attraction in Quincy was included, though the ship had nothing to do with the city of Salem.) In addition, he conducted interviews, read paranormal books on Salem, and checked out related blogs and websites for this volume.

However, Baltrusis repeats myths that have been corrected ages ago by historians and genealogists. Here are just a few:

  • Joanna Chibbun “declared that [Sarah] Good, who was pregnant in 1692 and lost her unborn child in Ipswich, actually murdered the infant” (72). Good’s infant daughter was born 10 December 1691, before she was charged with witchcraft (see New England Historical & Genealogical Register 157:9, published 2003).
  • In 1981, David L. Greene sorted out the identities of accused witches Bridget Bishop and Sarah Bishop (The American Genealogist 57:129-131). Although acknowledging the confusion, Baltrusis writes: Bridget “lived in Salem Village (present-day Danvers) but owned property on the eastern side of Salem’s current Washington and Church streets … that she sometimes leased out to tenants” (26, 41). Sarah Bishop and her husband ran an unlicensed tavern in Salem Village while Bridget Bishop lived in Salem Town. That’s why, regarding her Salem Village accusers, Bridget explicitly said: “I never saw these persons before; nor I never was in this place [Salem Village] before.”
  • On Bridget Bishop’s hanging, one of Baltrusis’ interviewees claims: “They could have just put the noose around Bridget’s neck and killed her instantly. But they didn’t. The executioners actually positioned the noose so she would die a slow, horrible death. She was hanging in the gallows—convulsing and losing control of her bowels—in front of a crowd of people. They were publicly shaming her before they killed her” (28-30). That’s not exactly true. Yes, hordes of people attended such a public spectacle, believed to be for their own edification. While we don’t know if the victims were hanged using the gallows or a tree, a quick death only happened if the victim’s neck snapped as their bodies dropped. That rarely happened; it often took “up to 20 minutes for the victims to die” by strangulation, as Margo Burns explains (67). And, yes, after death, the spontaneous relaxation of muscles sometimes caused bodily fluids to seep out.
  • Howard Street Cemetery is not where Giles Corey was crushed to death (18, 104, 106). The obstinate Corey suffered the medieval torture of peine fort et dure at the now-demolished 1683 jail at the corner of Federal Street and Prison Lane (now St. Peter’s Street). Like many of the witch trial victims, we don’t know where Giles Corey’s broken body was buried. But it’s not at Howard Street Cemetery, where the first burial occurred in 1801. (American Ancestors Magazine 15.4:36-37, published 2014)

More Weight

Throughout Wicked Salem, Frank C. Grace’s photographs capture the essence of the city’s past, while Baltrusis offers educational and entertaining stories—without the profound weight of history.

Granted, I’m not the intended audience of Baltrusis’ works. I’m skeptical about the existence of ghosts and paranormal phenomena. I’m disturbed by the continual misappropriation of the Salem witch trials with Halloween, Haunted Happenings, and horror thrills. And I have a penchant for being a mythbuster when it comes to innocent people accused of witchery.

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Proctor’s Ledge, Salem

If your ancestors lived in Massachusetts Bay Colony during the 17th century, at some point they were affected by the Salem witch trials of 1692. Perhaps they were one of the accused witches, one of the participants (afflicted “girls,” accusers, judges, or jury members), one of the trial attendees, or watched, as Rev. Nicholas Noyes said, the “firebrands of hell hanging there.” Perhaps they were neighbors of the accused or the accusers—or maybe they lived far enough away from the vortex. But, undoubtedly they knew about the events in Salem, whether from experience, word-of-mouth, ministers preaching, or reading various treatises on the subject.

More than 300 years have passed since the witch hunts, and over time, much has been lost, from original court papers to buildings associated with the trials. It’s as if the communal memory was erased, once men such as Rev. Cotton Mather and Robert Calef wrote their books. In the 19th century, after Salem’s maritime fortunes were on the wane, writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Charles W. Upham returned to the theme of witchcraft. Since then, many theories have been proposed of what really did happen in the Massachusetts Bay Colony to cause more than 150 people to be imprisoned for witchcraft—and the answers still elude us today.

A Discovery of Witches

Although we’ve lost much through the passage of time, we’ve also heard, seen, or read many things that are not true—from Salem tourist attractions, popular media, and even scholars—about the witch hunts of 1692. So let’s clear up 10 misconceptions.

  • No accused witches in Colonial America were burned at the stake. Witchcraft was a capital offense, which meant death by hanging. In continental Europe, witchcraft was heresy against the church and punishable by burning at the stake.
  • What is now called Gallows Hill in Salem is not where the accused witches were hanged. In early 2016, the Gallows Hill Project team verified conclusions made by early 20th-century historian Sidney Perley that the victims were hanged at Proctor’s Ledge, on the lower slope of Gallows Hill bounded by Proctor and Pope streets. In 2017, a memorial was created and dedicated at that location.
  • Judge Jonathan Corwin’s house, now called the Witch House, is billed as “the only structure in Salem with direct ties to the witchcraft trials of 1692.” Yes, the wealthy judge lived there, but were any of the accused witches brought there? Probably not.
  • Salem is considered the epicenter of the 1692 witch hunt. However, the first accusations were from “afflicted” girls in Salem Village, now the town of Danvers. The witch hunt spread to other towns, most notably Andover. Salem is where the Court of Oyer and Terminer tried people accused of witchcraft and where the 20 victims were executed. The accused were jailed not only in Salem but in such places as Boston and Ipswich.
  • The “afflicted accusers” were not all girls. Nine-year-old Betty Parris and her 11-year-old cousin Abigail Williams were the first to have strange fits. However, their “affliction” spread to the young and old, men as well as women and children.
  • Old, poor widows were not the only ones accused of witchcraft. People jailed for witchcraft in 1692 range in age from 4 years old to in their 80s, both male and female. Some were poor, some were wealthy. The first three people arrested for witchcraft were 38-year-old beggar Sarah Good; sickly 50-year-old Sarah Osborne; and Rev. Samuel Parris’ Indian servant Tituba. Sarah Good was hanged, Sarah Osborne died in jail, and Tituba, who pleaded guilty, survived.
  • Though Upham and many other writers claim Tituba told stories of voodoo and the Devil to impressionable young girls, starting the witch hunt, no contemporary accounts point fingers at Rev. Parris’ Indian servant. Images from the trials are of witches on broomsticks, witches with animal familiars (a yellow bird was rather popular), witches signing the Devil’s book in blood, heretical baptisms and communions—all centuries-old Western European themes, not voodoo. In the Danvers church records, Rev. Parris believed the “diabolical means” of making the witch cake “unleashed the witchcraft in the community.”
  • Bridget Bishop, one of the most notorious accused witches and the first to hang, was not the rowdy tavern keeper as often portrayed. In 1981, David L. Greene, editor of The American Genealogist, proved how Bridget Bishop of Salem Town and Sarah Bishop of Salem Village were conflated into one person. Both were married to men named Edward Bishop.
  • The youngest victim, Dorothy Good, is mistakenly called “Dorcas” in many books about the Salem witch trials. Dorcas is the name Judge John Hathorne wrote on her original arrest warrant, though he wrote Dorothy on subsequent records. (The name Dorcas is not a nickname for Dorothy.) According to William Good, his daughter Dorothy, “a child of 4 or 5 years old, was in prison seven or eight months and being chained in the dungeon was so hardly used and terrified that she has ever since been very chargeable, having little or no reason to govern herself” (petition for compensation, Salem, 13 September 1710).
  • Although the last executions for witchcraft occurred on 22 September 1692, there were more trials and even some guilty convictions. In March 1693, four weeks after she was found not guilty of witchcraft, Lydia Dustin died in prison because her family could not pay her jail fees.

The more you learn about the 1692 witch hunts in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the better you can understand the times and trials your ancestors lived through.

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Perley 1700 map Bridget Bishop lot shown in yellow
On Perley’s map, Bridget Bishop’s lot highlighted in yellow

As mentioned in a previous blog post, Which Bishop? The one who got away, Sarah (Wildes) Bishop and her husband Edward ran an unlicensed tavern in Salem Village near the Beverly line. Bridget Bishop, wife of Edward the sawyer, lived in Salem Town. Unfortunately, during the Salem witch trials, some afflicted accusers mistook one Goody Bishop for the other, heaping more accusations on one than she deserved. In 1981, David L. Greene solved the problem of mistaken identities in The American Genealogist (157:130), though people today continue to mix up the Bishop women’s lives.

Bridget Bishop lived in Salem Town

Sidney Perley’s “Salem in 1700” series mentioned past and post-1700 owners of property, including Thomas Oliver who married the widow Bridget (Playfer) Wasselbe in 1666:

“Benjamin Ropes House. Thomas Oliver owned this lot and the small house upon it as early as 1661. He died possessed of the estate in 1679. It was then appraised at 45 pounds. His widow Bridget Oliver continued to live there until 1681, and married Edward Bishop, being hanged as a witch in 1692. In the distribution of Mr. Oliver’s estate, in 1693, this house and lot were assigned to his grandson Job Hilliard of Boston, cordwainer, it being valued at that time at 38 pounds. Mr. Hilliard, for 65 pounds, conveyed the house and lot to Benjamin Ropes of Salem, cordwainer, January. 22, 1694/5” (Essex Antiquarian, 8:35-36).

After the death of her second husband, Bridget was granted administration on the Oliver estate on 24 June 1679. Instead of receiving the typical widow’s third, Bridget was ordered to pay 20 shillings each to two stepsons and her daughter. In return, the court gave “the estate to be for the use of the widow … and to have liberty to sell the 10-acre lot by advice of the selectmen of Salem, towards paying the debts and her present supply, and as need be, any other part of the estate” (Early Probate Records, 1635-1681, 3:319).

“Good fences make good neighbors”

Burdened with her dead husband’s debts, Bridget was in dire straits. Fortunately, in January 1679/1680, the selectmen allowed her to sell 10 acres of Salem land in the north field to John Blevin for 45 pounds (Essex deeds book, 5:274-276). In June 1681, she sold a narrow strip of land to schoolmaster Daniel Epes. It’s described as about two poles wide bounded by the street on the west (now Washington Street), with the length being the border between Epes’ land on the north and Oliver land on the south. In return, Bridget received 35 shillings in hand, plus a newly built fence 8 poles long and 5 feet high dividing the two properties—installed and paid for by Epes. This parcel, “lying on the back side of her house,” eventually became Church Street (Essex deeds book, 6:352-355).

Sometime after this date, Bridget married Edward Bishop. Contrary to Perley’s comment above, Bridget did not move out in 1681. The 1679 probate gave her rights to the Oliver estate until her death, not until remarriage. Edward, who had no property to call his own, moved into the Oliver house. According to Marilynne K. Roach, about 1685 Bridget and Edward Bishop built a second house on the Oliver lot (American Ancestors magazine, 14.4:45-47). As a sawyer (literally, someone who saws wood), it’s likely Edward used lumber from the old Oliver house to build the new structure.

Following the evidence

After the Bishop home was completed, John Bly Sr. was hired to tear down the cellar wall of the old Oliver house. In testimony given at Bridget’s witch trial in 1692, Bly claimed during demolition 7 years before, he found several poppets made with rags and hog bristles with headless pins stuck in them in the cellar wall.

John Louder also testified that 7 or 8 years prior, when he was living with John Gedney Sr. (d. 1688), owner of the Ship Tavern, the Gedneys were having troubles with Bridget Bishop’s fowl escaping her property. One night, Louder experienced sleep paralysis, and in his hallucinations, he thought it was Bridget sitting on his stomach and choking him. The next day, he and Mistress Susannah Gedney were in their orchard when Susannah confronted Bridget—in the next adjoining orchard—about her supposed nighttime travels.

Another time, Louder opened Gedney’s back door and walked toward the house end when he spied Bridget in her orchard going toward her house. In fear, he froze in place, unable to move, and saw the devilish shapeshifting creature he’d seen before fly over the apple trees. He claimed he was struck dumb for three days afterward. At her trial, Bridget denied knowing Louder but admitted having some differences with the Gedneys before, whose orchard adjoined hers (Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, pp. 368-371).

Placing Bridget on the map

From probate records and trial testimony, we know Bridget’s second home was situated near the town house, with her garden “by the northwest corner of her house” and orchard bordering the former John Gedney Sr. property (shown on Perley’s 1700 map as estate of Deliverance Parkman). Today, a bank building at 71 Washington Street is the approximate site of the Bishop house while the old Lyceum Hall at 43 Church Street covers land previously occupied by Bridget’s orchard.

Bridget’s trial for witchcraft in 1692 was held in the town house only steps from her home. One block in the opposite direction and a few blocks north stood the old wooden 1684 jail (now corner of Federal and St. Peter streets), from which Bridget was carted to Proctor’s Ledge (7 Pope Street) and unjustly hanged for witchcraft on 10 June 1692.

A month after Bridget’s death, Job Hilliard was appointed administrator of his grandfather Thomas Oliver’s estate. In August 1693, the Oliver lot with orchard and garden was appraised for 20 pounds, and the house on it at 18 pounds (Essex Probate #20009).

FOR SALE: “A dwelling house, orchards, and garden containing about three-quarters of an acre of land butted and bounded as followeth: on the land of Mr. Daniel Epes northerly, on the land of John Preist easterly, on the land of Coles. Gedney & John Ropes southerly, & on the lane or Towne House street westerly, to have and to hold the said dwelling house & grounds together with all the trees, fences, ways, easements, waters, water courses, & all the privileges and appurtenances hereunto.”

After selling the property to Benjamin Ropes, Hilliard paid 9 pounds to widower Edward Bishop for building the house on the Oliver lot (Essex deeds, 10:112). According to Perley, Bridget’s house was torn down by 1768.

Special thanks to Emerson W. Baker, author of A Storm of Witchcraft. During lunch at History Camp Boston 2018, he drew a map for me showing Bridget’s orchard adjoining Gedney’s property, then wiped his mouth with the napkin before I could grab it.

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Wrong! Edward & Sarah Bishop house site

One of my reasons for creating the Witches of Massachusetts Bay website is to right the wrongs. Even though it’s been 325 years since the witch trials, the topic is still popular and relevant in our society. That’s why new discoveries and better interpretations are made. Yet we keep hearing, reading, and seeing the same historical inaccuracies repeated. Why? Our brains are more apt to believe something wrong but oft-repeated than to replace it with new (and correct) information.

Today, I wanted to know if a structure exists where Edward and Sarah Bishop once held raucous, late-night shuffleboard parties at their unlicensed tavern on the outskirts of Salem Village. Naturally, I turned to Google maps and typed in 238 Conant Street, Danvers. Ironically, a lawyer has an office at that location.

Then I saw in the Google box that the address was labeled a landmark for Bridget Bishop. (Of course, I had to send Google a correction.)

On April 19, 1692, Bridget Bishop was confronted by Mercy Lewis, Ann Putnam Jr., and others who charged her with “sundry acts of witchcraft” (RSWH, doc. 63, pp. 183-184). Judge Jonathan Hathorne did not believe Bishop’s claim that she didn’t know these girls. But it’s true. Bridget Bishop lived in Salem Town and probably had no reason to visit Salem Village.

“I doe tell the truth I never hurt these persons in [my] life I never saw them before”

In 1981, The American Genealogist (TAG) published David L. Greene’s article showing how the court and historians confused two women named Goody Bishop (“Salem Witches I: Bridget Bishop,” vol. 157, p. 130). It was three-times-married Bridget (Playfer) (Wasselbe) (Oliver) Bishop (c.1640-1692) who wore the flashy red bodice, lived in Salem Town, and was the first person hanged in 1692. Bridget’s home was at the corner of what’s now Washington and Church streets, with her orchard located at 43 Church Street in Salem, currently occupied by Turner’s Seafood at Lyceum Hall.*

Like Bridget, Sarah (Wildes) Bishop was married to a man named Edward Bishop (1648-1711). These two disturbed their neighbors with their drunken parties in Salem Village, now Danvers, near the Beverly line. Sarah and her husband Edward were accused of witchcraft, but they escaped from jail. By 1703, they had moved to Rehoboth where they opened an inn.

So 238 Conant Street in Danvers? Site of Sarah’s house, not Bridget’s.

* updated 8 July 2018