For Sale: The Home of A Salem Witch Trial Victim

Would you like to own a home connected to Salem witch trials? Now is your chance. The historic Solart-Woodward House in Wenham, Massachusetts just went on the market. The house has four bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms. and is priced at $599,000. That seems like a good price in this current market.

Although there have been additions since, the original part of the house was built in 1670. That's an old house. A friend of mine used to live in a house built in the 1680s, and you could feel the history seeping out of the walls. I imagine the Solart-Woodward house would feel the same.

The Solart-Woodward House

As you might expect, the house has a tragic history attached to it. It was built by John Solart, a French immigrant and the father of Sarah Good, one of the first people accused in the Salem witch trials. Solart operated the house as an inn but drowned himself a few years later. His wife (Sarah's mother) inherited Solart's wealth after the suicide and quickly remarried. Sarah and her sisters sued but failed to get any of the inheritance.

Sarah married Daniel Poole, an indentured servant who incurred heavy debts. She inherited these when he died in 1682. Sarah's second husband, William Good, paid off her debts but had to sell most of his property to do so. He and Sarah became homeless, wandering through Essex County begging for food and shelter with their young daughter Dorothy (often erroneously referred to as Dorcas in older scholarly works).

Many witch accounts from colonial New England follow a familiar pattern. A poor person (usually a woman) asks a wealthier person for food or money. When the wealthier person refuses them the poor person mumbles threats. The wealthy person then hits a string of bad luck (sick children, dying farm animals, household mishaps) and accuses the poor person of being a witch. Puritans were expected to take care of each other and offer hospitality, but resented it when they felt they were being taken advantage of. Witch accusations often arose from that resentment.

That resentment could sometimes turn deadly. It did for Sarah Good. When the afflicted girls of Salem began to name witches Sarah was among the first. As a poor female beggar she was an obvious target. She denied being a witch until the end, but the judges still found her guilty. They thought the contortions of the afflicted girls were credible evidence. They were convinced when four-year old Dorothy Good admitted to being a witch and accused her mother. They took William Good literally when he said he felt like his wife was a witch when she treated him poorly. Absurd as it now seems, it all added up to a death sentence for Sarah.

Sarah Good was executed on July 29, 1692. A well-known story claims that she uttered a dying curse. After she was sentenced to hang the Reverend Nicholas Noyes asked her once again to admit her guilt. She refused, reportedly saying, "I am no more a witch than you are a wizard, and if you take away my life God will give you blood to drink!" Sarah was executed, but twenty-five years later Reverend Noyes died from internal hemorrhaging. Blood gushed out of his mouth as he expired. Witnesses thought back to Sarah Good's dying curse.

Sarah Good's problems and death were caused by poverty. Ironically, after the witch trials ended William Good sued for damages and won. He received thirty pounds, which was several times more than the average laborer earned in a year.

Did Moldy Grain Cause The Salem Witch Trials?

I think most people agree on the facts of the Salem witch trials. In 1692, nineteen people were executed for witchcraft, one died while being tortured, and several died in prison. More than 150 people from Massachusetts and Maine were accused. The trials ended as soon as they began, and were the last major witchcraft trials in New England.

There had been other witchcraft trials in 17th century New England, but none as large and deadly as the Salem trials. Historians have argued for years over what caused this terrifying social anomaly. Proposed explanations include mass hysteria, greed, Puritan misogyny, discord among neighbors, and stress caused by Indian attacks. There is probably some truth in all of these, but what if the cause was not social but biological? What if the Salem witch trials were caused by a fungus that grows on moldy grain?

The moldy grain theory first appeared in the April 2, 1976 issue of Science magazine in an article by Linnda R. Caporael titled "Ergotism: The Satan Loosed in Salem?" Caporael was a biology grad student at UC Santa Barbara, and she hypothesized that the Salem trials had been caused by ergot, a fungus that grows on grains, particularly rye.

Caporael's article explains that ergot (claviceps purpura) often grows on rye (and sometimes other grains) when the weather is warm and wet. Rye was the most widely planted Old World grain among the Puritans, and the spring and summer of 1691 were hot and humid in Massachusetts. The rye harvested that year would have been consumed in 1692. She theorizes that it was infected with ergot.

Barley infected with ergot, from Wikipedia

People who eat ergot-infected grains can develop a disease called ergotism. It comes in two varieties. Gangrenous ergotism causes an infected person's extremities to die and rot away. Fingers, toes and ears develop gangrene and fall off. Picture leprosy, but caused by grain. Scary! The second variety is called convulsive ergotism, which has very different symptoms, including the following:

• Tingling sensations in the skin and fingers
• Vertigo
• Headaches
• Ringing in the ears
• Vomiting and diarrhea
• Hallucinations
• Bodily convulsions

Ergot contains the alkaloid isoergine, aka lysergic acid amine, a molecule similar to that found in LSD, which can cause hallucinations. Perhaps all those Puritans were just having a really bad trip?

Caporael's article goes on to explain how some of the behaviors seen in the Salem witch trials might be caused by convulsive ergotism.

Accusations of choking, pinching, pricking with pins, and biting by the specter of the accused formed the standard testimony of the afflicted in almost all the examinations and trials. The choking suggests the involvement of the involuntary muscular fibers that is typical of ergot poisoning; the biting, pinching, and pricking may allude to the crawling and tingling sensations under the skin experienced by ergotism victims. Complaints of vomiting and "bowels pulled out" are common in the deposition of the accusers. The physical symptoms of the afflicted and many of the other accusers are those induced by convulsive ergot poisoning. (Linnda R. Caporael, "Ergotism: The Satan Loosed in Salem?", Science, vol. 192, April 2, 1976) 

The article also suggests that the demons people saw were just hallucinations, such as the thing with a monkey's body and bird's feet that choked John Londer while he slept, as were the spectral witches that people saw inside their homes or roaming the landscape. The Puritans didn't have a scientific understanding of ergotism so they explained away the strange symptoms as evil magic sent by witches.

Caporael's article really struck a chord when it was published. It received quite a bit of publicity, and even made the front page of The New York Times in an article titled "Salem Witch Hunts in 1692 Linked to LSD-Like Agent." LSD was a widely used drug in the 1970s and the link with contemporary drug culture made sense to a society dealing with its own hallucinating kids.

The ergot theory still remains popular, even though most people now don't know where it came from. I often see commenters online mention ergotism when discussing the Salem trials, and it comes up sometimes when I talk with people about New England witchcraft. Just a few weeks ago I was leading a tour in Boston and when I mentioned witchcraft someone asked about ergotism.

People still remember Caporaels' theory, but they don't remember the rebuttal that two psychologists published a few months later. Nicholas Spanos and Jack Gottlieb published an article titled "Ergotism and the Salem Village Witch Trials" in the December 24, 1976 issue of Science. The two authors outline some compelling reasons why ergotism did not cause the Salem trials.

First, only people suffering from Vitamin A deficiency contract convulsive ergotism; people with healthy vitamin A intake get the gangrenous variety. Vitamin A is found in dairy products and fish. Salem Village was a successful farming community with lots of cows and Salem Town was a seaport with lots of fishing activity. It seems unlikely that anyone had a Vitamin A deficiency.

Further, ergotism usually strikes entire families (since everyone is eating the same grain). That did not happen in Salem, where only a few members of families were afflicted by witchcraft. The afflicted girls also did not report diarrhea or vomiting, and more importantly they did not die or develop permanent dementia, which happens in severe cases of ergotism. Their skin also did not turn a livid color, which is another symptom of the disease.

The afflicted girls did not actually suffer convulsions or pain in a way that was consistent with ergotism. They would suffer fits and convulsions when a suspected witch was brought into the courtroom for them to see, but their symptoms would subside when the suspect confessed, when passages were read from the Bible, or when the suspect touched them. Their convulsion were clearly not the symptoms of a disease. As Spanos and Gottlieb write:

The afflicted girls were responsive to social cues from each other as well as from the accused and were therefor able to predict the occurrence of each other's fits. In such cases one of the girls would cry out that she saw the specter of an accused witch about to attack another of the afflicted. The other girl would then immediately fall into a fit.... 

... Taken together, these facts indicate that the afflicted girls were enacting the role demoniacs as that role was commonly understood in their day. (Nicholas Spanos and Jack Gottlieb, "Ergotism and the Salem Village Witch Trials, " Science, December 24, 1976)

Spanos and Gottlieb also point out that the afflicted girls were only a small subset of all the witnesses in the Salem witch trials. Dozens of people testified against the accused witches, and most of them showed no symptoms of ergotism at all.

So it seems extremely unlikely that ergotism caused the Salem witch trials or even played any role at all. It's too bad, because modern science is great at treating physical disease, but not so great at dealing with psycho-social eruptions. We can probably prevent outbreaks of ergotism, but that won't help us prevent future witch hunts. Witch hunts still occur around the world, and we've even seen seen similar phenomena within the last few decades in the United States, like the Satanic panic of the 1980s or the evil clown scare of 2016. If only they were as easy to treat as a troublesome fungus.

American Horror Story: Did Tituba Practice Voodoo?

We've been watching season three of American Horror Story, and last week's episode ended with a confrontation between Fiona Goode the supreme witch (played by Jessica Lange), and Marie Laveau the immortal voodoo queen (played by Angela Bassett). As they argue in a New Orleans hair salon, Marie claims that the witches stole their power from Tituba, who practiced voodoo in Puritan Salem. (To be clear, Voudou or Voudoun is an African-based polytheistic religious system; in popular culture, voodoo is a magical system that is derived from Voudou.)

Angela Bassett as Marie Laveau

American Horror Story is of course fiction and created to entertain (which I think it does), but it usually works in some historical information as well. So who was Tituba, and did she really practice voodoo or Voudou?

Tituba was a slave owned in the 1690s by Salem Village's minister Samuel Parris. After his daughter Betty, her cousin Abigail Williams and other local girls began to have fits, they accused Tituba of bewitching them. Some writers, like Marion Starkey, have claimed the girls made these accusations because Tituba taught them voodoo-style magic. In particular, Starkey's The Devil in Massachusetts claims that the guilt and conflict the adolescent girls felt about practicing Tituba's magic was the spark that ignited the Salem witch trials.

This probably never happened, but it sure looks dramatic!

However, there's not much evidence that Tituba practiced any magic at all, let alone voodoo or Voudou. According to Marilynne Roach's The Salem Witch Trials, there's just one documented incident of Tituba performing magic.

On February 25, 1692, before she was accused of being a witch, Tituba made a cake made from the afflicted girls' urine and fed it to a dog. This was a form of diagnostic magic. If the dog became sick after eating the cake, it would prove the girls had witchcraft-tainted urine and were indeed bewitched. Baking a witch cake is not a practice associated with Voudou or voodoo, but is part of English folk magic. Tituba was in fact instructed to make the cake by Mary Sibley, an English neighbor of the Parrises.

When Tituba did confess to being a witch, her confessions matched those of her English Puritan neighbors. She had flown through the air on a pole to the witch meetings, had been pressured by the Devil to serve him, and had been offered animal familiars. These are all part of English witchcraft belief, not Voudou. Another Salem slave named Candy was accused of witchcraft, and her confessions also matched her Puritan neighbors. I think it's safe to assume the slaves were just telling the judges what they wanted to hear. It was the safest strategy to prolong your life during the Salem trials.

It's also not entirely clear if Tituba was of African, or even part-African, descent. The trial records refer to her as Tituba Indian, and her husband as John Indian. It appears they had come originally from the Caribbean, and some historians have claimed they were actually Arawak Indians rather than Africans. On American Horror Story Marie Laveau does mention that Tituba was an Arawak, but any connection between Arawak religion (now extinct) and voodoo or Voudou is mostly speculative.

American Horror Story also has a minotaur in it, so I'm not expecting historical accuracy. The show entertains while discussing broader social themes, and this season seems to be partly about racial conflict. If that turns out to be the case Tituba certainly fits right in.

Abigail Hobbs, Poor Little Witch Girl

As I read about the Salem witch trials, sometimes I feel like I'm really getting to know a particular person. Abigail Hobbs, accused of witchcraft at age 14, is one of them.

Maybe I'm just projecting my modern attitudes onto a completely different historical era, but when I read about Abigail Hobbs I get the impression of a bratty teenage Goth girl. For example, here is the transcript of one of her interrogations. The judge has asked her when she first encountered the Devil:

Abigail: About 3 or 4 years ago.

Judge: What did he say to you?


Abigail: He said he would give me fine things, if I did what he would have me.

Judge: What would he have you do?

Abigail: Why, he would have me be a witch. 

Her use of the word "why" gives the impression that she was relaxed, and almost mocking. "Of course he wanted me to be a witch," she implies. "Why else would I be on trial?"

Before coming to Salem, Abigail Hobbs had lived with her father and stepmother in a settlement at Casco Bay in Maine. In the 1690s Maine was a dangerous frontier area, rife with wild animals and marauding Wabenaki Indians, but Abigail roamed freely outside the palisades surrounding the settlement. She even spent nights alone in the woods.

When asked by neighbors why she was unafraid outside in the dangerous forest, she replied that she had "sold herself body and soul to the Old Boy." I like to think she said this sarcastically, to scare her pious and nosey neighbors. Chadwick Hansen, in his crazy book Witchcraft at Salem, thinks Abigail Hobbs really was a witch based on statements like this. I prefer to think of her as a proto-Goth girl out to shock.

As Indian attacks made Casco Bay increasingly dangerous the Hobbs family moved south to Topsfield, Massachusetts, which is next to Salem. Abigail continued to be a wild child. She mockingly baptized her mother while at a neighbor's house, openly defied her parents in public, and told people who criticized her that she could see the Devil sitting behind them.

Needless to say, these antics soon led to Abigail being accused of witchcraft. Like most of the other accused, she soon realized that the best way to delay execution was to tell the judges what they wanted to hear. She confessed to witchcraft. She claimed she tortured and killed neighbors by sticking pins in poppets, and ate red bread and red wine at the witches' sabbat. She also accused several others of witchcraft, including John Proctor of Salem and George Burroughs, the former Salem minister who had moved to Maine.

In the fall of 1692 Abigail was sentenced to be executed, but by early 1693 the trials had collapsed and the order was never carried out. Governor Phipps signed a reprieve and Abigail was spared the hangman's noose. Unfortunately many of the people she had accused were not so lucky.

I like to think that Abigail Hobbs was a just free-spirited teenager growing up in a dangerous time. Maybe her blasphemous, screw-you attitude started out as a reaction to the unstable environment of Casco Bay, but by the time she arrived in Massachusetts people took her all too seriously.

You can read the transcripts of Abigail's trials here.

Movie Review: The Lords of Salem

I needed some escapism this week, so I went this morning to see an early show of The Lords of Salem. Some people escape reality through comedies or eating ice cream - I like to watch horror movies. This one is based loosely on New England folklore, and was written and directed by Massachusetts native Rob Zombie - someone I went to high school with. How could I stay away?

Here's the basic plot. In 1696, Margaret Morgan and her coven of female witches lurk in the woods outside Salem Village, rolling around naked in the dirt and blaspheming while they try to breed the Anti-Christ. Interestingly, all the witches are marked with a glyph that looks very similar to John Dee's Monas Hieroglyphica.

This glyph is very similar to John Dee's.

Jonathan Hawthorne, a dour Salem Puritan, puts a stop to their Satanic shenanigans by capturing them and burning them at the stake. As Margaret and her co-religionists graphically sizzle she curses Hawthorne, screaming that one of his descendants will bear Satan's child.

Three centuries later, Hawthorne's descendant Heidi Hawthorne is a recovering drug addict and hipster DJ who works at a Salem radio station. After Heidi plays a mysterious record from a band called the Lords, she starts to hallucinate about cackling witches, goats, and inappropriate sexual conduct with clergymen. Her bohemian landlady and her creepy sisters feed Heidi tea and scones, but somehow she (and the audience) are not reassured. Can Heidi be saved by a local historian, who realizes the music on the Lords record is the same tune Margaret and her witches played at their revels? (It sounds like death-metal folk music.) Maybe Heidi's fellow DJ and possible love interest will actually do something and help her out? Will anything good come of the Daughters of Historic Salem attending the Lords free concert in town?


Overall I enjoyed The Lords of Salem. Most of the exterior shots were filmed in Salem, which looks wonderfully gloomy and Gothic on the big screen. Old houses, brick sidewalks, falling autumn leaves, cheerless vistas of the Atlantic Ocean - it's like a big visual love letter to New England in November. Zombie definitely gets good mileage out of the local scenery. It's also beautifully filmed, with great sets and costumes. It was reminiscent of European horror movies like Suspiria, The Church, and The Sect: moody, well-designed, and vaguely nutty.

I didn't go in expecting historic authenticity, so I wasn't upset that The Lords of Salem twists the witch trials to suit its own purposes. It's a horror movie, not a history lesson. For example the real Salem trials happened in 1692, not 1696, and the witches were executed by hanging, not burning. And most importantly, the people executed were innocent citizens, not malicious Devil worshipers. Always remember that.

However there really was a Puritan judge named John (not Jonathan) Hathorne, who was an ancestor of author Nathaniel Hawthorne. Although Judge Hathorne wasn't cursed during the Salem trials, the Reverend Nicholas Noyes was. According to legend, Sarah Good told him from the gallows that "God will give you blood to drink." The reverend reportedly died from choking on his own blood. Nathaniel Hawthorne built the plot of The House of Seven Gables around this legend and his own ancestral guilt. Rob Zombie merges it with Rosemary's Baby to make The Lords of Salem.

Witches' Sabbath by Francisco Goya

There are lots of naked ladies in this film, writhing around, licking blood off newborns, and denouncing Christianity. There are also lots of goats. I feel like Zombie was inspired by Goya paintings and records of the European witch trials in his portrayal of the witch sabbath. The descriptions of the Puritan witch meetings, even though often extracted through torture, are very tame compared to those from Europe. Instead of having orgies and eating babies, the New England witches stood around (with their clothes on) and listened to the Devil, a man dressed in black like the Puritan ministers, talk about their plans to ruin crops and kill livestock. Basically they were a corruption of the Puritan Sunday church services - talky and kind of dull.

If you like stylish horror films I'd recommend seeing this one. It's not overly violent, but it was probably the most blasphemous movie I've seen in a long time. The Mosaic Church of Boston was actually holding services in the theater next door and I'm glad they didn't see what I did. That's my one warning - graphic blasphemy!

One last thing - Satan shows up in one scene looking like Bigfoot, which is pretty cool.

Richard Carrier: Confessions of a Cider-Drinking Witch

Richard Carrier was only eighteen years old when he and his younger brother Andrew were accused of witchcraft.

He was quite surprised, but should he have been? His mother, Martha Carrier, had recently been accused of witchcraft herself, and the Carrier family had never been popular in Andover, Massachusetts. They were considered poor even by the low standards of 1692 New England, and they were also pugnacious - Richard had been in fistfights with several other men and boys. When smallpox struck their family they had lived as pariahs on the outskirts of town.

When the constables brought Richard and his brother to Salem for questioning, they were obviously terrified. (Records note that Andrew was so frightened he stuttered when he spoke.) Both brothers pled innocent, but the afflicted girls who had accused them convulsed wildly in their presence, indicating guilt. The Carrier boys were brought into an adjacent room, where the questioning continued privately and the constables tied their heads to their ankles. Under this torture, they confessed to being witches.

When he was returned to the courtroom, Richard told how the Devil had first approached him on the Andover road one night in May of 1691. The dark man in the high-crowned hat claimed he was Jesus, and offered Richard new clothes and a horse in return for making his mark in a red book. A tempting offer for a poor Puritan, and Richard signed. His initiation was complete when the Devil baptized him in a waterfall at Newbury, Massachusetts. His brother Andrew later signed the Devil's book in an apple orchard in the presence of Richard and their mother.

 

As a witch, Richard followed Satan's orders. He sent his spirit to torment Timothy Swan of Andover, who had argued with another witch about the price for thatching her roof. Richard used a simple poppet to torment the wife of Salem Village's minister Samuel Parris. He attended the witch meetings, which his spirit was summoned to by the beating of a drum.

And he drank stolen cider. 

Mary Lacy, who had been accused of witchcraft shortly before the Carrier brothers, had told the court that she, the Carrier family, and other witches had flown to the home of Elizabeth Ballard and drunken all the cider in her cellar.

"Sometimes we leave our bodies at home, but at other times we go in our bodies and the Devil puts a mist before their eyes and will not let them see us." Mary Lacy had drunken the cider while invisible.

Richard confessed to this as well, but said his spirit had done it while outside his body. Mary Lacy supported his confession. "He went in his spirit, and his body lay dead the while out of doors."

After he confessed, the afflicted girls touched his hand without convulsing, a sign of his true contrition. The court spared Richard and Andrew's lives because they had confessed to witchcraft. Their mother never confessed, and was hanged. 

***

There are lots of things I find interesting about Richard Carrier's story. For example, he was male (most of the accused witches in Salem and New England overall were women) and the torture he and Andrew endured is horrifying.

What struck me the most, though, was the cider. Richard and all the confessed witches created stories about their witchy exploits that were believable to their accusers. People in Puritan New England believed in the reality of witches; it was part of their shared worldview. Everyone knew what witches did. All it took was a little persuasion (or torture) to tell a convincing story about your own actions as a witch.

And apparently, witches sent their spirits or invisible bodies to drink their neighbors' cider. Elizabeth Ballard's cider would have been alcoholic cider, which was one of the main drinks at the time. Water was often polluted, tea was expensive, and grain for beer was too hard to grow. People drank hard cider morning, noon and night.

Spirits entering a house to drink liquor (or eat food) is an old folklore motif. For example, the Swedish historian Olaus Magnus wrote in his History of the Northern Peoples (1555) that at Yuletide werewolves break into cellars to drink beer and mead. The line between werewolves and witches is blurry, since both are shapeshifters. Many people who confessed to being werewolves talked about sending out their spirits in the shape of a wolf, much as witches sent their spirits to do mischief.

We don't believe in these things in the 21st century, of course, but a surprising number of people leave out milk and cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve. But that's just for children, right?


In parts of Medieval and Renaissance Europe it was believed that a night-riding goddess and her followers (sometimes called the Good Ladies) traveled across the countryside. To gain their favor, people would leave out food and beverages for them. In the British Isles, food was left out for faeries and elves. In many countries, food and beverages are still left out for the wandering spirits of the dead who might enter the home.

The origins of this belief in traveling spirits that enter your house to eat and drink is quite murky. Writers like Carlo Ginzburg and Claude Lecouteux trace it back to ancient shamanic practices and ideas about the dead. It sounds good to me. Apparently it is a very resilient belief that has changed shape and expressed itself differently over time.

For Halloween, maybe I'll leave out some cider for who or whatever is wandering around that night, and be thankful that I can write about this topic without being tortured. 

***

I got the information about Richard Carrier from Marilynne Roach's wonderful The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-by-Chronicle of New England Under Siege.  This is the book if you want to read a straightforward and detailed narrative of what transpired in Salem.

Rebecca Nurse Homestead and Cemetery

At the time of the infamous witch trials, Salem was much larger than it is today and was divided into two parts: Salem Town and Salem Village.

Salem Town (which today is the modern city of Salem) was a wealthy coastal trading port. Salem Village (which today is the town of Danvers), on the other hand, was an inland village focused on agriculture. According to Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum's book Salem Possessed, the citizens of Salem Village were divided over their relationship with the larger and wealthier Salem Town. Some villagers, including Reverend Parris and the Putnam family, wanted the village to become independent. Others appreciated the business opportunities that came their way from Salem Town and wanted to remain part of it. Boyer and Nissenbaum claim these political tensions gave rise to the witchcraft accusations. I think there were probably a lot of reasons, but I'm sure they added fuel to the fire.

Most of the initial accusers and the people they accused lived in Salem Village, although the accusations eventually spread throughout the colony. Danvers has downplayed the important role it played in the Salem witch trials but there are still a few interesting historic sites you can visit. When I was in Danvers with Lori visiting the hospital cemetery we decided to see some.

The first was this monument erected in 1992 on the 300th anniversary of the trials. It is quite large and dramatic, but is located on a relatively quiet suburban street. Unlike the city of Salem, which generates a lot of tourism from witchcraft, Danvers is really low-key about it.

After the monument we stopped by the Rebecca Nurse homestead, a multi-acre historic site. Rebecca Nurse was a prominent and pious member of the Salem Village community, so it was shocking to her neighbors when she was accused of witchcraft. (Her sisters Mary Eastey and Sarah Cloyce were accused as well.) Many of her neighbors signed a petition supporting her, and the judges initially found her innocent. However, some of the afflicted girls (including Ann Putnam, whose family had a history of property disputes with the Nurses) continued to cry out that Rebecca's phantom was tormenting them. The judges changed their verdict to guilty, and Rebecca was hanged on July 19, 1692. She was 71 years old.

Like all those executed in the trials her body was buried in an unmarked grave on Gallows Hill in Salem Town, but her family took it and re-buried it on her homestead. The family cemetery still exists, and is a short walk from the main house. Rebecca's grave is now marked by a large monument that her descendants erected in 1885.

The bones of George Jacobs, another victim of the Salem trials, are also interred in the Nurse cemetery. George was executed in August of 1692 at the age of 70 after being accused of witchcraft by, among others, his granddaughter Margaret. Margaret herself had been accused earlier, and knew that by confessing and accusing others she could escape execution. Margaret did survive, but wrote she had accused her grandfather only "to save my life and to have my liberty." She visited her grandfather in jail before he died to get his forgiveness.

After he was hanged George's body was taken from Gallows Hill and buried on his family's farm. His bones had to be moved when the property was sold to developers, and were finally laid to rest in the Nurse cemetery in 1992. His monument, although only 20 years old, is a replica of a traditional 17th century grave stone.

The Salem Witch House and Jonathan Corwin

October is Halloween month. The days are getting darker, the air is getting cooler. It puts me in the mood for spooky stories, and tales about witches.

Tony and I went with our friends Lori and Dave up to Salem for our annual pilgrimage. This year rather than visit a cheesy (but scary) haunted house we went someplace with an authentic connection to the Salem witch trials - the Salem Witch House, the former residence of witch trial judge Jonathan Corwin.


Located just off the main drag, the Corwin house is an impressive example of 17th century architecture. Jonathan Corwin bought the house in 1675, but I believe it was built in the 1650s. Now that's an old house!


Jonathan Corwin was born in 1640, and became quite wealthy as a merchant. He served Salem (and Salem Village) as a magistrate, and dealt mostly with petty crimes like public drunkenness and burglary. However, given the penal code of the day, even though the crimes were petty I am sure he delivered some harsh punishments. For example, convicted burglars were branded with a "B" on their hands or forehead, depending on their number of convictions.


Corwin was appointed to serve on the witch trials only after Haverhill's Nathaniel Saltonstall resigned. Saltonstall had quit in protest over the admission of spectral evidence in the trials.


People at the time believed that witches could send their souls (or specters) to attack their victims. The afflicted girls in Salem Village claimed they could see the specters of the witches who were attacking them. Although no one else was able to see them, this spectral evidence was still allowed in the court.


It appears that Jonathan Corwin had no qualms about accepting spectral evidence, but not much is known about his role in the trials. Records from the time are incomplete. Corwin did sign multiple arrest warrants and transcribed the records of several trials.


Corwin's role in the trials did not have a negative effect on his reputation. Although it was eventually acknowledged that the trials killed twenty innocent people, Corwin went on to serve on the state legislature. He died in 1718 at the age of 78.


The Salem Witch House is definitely worth a visit. The architecture is great, and the building is filled with furniture and artifacts from the 17th century. They let you take photos (no flash allowed), which I think is unusual for a house museum. There are also some interesting displays around the house about witchcraft beliefs of the time.

I got my information about Jonathan Corwin from Wikipedia.

Next week: how to make a poppet!

Nathaniel Saltonstall, Salem Witch Trials Judge

I went to my ancestral Haverhill home today, and stopped by the Pentucket Cemetery on Water Street. Lots of interesting people are buried there, including some victims of the raid that made Hannah Duston a national heroine.

The most impressive monument belongs to the family of Nathaniel Saltonstall, who was one of the judges at the Salem witchcraft trials in the 1690s.



Saltonstall was born in Ipswich in 1639, attended Harvard, and eventually became Haverhill's town clerk. He married Elizabeth Ward, who was the daughter of John Ward, the minister who founded Haverhill. In short, he was kind of a bigwig.

When the 1692 witch craze broke out in Salem Village, Saltonstall was appointed to the Court Oyer and Terminer, a group of seven judges who would oversee the witchcraft trials.

Saltonstall only heard one witchcraft case, that of Bridget Bishop, who was found guilty and hanged on Gallows Hill. After this, he removed himself from the Court Oyer and Terminer. Salem was far from his home in Haverhill, but more importantly he didn't believe the afflicted girls were really possessed, and found the spectral evidence admitted in court unconvincing.



It wasn't so easy for him to escape the Salem madness unscathed, though. When he returned to Haverhill he started to drink heavily, and was reprimanded for it by Samuel Sewall, one of the judges who remained on the court. Even worse, the afflicted Salem Village girls claimed they saw Nathaniel Saltonstall's spectre with the other witches, and that he was a witch himself.

Because he was well-connected Saltonstall was never brought to trial. He weathered the witch craze, and eventually died in 1707. I don't know if he stopped drinking.



I got most of this information from Marion Starkey's The Devil in Massachusetts, plus several genealogical sources on Google books.

Witch Cake - A Recipe You Won't Like

Here's a funky little recipe from the 1600s that I doubt you'll like. It's for something called witch cake. The secret ingredient? Human urine.

Back in February 1692, some of the young girls in Salem Village were acting strangely. Puritan girls were definitely supposed to be seen and not heard, and these girls were really causing a commotion. Among them was Betty Parris, the daughter of Salem Village's minister.

William Griggs, the local physician was called to take a look at them. Maybe he could explain why these young ladies were acting out. His diagnosis? Witchcraft! Someone had bewitched the young girls!

Now, if you were to go to your doctor today and get a weird diagnosis for your kids you'd want a second opinion. The villagers felt the same way, but they didn't have easy access to multiple physicians.

Instead, a local woman named Mary Sibley suggested the Parris's slave Tituba make a cake out of rye meal moistened with urine from the bewitched girls. After the cake was baked (imagine what the kitchen smelled like!) it was fed to a dog, who was to be studied for signs of bewitchment. If it acted strangely after eating the cake, it was proof the girls really were under the influence of baleful magic. I suspect any dog would act strangely after eating a cake made with urine.

Although witch cake probably sounds strange to contemporary readers, believe it or not there was a theory behind it. The Puritans (and many other pre-industrialized people) believed that because witches directed their magic towards a person's body, the magic would also be present in the products of that person's body. Therefore, if someone had evil magic operating on them that magic would also be in their blood or urine, and could be passed onto anything that consumed them (like a dog).

The witch cake operates similarly to the witch bottle, but the witch bottle was used as defensive magic while the witch cake was used merely to prove there was witchcraft present.

Strangely, there's no record of what happened to the dog who ate the witch cake in 1692. The girls didn't improve, however, and eventually accused Tituba of being one of the witches tormenting them.

I found a lot of this information from various places on the Web and also in Marion Starkey's book The Devil in Massaschusetts.