every thing before it. Accusers and accused were counted by scores, and
under the panic of the hour the accused generally confessed. But
Andover was the first to recover its senses. On the 12th of October,
1692, seven of its citizens addressed a memorial to the General Court
in behalf of their wives and children, praying that they might be
released on bond, "to remain as prisoners in their own houses, where
they may be more tenderly cared for." They speak of their "distressed
condition in prison,—a company of poor distressed creatures as full of
inward grief and trouble as they are able to bear up in life withal."
They refer to the want of "food convenient" for them, and to "the
coldness of the winter season that is coming which may despatch such
out of the way that have not been used to such hardships," and
represent the ruinous effects of their absence from their families, who
were at the same time required to maintain them in jail. On the 18th of
October, the two ministers of Andover, Francis Dane and Thomas Barnard,
with twenty-four other citizens of Andover, addressed a similar
memorial to the Governor and General Court, in which we find the first
public expression of condemnation of the proceedings. They call the
accusers "distempered persons." They express the opinion that their
friends and neighbors have been misrepresented. They bear the strongest
testimony in favor of the persons accused, that several of them are
members of the church in full communion, of blameless conversation, and
"walking as becometh women professing godliness." They relate the
methods by which they had been deluded and terrified into confession,
and show the worthlessness of those confessions as evidences against
them. They use this bold and significant language: "Our troubles we
foresee are likely to continue and increase, if other methods be not
taken than as yet have been; and we know not who can think himself
safe, if the accusations of children and others who are under a
diabolical influence shall be received against persons of good fame."
On the 2d of January, 1693, the Rev. Francis Dane addressed a letter to
a brother clergyman, which is among the files, and was probably
designed to reach the eyes of the Court, in which he vindicates Andover
against the scandalous reports got up by the accusers, and says that a
residence there of forty-four years, and intimacy with the people,
enable him to declare that they are not justly chargeable with
any[ii.460] such things as witchcraft, charms, or sorceries of any
kind. He expresses himself in strong language: "Had charity been put
on, the Devil would not have had such an advantage against us, and I
believe many innocent persons have been accused and imprisoned." He
denounces "the conceit of spectre evidence," and warns against
continuing in a course of proceeding that will procure "the divine
displeasure." A paper signed by Dudley Bradstreet, Francis Dane, Thomas
Barnard, and thirty-eight other men and twelve women of Andover, was
presented to the Court at Salem to the same effect.
None of the persons named by Brattle can present so strong a claim to
the credit of having opposed the witchcraft fanaticism before the close
of the year 1692, as Francis Dane, his colleague Barnard, and the
citizens of Andover, who signed memorials to the Legislature on the
18th of October, and to the Court of Trials about the same time. There
is, indeed, one conclusive proof that the venerable senior pastor of
the Andover Church made his disapprobation of the witchcraft
proceedings known at an earlier period, at least in his immediate
neighborhood. The wrath of the accusers was concentrated upon him to an
unparalleled extent from their entrance into Andover. They did not
venture to attack him directly. His venerable age and commanding
position made it inexpedient; but they struck as near him, and at as
many points, as they dared. They accused, imprisoned, and caused to be
convicted and sentenced to death, one of his daughters, Abigail
Faulkner. They accused, imprisoned, and brought to trial another,
Elizabeth Johnson. They imprisoned, and brought to the sentence of
death, his grand-daughter, Elizabeth Johnson, Jr. They cried out
against, and caused to be imprisoned, several others of his
grandchildren. They accused and imprisoned Deliverance the wife, and
also the "man-servant," of his son Nathaniel. There is reason for
supposing, as has been stated, that Elizabeth How was the wife of his
nephew. Surely, no one was more signalized by their malice and
resentment than Francis Dane; and he deserves to be recognized as
standing pre-eminent, and, for a time, almost alone, in bold
denunciation and courageous resistance of the execrable proceedings of
that dark day.
Francis Dane made the following statement, also designed to reach the
authorities, which cannot be read by any person of sen[ii.461]sibility
without feeling its force, although it made no impression upon the
Court at the time:—
"Concerning my daughter Elizabeth Johnson, I never had ground to
suspect her, neither have I heard any other to accuse her, till by
spectre evidence she was brought forth; but this I must say, she was
weak, and incapacious, fearful, and in that respect I fear she hath
falsely accused herself and others. Not long before she was sent for,
she spake as to her own particular, that she was sure she was no witch.
And for her daughter Elizabeth, she is but simplish at the best; and I
fear the common speech, that was frequently spread among us, of their
liberty if they would confess, and the like expression used by some,
have brought many into a snare. The Lord direct and guide those that
are in place, and give us all submissive wills; and let the Lord do
with me and mine what seems good in his own eyes!"
There is nothing in the proceedings of the Special Court of Oyer and
Terminer more disgraceful than the fact, that the regular Court of
Superior Judicature, the next year, after the public mind had been
rescued from the delusion, and the spectral evidence repudiated,
proceeded to try these and other persons, and, in the face of such
statements as the foregoing, actually condemned to death Elizabeth
Johnson, Jr.
It is remarkable that Brattle does not mention Calef. The understanding
has been that they acted in concert, and that Brattle had a hand in
getting up some of Calef's arguments. The silence of Brattle is not,
upon the whole, at all inconsistent with their mutual action and
alliance. As Calef was more perfectly unembarrassed, without personal
relations to the clergy and others in high station, and not afraid to
stand in the gap, it was thought best to let him take the fire of
Cotton Mather. His name had not been connected with the matter in the
public apprehension. He was a merchant of Boston, and a son of Robert
Calef of Roxbury. His attention was called to the proceedings which
originated in Salem Village; and his strong faculties and moral courage
enabled him to become the most efficient opponent, in his day, of the
system of false reasoning upon which the prosecutions rested. He
prepared several able papers in different forms, in which he discussed
the subject with great ability, and treated Cotton Mather and all
others whom he regarded as instrumental in precipitating the community
into the fatal tragedy,[ii.462] with the greatest severity of language
and force of logic, holding up the whole procedure to merited
condemnation. They were first printed, at London, in 1700, in a small
quarto volume, under the title of "More Wonders of the Invisible
World." This publication burst like a bomb-shell upon all who had been
concerned in promoting the witchcraft prosecutions. Cotton Mather was
exasperated to the highest pitch. He says in his diary: "He sent this
vile volume to London to be published, and the book is printed; and the
impression is, this day week, arrived here. The books that I have sent
over into England, with a design to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ, are
not published, but strangely delayed; and the books that are sent over
to vilify me, and render me incapable to glorify the Lord Jesus
Christ,—these are published." Calef's writings gave a shock to Mather's
influence, from which it never recovered.
Great difficulty has been experienced in drawing the story out in its
true chronological sequence. The effect produced upon the public mind,
when it became convinced that the proceedings had been wrong, and
innocent blood shed, was a universal disposition to bury the
recollection of the whole transaction in silence, and, if possible,
oblivion. This led to a suppression and destruction of the ordinary
materials of history. Papers were abstracted from the files, documents
in private hands were committed to the flames, and a chasm left in the
records of churches and public bodies. The journal of the Special Court
of Oyer and Terminer is nowhere to be found. Hutchinson appears to have
had access to it. It cannot well be supposed to have been lost by fire
or other accident, because the records of the regular Court, up to the
very time when the Special Court came into operation, and from the time
when it expired, are preserved in order. A portion of the papers
connected with the trials have come down in a miscellaneous, scattered,
and dilapidated state, in the offices of the Clerk of the Courts in the
County of Essex, and of the Secretary of the Commonwealth. By far the
larger part have been abstracted, of which a few have been deposited,
by parties into whose hands they had happened to come, with the
Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston and the Essex Institute at
Salem. The records of the parish of Salem Village, although exceedingly
well kept before and after 1692 by Thomas Putnam, are in another hand
for that[ii.463] year, very brief, and make no reference whatever to
the witchcraft transactions. This general desire to obliterate the
memory of the calamity has nearly extinguished tradition. It is more
scanty and less reliable than on any other event at an equal distance
in the past. A subject on which men avoided to speak soon died out of
knowledge. The localities of many very interesting incidents cannot be
identified. This is very observable, and peculiarly remarkable as to
places in the now City of Salem. The reminiscences floating about are
vague, contradictory, and few in number. In a community of uncommon
intelligence, composed, to a greater degree perhaps than almost any
other, of families that have been here from the first, very inquisitive
for knowledge, and always imbued with the historical spirit, it is
truly surprising how little has been borne down, by speech and memory,
in the form of anecdote, personal traits, or local incidents, of this
most extraordinary and wonderful occurrence of such world-wide
celebrity. Almost all that we know is gleaned from the offices of the
Registry of Deeds and Wills.[J]
[ii.464]
It is remarkable, that the marshal and sheriff, both quite young men,
so soon followed their victims to the other world. Jonathan Walcot, the
father of Mary, and next neighbor to Parris, removed from the village,
and died at Salem in 1699. Thomas Putnam and Ann his wife, the parents
of the "afflicted child," who acted so extraordinary a part in the
proceedings and of whom further mention will be made, died in 1699,—the
former on the 24th of May, the latter on the 8th of June,—at the
respective ages of forty-seven and thirty-eight.[K] There are
indications that they saw the errors into which they had been led. If
their eyes were at all opened to this view, how terrible must have been
the thought of the cruel wrongs and wide-spread ruin of which they had
been the cause! Of the circumstances of their deaths, or their last
words and sentiments, we have no knowledge. It is not strange, that, in
addition to all her woes, the death of her husband was more than Mrs.
Ann Putnam could bear, and that[ii.465] she followed him so soon to the
grave. Of the other accusers, we have but little information. Elizabeth
Booth was married to Israel Shaw about the year 1700. Mary Walcot was
married, somewhere between 1692 and 1697, to a person belonging to
Woburn, whose name is torn or worn off from Mr. Parris's records. Of
the other "afflicted children" nothing is known, beyond the fact, that
the Act of the Legislature of the Province, reversing the judgments,
and taking off the attainder from those who were sentenced to death in
1692, has this paragraph: "Some of the principal accusers and witnesses
in those dark and severe prosecutions have since discovered themselves
to be persons of profligate and vicious conversation;" and Calef speaks
of them as "vile varlets," and asserts that their reputations were not
without spot before, and that subsequently they became abandoned to
open and shameless vice.
A very considerable number of the people left the place. John Shepard
and Samuel Sibley sold their lands, and went elsewhere; as did Peter
Cloyse, who never brought his family to the village after his wife's
release from prison. Edward and Sarah Bishop sold their estates, and
took up their abode at Rehoboth. Some of the Raymond family removed to
Middleborough. The Haynes family emigrated to New Jersey. No mention is
afterwards found of other families in the record-books. The descendants
of Thomas and Edward Putnam, in the next generation, were mostly
dis[ii.466]persed to other places; but those of Joseph remained on his
lands, and have occupied his homestead to this day. It is a singular
circumstance, that some of the spots where, particularly, the great
mischief was brewed, are, and long have been, deserted. Where the
parsonage stood, with its barn and garden and well and pathways, is now
a bare and rugged field, without a vestige of its former occupancy,
except a few broken bricks that mark the site of the house. The same is
the case of the homestead of Jonathan Walcot. It was in these two
families that the affair began and was matured. The spots where several
others, who figured in the proceedings, lived, have ceased to be
occupied; and the only signs of former habitation are hollows in the
ground, fragments of pottery, and heaps of stones denoting the location
of cellars and walls. Here and there, where houses and other structures
once stood, the blight still rests.
Some circumstances relating to the personal history of those who
experienced the greatest misery during the prevalence of the dreadful
fanaticism, and were left to mourn over its victims, have happened to
be preserved in records and documents on file. On the 30th of November,
1699, Margaret Jacobs was married to John Foster. She belonged to Mr.
Noyes's parish; but the recollection of his agency in pushing on
proceedings which carried in their train the execution of her aged
grandfather, the exile of her father, the long imprisonment of her
mother and herself, with the prospect of a violent and shameful death
hanging over them every hour, and, above all, her own wretched
abandonment of truth and conscience for a while, probably under his
persuasion, made it impossible for her to think of being married by
him. Mr. Greene was known to sympathize with those who had suffered,
and the couple went to the village to be united. Some years afterwards,
when the church of the Middle Precinct, now South Danvers, was
organized, John and Margaret Foster, among the first, took their
children there for baptism; and their descendants are numerous, in this
neighborhood and elsewhere. Margaret, the widow of John Willard,
married William Towne. Elizabeth, the widow of John Procter, married,
subsequently to 1696, a person named Richards. Edward Bishop, the
husband of Bridget, a few years afterwards was appointed guardian of
Susannah Mason, the only child of Christian, who was the only child of
Bridget by her[ii.467] former husband Thomas Oliver. Bishop seems to
have invested the money of his ward in the lot at the extreme end of
Forrester Street, where it connects with Essex Street, bounded by
Forrester Street on the north and east, and Essex Street on the south.
This was the property of Susannah when she married John Becket, Jr.
Bishop appears to have continued his business of a sawyer to a very
advanced age, and died in Salem, in 1705.
Sarah Nurse, about two years after her mother's death, married Michael
Bowden, of Marblehead; and they occupied her father's house, in the
town of Salem, of which he had retained the possession. His family
having thus all been married off, Francis Nurse gave up his homestead
to his son Samuel, and divided his remaining property among his four
sons and four daughters. He made no formal deed or will, but drew up a
paper, dated Dec. 4, 1694, describing the distribution of the estate,
and what he expected of his children. He gave them immediate occupancy
and possession of their respective portions. The provision made by the
old man for his comfort, and the conditions required of his children,
are curious. They give an interesting insight of the life of a rural
patriarch. He reserved his "great chair and cushion;" a great chest;
his bed and bedding; wardrobe, linen and woollen; a pewter pot; one
mare, bridle, saddle, and sufficient fodder; the whole of the crop of
corn, both Indian and English, he had made that year. The children were
to discharge all the debts of his estate, pay him fourteen pounds a
year, and contribute equally, as much more as might be necessary for
his comfortable maintenance, and also to his "decent burial." The
labors of his life had closed. He had borne the heaviest burden that
can be laid on the heart of a good man. He found rest, and sought
solace and support, in the society and love of his children and their
families, as he rode from house to house on the road he had opened, by
which they all communicated with each other. The parish records show
that he continued his interest in its affairs. He lived just long
enough to behold sure evidence that justice would be done to the memory
of those who suffered, and the authors of the mischief be consigned to
the condemnation of mankind. The tide, upon which Mr. Parris had ridden
to the destruction of so many, had turned; and it was becoming apparent
to all, that[ii.468] he would soon be compelled to disappear from his
ministry in the village, before the awakening resentment of the people
and the ministers. Francis Nurse died on the 22d of November, 1695,
seventy-seven years of age. His sons with their wives, and his
daughters with their husbands, went into the Probate Court with the
paper before described, and unanimously requested the judge to have the
estate divided according to its terms. This is conclusive proof that
the father had been just and wise in his arrangements, and that true
fraternal love and harmony pervaded the whole family. The descendants,
under the names of Bowden, Tarbell, and Russell, are dispersed in
various parts of the country: those under the name of Preston, while
some have gone elsewhere, have been ever since, and still are, among
the most respectable and honored citizens of the village. Some of the
name of Nurse have also remained, and worthily represent and perpetuate
it.
I have spoken of the tide's beginning to turn in 1695. Sure indications
to that effect were then quite visible. It had begun far down in the
public mind before the prosecutions ceased; but it was long before the
change became apparent on the surface. It was long before men found
utterance for their feelings.
Persons living at a distance have been accustomed, and are to this day,
to treat the Salem-witchcraft transaction in the spirit of lightsome
ridicule, and to make it the subject of jeers and jokes. Not so those
who have lived on, or near, the fatal scene. They have ever regarded it
with solemn awe and profound sorrow, and shunned the mention, and even
the remembrance, of its details. This prevented an immediate expression
of feeling, and delayed movements in the way of attempting a reparation
of the wrongs that had been committed. The heart sickened, the lips
were dumb, at the very thought of those wrongs. Reparation was
impossible. The dead were beyond its reach. The sorrows and anguish of
survivors were also beyond its reach. The voice of sympathy was felt to
be unworthy to obtrude upon sensibilities that had been so outraged.
The only refuge left for the individuals who had been bereaved, and for
the body of the people who realized that innocent blood was on all
their hands, was in humble and soul-subdued silence, and in prayers for
forgiveness from God and from each other.[ii.469]
It was long before the public mind recovered from its paralysis. No one
knew what ought to be said or done, the tragedy had been so awful. The
parties who had acted in it were so numerous, and of such standing,
including almost all the most eminent and honored leaders of the
community from the bench, the bar, the magistracy, the pulpit, the
medical faculty, and in fact all classes and descriptions of persons;
the mysteries connected with the accusers and confessors; the universal
prevalence of the legal, theological, and philosophical theories that
had led to the proceedings; the utter impossibility of realizing or
measuring the extent of the calamity; and the general shame and horror
associated with the subject in all minds; prevented any open movement.
Then there was the dread of rekindling animosities which time was
silently subduing, and nothing but time could fully extinguish. Slowly,
however, the remembrance of wrongs was becoming obscured. Neighborhood
and business relations were gradually reconciling the estranged.
Offices of civility, courtesy, and good-will were reviving; social and
family intimacies and connections were taking effect and restoring the
community to a natural and satisfactory condition. Every day, the
sentiment was sinking deeper in the public mind, that something was
required to be done to avert the displeasure of Heaven from a guilty
land. But while some were ready to forgive, and some had the grace to
ask to be forgiven, any general movement in this direction was
obstructed by difficulties hard to be surmounted.
The wrongs committed were so remediless, the outrages upon right,
character, and life, had been so shocking, that it was expecting too
much from the ordinary standard of humanity to demand a general
oblivion. On the other hand, so many had been responsible for them, and
their promoters embraced such a great majority of all the leading
classes of society, that it was impossible to call them to account. Dr.
Bentley describes the condition of the community, in some brief and
pregnant sentences, characteristic of his peculiar style: "As soon as
the judges ceased to condemn, the people ceased to accuse.... Terror at
the violence and guilt of the proceedings succeeded instantly to the
conviction of blind zeal; and what every man had encouraged all
professed to abhor. Few dared to blame other men, because[ii.470] few
were innocent. The guilt and the shame became the portion of the
country, while Salem had the infamy of being the place of the
transactions.... After the public mind became quiet, few things were
done to disturb it. But a diminished population, the injury done to
religion, and the distress of the aggrieved, were seen and felt with
the greatest sorrow.... Every place was the subject of some direful
tale. Fear haunted every street. Melancholy dwelt in silence in every
place, after the sun retired. Business could not, for some time,
recover its former channels; and the innocent suffered with the
guilty."
While the subject was felt to be too dark and awful to be spoken of,
and most men desired to bury it in silence, occasionally the slumbering
fires would rekindle, and the flames of animosity burst forth. The
recollection of the part he had acted, and the feelings of many towards
him in consequence, rendered the situation of the sheriff often quite
unpleasant; and the resentment of some broke out in a shameful
demonstration at his death, which occurred early in 1697. Mr. English,
representing that class who had suffered under his official hands in
1692, having a business demand upon him, in the shape of a suit for
debt, stood ready to seize his body after it was prepared for
interment, and prevented the funeral at the time. The body was
temporarily deposited on the sheriff's own premises. There were, it is
probable, from time to time, other less noticeable occurrences
manifesting the long continued existence of the unhappy state of
feeling engendered in 1692. There were really two parties in the
community, generally both quiescent, but sometimes coming into open
collision; the one exasperated by the wrongs they and their friends had
suffered, the other determined not to allow those who had acted in
conducting the prosecutions to be called to account for what they had
done. After the lapse of thirty years, and long subsequent to the death
of Mr. Noyes, Mr. English was prosecuted for having said that Mr. Noyes
had murdered Rebecca Nurse and John Procter.