SALEM VILLAGE, AND '92.
_Banquo._ "Were such things here as we do speak about?
Or have we eaten of the insane root,
That takes the reason prisoner?"--_Macbeth._
Salem Village has a sorrowful celebrity. It would seem as if an adverse
spell still hung over it, for in the changes brought by time to its
neighbors it has no part, remaining, as it is likely to remain, Salem
Village--that is to say, distinctively antiquated, sombre, and lifeless.
A collection of houses scattered along the old high-road from Salem to
Andover, decent-looking, brown-roofed, though humble dwellings, a
somewhat pretending village church, and pleasant, home-like, parsonage;
old trees, partly verdant, partly withered, stretching naked boughs
above the gables of houses even older than themselves, embody something
of the impressions of oft-repeated walks in what is known as the "Witch
Neighborhood."
The village contains one central point of paramount interest. It is an
inclosed space of grass ground, a short distance from the principal and
only street, reached by a well-trodden by-path. Within this now naked
field once stood a house, with a garden and orchard surrounding. Of the
house nothing remains except a slight depression in the soil; of the
orchard and garden there is no trace; yet hard by I chanced on a bank of
aromatic thyme once held of singular potency in witchcraft--as in the
"Faerie Queen," the tree laments to the knight:
"I chanced to see her in her proper hue,
Bathing herself in origan and thyme."
In this quiet, out-of-the-way little nook, Salem witchcraft had its
beginning. The sunken cavity is what remains of the Ministry House, so
called, pulled down in 1785 (not a day too soon); the den of error in
which the plague-spot first appeared. No one would have thought,
standing here, that he surveyed the focus of malevolence so deadly as
the wretched delirium of '92.
The well-informed reader is everywhere familiar with the origin and
development of Salem witchcraft.[134] It has employed the best pens as
it has puzzled the best brains among us; until to-day the whole affair
remains enveloped in a mystery which the theories of nearly two hundred
years have failed wholly to penetrate.
The writer has had frequent occasion to know how wide-spread is the
belief that witchcraft began in New England, and particularly in Salem.
This is to be classed among popular errors upon which repeated denials
have little effect. Nevertheless, witchcraft did not originate in New
England; no, nor in old England either, for that matter. The belief in
it was earlier than the _Mayflower_, older than the Norman Conquest, and
antedated the Roman Empire. The first written account of it is contained
in Scripture.[135]
Saul incurred the anger of God by consulting the Witch of Endor. Joan of
Arc was burned as a witch in 1431. About fifty years later the Church of
Rome fulminated a bull against witchcraft. The number of suspected
persons already burned at the stake or subjected to the most cruel
torments is estimated at many thousands.
In taking leave of the Dark Ages we do not take our leave of witchcraft.
More than a hundred thousand victims had perished in Germany and France
alone before the _Mayflower_ sailed from Delft. The Pilgrims, I engage,
believed in it to a man.
Old England! Why, the statute against witchcraft was not repealed until
1736, in the second George's time, though it had lain dormant some
years. The last recorded execution in the British Islands occurred in
Scotland, as late as 1722. The sixth chapter of Lord Coke's "Third
Institutes" is devoted to a panegyric on the statutes for punishing
"conjuration, sorcery, witchcraft, or enchantment." The laws of England
were the fundamental law of New England; witchcraft was in the list of
recognized crimes throughout Christendom.
France, under Louis le Grand, whose style history will change,
notwithstanding his famous "_L'etat c'est moi_," to Louis the Little,
was immeshed in the net of superstition. The highest personages of the
court resorted to the astrologers for horoscopes, charms, or philters.
We might see later the magic and sorcery of the sixteenth century and
of the seventeenth transformed into studies in chemistry under the
Regency, and become experiments in magnetism in the eighteenth century.
The settlers in New England, who brought all their Old-World
superstitions with them, were not surprised to find the Indians fully
impregnated with a belief in magic equal to their own. The wonderful
cures of the Indian magicians or medicine-men were thoroughly believed
in, and are vouched for by white evidence. One of their favorite methods
of revenging private injury was by enchanting a hair, which entered the
bodies of their enemies and killed them while sleeping. It is noted that
Tituba, an Indian, had much to do with the outbreak in Salem village.
Sir William Phips, an illiterate but not incapable man, had been
appointed Governor of Massachusetts Bay, under the new charter of
William and Mary. The charter conferred the power of civil government,
and separated the legislative from the judicial authority. Sir William
constituted a commission of seven to try the witchcraft cases at Salem.
As he had no power to create such a court under the charter, one of the
saddest reflections that arise from these bloody proceedings is that
twenty persons suffered death for an imaginary crime, inflicted by an
illegal tribunal. The province law of 1692 decreed death for
"enchantment, sorcery, charm, or conjuration, or invocation, or to feed
any wicked spirit."
The first authenticated case of witchcraft in New England, and also the
first execution, took place at Boston, as early as 1648. The culprit,
Margaret Jones, of Charlestown, was suspected of having and using the
"malignant touch." She professed some knowledge of medicine, and
probably availed herself of the awe in which she was held by the
superstitious to ply her trade. Many other cases are mentioned in the
other colonies, Connecticut bearing her full share, before the climax of
1692 is reached. Then, as afterward, the accusations fell chiefly upon
women; the old, friendless, or half-witted bearing the burden of every
accident in their neighborhood.
An English writer gravely says in 1690: "Several old women suspected for
witches in and about Lancashire have been often noted to have beards of
considerable growth, tho' that's no general rule, some of the reverend
and virtuous being often liable to the same." Everywhere witchcraft was
received as a stubborn fact. The criminal codes of nearly if not quite
all the colonies recognized it. In Pennsylvania, if tradition may be
believed, the fact was met by no less stubborn common sense. It is said,
when Philadelphia was three years old, a woman was brought before
Governor Penn, charged with witchcraft and riding through the air on a
broomstick. Although the woman confessed her guilt, she was dismissed by
the Quaker magistrate with the assurance that, as there was no law
against it, she might ride a broomstick as often as she pleased.
[Illustration: CUSTOM-HOUSE, SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS.]
Could a full and candid confession be obtained of the present
generation there would appear more superstition than we wot of, such
as would show us legitimate descendants of credulous colonists. It is
not long since a staid old town in Massachusetts was in consternation at
the report of a ghost in a school-room. Signs and portents have been
handed down and are religiously believed in by other than the ignorant
and credulous, as has been already stated in a former chapter. A very
small proportion of the skeptical could be induced to enter a
church-yard at night. There is some subtle principle of our nature that
gives ready adhesion to the mystical or the marvelous; and it is
believed they were not differently constituted in 1692.
[Illustration: REBECCA NURSE'S HOUSE.]
Leaving the Witch Ground, the visitor, in retracing his steps, will pass
near the old Nurse House, a memorial of one of the most damning of the
innocent sacrifices to superstition. It is not easy to sit down and
write of it with the indifference of the professional historian.
Rebecca Nurse, aged and infirm, universally beloved by her neighbors,
was accused. The jury, moved by her innocence, having brought in a
verdict of "not guilty," the court sent them out again with instructions
to find her guilty. She was executed. The tradition is that her sons
disinterred her body by stealth from the foot of the gallows, where it
had been thrown, and brought it to the old homestead, laying it
reverently and with many tears in the little burying-ground which the
family always kept, and which is still seen near by.
But briefly to our history. We there discover that twenty persons lost
their lives through the denunciation of eight simple country girls, the
youngest being eleven, and the oldest not more than twenty years of
age.[136] These maidens met at the house of Samuel Parris, the then
minister of the village, and on the spot where the earth is now trying
to heal the scar left by the old cellar. They formed what was then and
is still known as a "circle" in New England, devoted in these more
modern days to clothing the heathen and bewitching the youth who enter
their influence.
The most plausible, and therefore the commonly received opinion is, that
these girls, having at first practiced some of the well-known methods of
performing magic, were led into a series of false accusations which,
from being conceived in a spirit of mischief, grew into crimes of the
first magnitude as they found themselves carried away by a frenzy they
had not moral courage to stay. Another presumption supposes the girls
believers in their own powers. This view is sustained by the universal
belief in witchcraft, the ready adhesion given to their charges, the
support they received from the judges, and the terrible power with which
they found themselves possessed. Another solution is found in the occult
influences of second-sight so widely credited in Scotland in years
by-gone, the psychology and clairvoyance of the present day. Dr. Samuel
Johnson said he would rather believe in second-sight than in the poetry
of Ossian. If the soundest thinkers of the nineteenth century are
staggered to account for the phenomena of spirit-rappings, it is wise to
defer a hasty condemnation of the "possessed damosels" of Salem village.
[Illustration: PROCTER HOUSE]
Instead of plying its needles, the circle was engaged in attempts to
discover the future. Rev. John Hale, in his "Modest Inquiry into the
Nature of Witchcraft," has this to say:
"I fear some young persons, through a vain curiosity to know their
future condition, have tampered with devil's tools, so far that thereby
one door was opened to Satan to play those pranks--_Anno_ 1692. I knew
one of the Afflicted persons, who (as I was credibly informed), did try
with an egg and a glass to find her future husband's calling; till there
came up a coffin, that is, a spectre in likeness of a coffin. And she
was afterward followed with diabolical molestation to her death; and so
dyed a single person. A just warning to others, to take heed of handling
the devil's weapons lest they get a wound thereby." This John Hale,
teacher of the people, was at first a zealous believer. Perhaps the
denunciation of his own wife had something to do with his backsliding
into common sense.
The accusing girls were believed infallible witch-finders. Their
services were consequently in demand as their fame spread abroad. Some
of them were taken to Andover, leaving distrust, dismay, and death in
the quiet old West Parish. "In a short time," says the annalist, "it
was commonly reported forty men of Andover could raise the devil as well
as any astrologer."
A "Boston Man" having taken his sick child to Salem in order to consult
the afflicted ones, obtained the names of two of his own towns-people as
the authors of its distemper; but the Boston justices refused warrants
to apprehend them, and Increase Mather asked the father if there was not
a God in Boston that he must go to the devil in Salem. These two persons
are said to have been Mrs. Thatcher, mother-in-law of Curwin, one of the
judges,[137] and the wife of Sir William Phips.
As soon as the prosecutions stopped, it was remarked that the
apparitions ceased. Once or twice the accuser recoiled before a sharp
and swift reproof, as at Lieutenant Ingersoll's, when one of them cried
out, "There's Goody Procter!" Raymond and Goody Ingersoll told her
flatly she lied; there was nothing. The girl was cowed, and "said she
did it for sport."
Even the witchcraft horrors have a humorous side--grimly humorous, it is
true, like the jokes cracked in a dissecting-room. The thought of pots
and kettles jumping on the crane, of anchors leaping overboard of
themselves, and of hay-cocks found hanging to trees is rather
mirth-provoking. Mirrors were daily consulted by maids and widows
looking for a husband. A matter of life and death could not prevent
George Jacobs, the old grandfather, from laughing heartily at the
spasmodic antics of Abigail Williams.
It seems a pity that New England in her greatest need should have found
no champion, like St. Dunstan, to argue with and finally compel the
devil to own himself confuted, as, according to vulgar belief, he did,
by taking the fiend by the nose with a pair of red-hot tongs; or as
Ignatius Loyola, who, when disturbed at his devotions by the devil,
seized his cudgel and drubbed him away.[138] Montmorency, a peer and
marshal of France, son of the famous Bouteville, whom Richelieu had
caused to be decapitated for fighting a duel at midday in the Place
Royal, was weak enough to visit La Voisin, the renowned conjuror and
fabricator of poisons in the reign of Louis XIV. La Voisin had promised
to show him the devil, and the duke was curious. When the _marechal_
whipped out his rapier and thrust vigorously at the spectre, it fell on
its knees, and begged its life. The devil proved to be a confederate of
La Voisin. Archibald, duke of Argyle, was haunted by blue phantoms--the
origin of our epithet for melancholy, "blue devils."
In the village tavern there was a battle with spectres that Abigail
Williams and Mary Walcut declared were present. Benjamin Hutchinson and
Eleazer Williams pulled out their swords and cut and stabbed the air
until, as the two girls averred, the floor was deep in ghostly blood!
A ride through the woods then was little coveted by the stoutest hearts.
A spark of fear is soon blown into uncontrollable panic. Bushes grew
spectres and trees outstretched goblin arms. Elizabeth Hubbard was
riding home from meeting on the crupper, behind old Clement Coldum. The
rustling leaves were witches' whisperings, the white birches seemed
ghosts in their winding-sheets. The woman, faint-hearted and
overmastered by a nameless dread, cried out to the goodman to ride for
life--the woods were full of devils. Though he could see none, the
valiant rider spurred his horse like mad, and rode as Tam O'Shanter rode
his fearful race when pursued by the witches of Kirk Alloway.
The trysting-place of the witches was in Parris's pasture. It was here
Abigail Hobbs, who had sold herself to the "Old Boy," attending, saw the
sacrament of the "red bread and the red wine" administered to the
devil's elect. Poor George Burroughs, whom we met for a moment in our
walk through Wells, was denounced for summoning with a trumpet the
attending witches. Obedient to the sound, from far and near, the
withered beldams, toothless hags in short petticoats, white linen hoods,
and conical high crowned hats, come flocking on flying broomsticks.
Satan is there in person, not playing the bagpipe, as in Tam O'Shanter's
fearful conclave, but with the conventional book written in letters of
blood.
Certes, these were but rude ghosts. Nowadays the devil is raised as
easily, but conducts himself with greater propriety, as becomes the
devil of the nineteenth century. The damp grass of the church-yard and
the witches' den are bugbears no longer. We sit in a comfortable
apartment around a mahogany table. Our ghost no more appears in mouldy
shroud, but, like a well-bred spectre, knocks for admittance. Soon his
card will be handed in on a salver, and we may perhaps in time expect
daily weather reports from the nether world.
Before leaving the village, I turned into one of those old abandoned
roads in which I like so well to walk. Left on one side by a shorter
cut, saving some rods to this hurrying age, the deserted by-way conducts
you into solitudes proper for communion with the past. Grass has sprung
up so thickly as almost to conceal traces of the once well-worn ruts,
now only two indistinct lines of lighter green. Young pines, a foot
high, are rooted in the cart-way; stone walls, moss-grown and tumbling
down. Here and there are the ghastly remains of some old orchard, the
ground strewed with withered branches. A half-obliterated cellar denotes
a former habitation; even the land betrays evidences of having been
turned by the plows of two centuries ago. Who have passed this way?
Perhaps the laying-out of this very road begot disputes transmitted from
father to son.
A mile beyond the Witch Neighborhood the Andover road crosses the
Newburyport turnpike. At the junction of the two roads stands the old
farm-house in which Israel Putnam, the "Old Put" of the Revolutionary
army, was born.
The house, or rather houses, for two structures compose it, is still
occupied by Putnams. The newer building, already old by comparison with
some of its neighbors, was built in 1744; the original in 1650, or
thereabouts, according to family tradition. One object, to which the
attention of every visitor is directed, is the old pollard of enormous
girth standing near the house. House and tree seem types of the sturdy,
indomitable old man, who at nearly three-score was full of the rage of
battle.
[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF PUTNAM.]
By the courtesy of the family, ever ready to indulge a proper curiosity,
I looked over the old house from garret to cellar. The little room in
which the general was born remains just as when its rough-hewn posts and
thick beams were revealed to his astonished gaze. There are few relics
of the general remaining.
While in the Wadsworth Museum at Hartford, I lately saw the damaged sign
displayed by Putnam when he kept an inn at Brooklyn, Connecticut, about
1768. Another famous soldier, Murat, was the son of an _aubergiste_, and
Napoleon was not too willing on this account to give him the hand of his
sister.
[Illustration: PUTNAM IN BRITISH UNIFORM.]
The Putnams settled early in Salem. John, the first emigrant, came from
Buckinghamshire, in 1634, with three sons, Thomas, Nathaniel, and John.
Some of the name exercised a fatal influence during the reign of
witchcraft. Israel was already an old man when he left his plow in the
furrow to gallop to Cambridge, having been born in 1718. At twenty-one
he removed to Pomfret, Connecticut. Putnam was prompt, resolute, and
incapable of fear--full of fight, and always ready. Washington, who did
not judge badly, thought him the only fit man to make an assault on
Boston. Though uneducated, Putnam wrote pithily, as to Governor Tryon:
"SIR,--Nathan Palmer, a lieutenant in your king's service, was
taken in my camp as a spy; he was condemned as a spy; and he
shall be hanged as a spy.
"P.S.--_Afternoon._ He is hanged."
[Illustration: ENDICOTT PEAR-TREE.]
Danvers, in whose territory we have been rambling, is an aggregate of
several widely scattered villages taken from Salem in the last century.
Some of its villages have grown into good-sized, prosperous towns, and
one has taken the name of her eminent banker-philanthropist, George
Peabody. When at Salem, the visitor may easily reach Peabody, Danvers,
and the Witch Neighborhood by rail, having in the latter instance a walk
of a mile before him on leaving the little station near the Putnam
House. In a circuit of several miles, embracing what is to be seen of
interest on this side, it is, perhaps, better to leave Salem by the old
Boston road and return to it by the Andover highway. Following this
route, we successively pass by Governor Endicott's farm, on which is
still seen the aged pear-tree, sole relic of the ancient orchard,[139]
the house which became the head-quarters in 1774 of General Gage, and
the Witch Neighborhood. But before hurrying away from Peabody, it will
be well to read the inscription on the monument which one sees in the
main street,[140] examine the memorials of royal munificence in the
library of the Institute,[141] and, if the stranger be of my mind, to
halt for a moment before the humble dwelling in which Bowditch was born.
As there is no place in New England which so highly prizes its antique
memorials and traditions as Salem, the first person you meet will be
able to direct you to the one or relate to you the other.
[Illustration: PUTNAM'S TAVERN SIGN.]
FOOTNOTES:
[134] Mather and Hutchinson deal largely with it. Upham and Drake have
compiled, arranged, and analyzed it.
[135] Exod. xxii., 18 (1491 B.C.): "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to
live."
[136] Abigail Williams, eleven; Mary Walcut, seventeen; Ann Putnam,
twelve; Mercy Lewis, seventeen; Mary Warren, twenty; Elizabeth Booth,
eighteen; Sarah Churchill, twenty; Susannah Sheldon, age not known.
[137] Account of Thomas Brattle.
[138] See his life, page 80.
[139] Endicott had a grant of three hundred acres on the tongue of land
between Cow-house and Duck rivers. The site does justice to his
discernment.
[140] Raised in 1837 to the memory of soldiers of Danvers killed in the
battle of Lexington.
[141] The Queen's portrait by Tilt, the gold box and medal presented by
the city of London and by Congress to Mr. Peabody.
[Illustration: WASHINGTON STREET, SALEM.]