The Norton Witches: Small Town Legends

Well, it's October. Spooky month, as people say. Every month is spooky on this blog, but I'll try to share some particularly nice stories this October. Let's conjure up those Halloween vibes! 

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I don't think I've ever been to Norton, Massachusetts but I may have passed through it. It sounds like a small, quiet New England town. They only got their first traffic light in 1997, so it's very quiet. But small New England towns often harbor strange secrets, as every Stephen King fan knows. 

For example, a rock behind the Norton's elementary school supposedly is imprinted with the Devil's footprint. The Evil One made it in 1716 as he carried off George Leonard, who had sold his soul for material wealth. 

Norton is also located inside the Bridgewater Triangle, an area famous for its paranormal activity. The town certainly has had its share of weird happenings. For example, a couple weeks ago I posted about a lizard man seen in Norton in 2001. More famously, in 1971 a Norton police officer named Thomas Downy saw something with an 8 to 12 foot wingspan flying overhead as he drove home through Easton late one night. Small towns seem to get the best monsters! 

Norton was first settled in 1669, so it's a relatively old town. These days people tend to blame paranormal phenomena on ghosts, aliens or dimensional gateways, but in the past witches were usually blamed for strange events and misfortunes. That was certainly the case in Norton.

The most famous witch in Norton's history is Ann Cobb. Interestingly, very little is known of her witchy exploits but a bridge in town is named after her (Ann Cobb Bridge). It is more commonly known as Witch Bridge or Witch's Bridge. Ann Cobb used to live near the bridge that now bears her name, which was about two miles away from the town center. According to a local legend, one day she set out from her home for the center and arrived there within minutes, much to the consternation of the townspeople. How had she traveled so quickly? People suspected that perhaps she flew, or was transported by some sort of evil spirit. The incident was enough to cement her reputation as a witch and to merit a bridge being named after her. Ann Cobb died in poverty as a ward of the town in 1798.

Dora Leonard was also suspected of being a witch. Farmers blamed Dora and her magic when their animals escaped from the barn or their pens. Two young boys also blamed her for their bad luck hunting squirrels. According to the boys, they had trapped a particularly large squirrel in a tree and shot at it repeatedly. They missed every shot, though, and the squirrel escaped unharmed. As the boys trudged home they saw a strange cat watching them. They told everyone who would listen that the cat was really Dora and she had bewitched their guns. Much like Ann Cobb, Dora Leonard was impoverished in her old age and the town took care of her financially. As she lay dying in 1786 her house was filled with strange noises. The neighbors who were attending her final moments fled in terror. 

Naomi Burt was the third Norton woman believed to be a witch. Like Dora Leonard, Naomi was said to cause mischief and minor mishaps. Wagons lost their wheels if they passed by her house and oxen escaped their yokes thanks to Naomi's witchcraft. Children particularly feared her and held their breath if they passed by her residence. Sadly, Naomi committed suicide on July 4, 1808. Old legends about witches are entertaining and spooky, but being impoverished and a social outcast can be grim and lonely. 

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My sources for this week's post are Duane Hamilton Hurd's History of Bristol County, Massachusetts. With Biographical Sketches of Many of Its Pioneers and Prominent Men, Part 2 (1883), and George Faber Clark's  A History of the Town of Norton, Bristol County, Massachusetts, from 1669 – 1859 (1859. This article from Patch.com also had good information about the Norton witches. 

Molly Bridget and the Bewitched Pigs: A New Hampshire Witchcraft Story

Molly Bridget lived in Portsmouth, New Hampshire during the 1700s. Molly made her living telling fortunes for sailors and young lovers (as fortune tellers do) but over time she developed a reputation for being a witch. People in Portsmouth grew to fear and hate her.

Molly was never wealthy to begin with, and as she grew older she slipped into poverty. Sometime around the Revolutionary War she wound up living in Portsmouth's almshouse (or poorhouse). This was not to her liking so she decided to move south to Boston for a fresh start.

Unfortunately her reputation preceded her and when she arrived in Boston the following occurred:

Finding her way to Boston, the police gave her warning to leave the city forthwith.
"Why?" she asked.
"Is not your name Molly Bridget?"
"No, sir," she replied. "Do you think I am such a despicable creature as Molly?"
(Charles W. Brewster, Rambles About Portsmouth. Second Series. 1869)

The police weren't fooled. Molly realized that she wouldn't be able to leave her old identity behind so with a heavy heart she returned to Portsmouth and the almshouse.

An English woodcut of a witch from 1643

The almshouse was managed by a man named Clement March. One day in 1782 Mr. March noticed that the almshouse's pigs were acting strangely. His thoughts immediately turned to his resident witch, Molly Bridget. Had she bewitched the pigs?

There was only one way to find out. Like many people at that time, Mr. March believed that when a witch cursed something (or someone) they created a magical connection with the object of their curse. If Molly had cursed the pigs there was a connection between her and the animals. Molly's evil magic flowed from her into the pigs through this connection, but Mr. March thought he could use the connection to his advantage. He could make pain flow from the pigs back into Molly. If Molly felt enough pain she would stop cursing the animals.

Putting his plan into action, Mr. March took a knife out to the stye and cut off the pigs' ears and tails. He thought that this would be enough pain to cure the pigs of their strange behavior, but that was not the case.* He then decided to up the ante and burn their severed ears and tails, but when he went to gather them up the ears and tails were missing. Clearly this was more witchcraft! He surmised that Molly had made them disappear somehow.

Not willing to give up, Mr. March gathered the dead leaves and wood chips that were in the pig stye. These were soaked in the pigs' urine, feces, and blood, and therefore still had a connection to the animals and to the witch who had theoretically cursed them. He then burned the chips and leaves in the almshouse's various fireplaces.

The fires had a sudden and violent effect on Molly Bridget:

After the fires were kindled, Molly hastened from room to room in a frenzied manner. She soon went to her own room, and as the flames began to subside her sands of life began to run out, and before the ashes were cold, she was actually a corpse. (Brewster, Rambles About Portsmouth, 1869)

Mr. March and the residents of the Portsmouth almshouse took this as proof that Molly had indeed cursed the pigs. On the day of her funeral a violent storm struck Portsmouth, which was taken as further evidence that she was a witch.

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Like last week's post about the witch of Pepperell, this story shows how the belief in witchcraft lingered in New England well past the witch trials of the 1600s. Also like last week's legend, there's no official documentation about Molly Bridget and her witchcraft. The only account I've found is in Charles W. Brewster's Rambles About Portsmouth (1869). 

So is this story true or just a legend? Brewster has the following to say on the matter:

These are facts - how far the results were induced by the superstitious feelings of that day, the reader is left to judge. The poor creature might have believed herself a witch, and the expectation expressed that the burning of the pigs' tails would kill the witch, might have so wrought upon her mind as to produce the result.

I might also suggest that stories like these tend to become more legend-like over time. Perhaps Molly Bridget just died from natural causes and people in Portsmouth created the legend about her death over the years. By the time Brewster wrote down the story 80 years later it had become the traditional witch legend it is now. 

* I don't think cutting off an animal's ears and tail will ever improve its behavior. Be kind to animals!

Abducted to the Witches' Sabbath: Joseph Ring and A Devilish Debt

The Devil must have really wanted Joseph Ring to become a witch. Over the course of two years poor Joseph was spirited away to the Witches' Sabbath against his will dozens of times. It often happened at night while he was asleep but also happened during the day. Some neighbors even claimed to have seen him walking down the road and then vanish in broad daylight. 

Joseph Ring was born in Salisbury, Massachusetts in 1664. There isn't much known about his early years, but when he was twenty-six he enlisted in a military expedition to Casco, Maine. The English settlement at Casco had been besieged by French troops and their Indian allies and the Puritans sent four ships to relieve the settlers. The expedition was in vain. When the ships arrived they found that Casco had been burned to the ground and most of the inhabitants slaughtered. 

This was probably a traumatic thing for Joseph to see. There was a lot of anxiety and trauma about the war with the French and Indians in New England in general at that time. Everyone knew a story about a burned village, a massacre, or some other atrocity. 

 

But surprisingly Joseph claimed that seeing the burning settlement was not the most frightening thing about the expedition. No, the most frightening thing was that he made a bet with Thomas Hardy. 

On this way to Maine Joseph had stopped at a tavern on New Hampshire's Great Island. While he was there he met Thomas Hardy who invited him to play shuffleboard, a game of chance played by sliding a coin down a table. Joseph was young and didn't have any money, but Hardy loaned him some money to play. Joseph lost the game and left the tavern owing him two pounds. 

After the expedition Hardy frequently asked Joseph for the money he was owed. But was he just interested in money or something more? He was quite insistent and appeared to Joseph at odd times and in almost unnatural circumstances. For example, Joseph once encountered him on an isolated road where Hardy was riding on horseback with a strange group of men and women. Joseph later stumbled upon Hardy drinking cider with two women in the middle of dense woods. The woods were dangerous, full of wild animals and angry Indians, but Hardy and his companions seemed unconcerned. 

Each time they met Hardy asked Joseph for the money he was owed. Joseph didn't have two pounds and was unable to repay the debt. Hardy was sympathetic and suggested instead that if Joseph simply signed his name in a black book his debt would be forgiven. In fact, signing the book might even bring good things into his life. Wouldn't he like to sign his name?

Something about the book made Joseph uneasy and he refused to sign. Other things made him even uneasier. Once after leaving Hardy and his strange companions in the woods Joseph thought they had turned into black pigs and run off into the trees. At other times Hardy and his friends had appeared as flaming balls of fire. 

 

Joseph realized that Hardy was a witch, and while Joseph owed him two pounds he didn't want to repay the debt with his soul.

The situation went from bad to worse. He refused to sign the book but Joseph began to be abducted to the Witches' Sabbath, being taken bodily to the eerie gathering where the witches celebrated their service to the Devil. The abductions happened frequently and in the same manner each time. Strange figures would appear and carry him away through the air. Joseph would suddenly find himself at the Sabbath and then feel a painful blow upon his back that immobilized him. He was unable to move and could only watch the witches feast and celebrate. Someone would present him with a book to sign, which he always refused. The scene would dissolve into terrifying noise and chaos, and Joseph would find himself back in the normal world.

Although neighbors allegedly saw him vanish he was not able to tell them what was happening. Thomas Hardy and the other witches had enchanted Joseph so he was unable to talk about the Sabbath and his unwilling sojourns there. In August of 1691 the spell upon him worsened and he became unable to speak at all. 

The spell was finally broken in April of 1692 when Susannah Martin, a widow who lived nearby, appeared in Joseph's bedroom while he slept. Joseph had seen her before with Thomas Hardy and knew she was a witch. As he lay immobile in bed she viciously pinched his feet. She vanished from his room, but for some reason her attack had released him from the spell that silenced him. He could speak again. 

The name "Susannah Martin" may be familiar to you from the Salem Witch trials. She was one of the nineteen people hanged for witchcraft, and Joseph Ring's testimony helped seal her fate. He told the magistrates about his abductions, the debt he owed Thomas Hardy, and about Susannah Martin's friendship with him. Joseph's brother Jarvis also testified against Martin, claiming that she had appeared in his bedroom and lain upon his immobilized body.

Joseph and his brother were only two of many people who testified against Susannah Martin, but their statements helped convict her. She was executed on July 19, 1692 on Salem's Gallows Hill. Thomas Hardy was not convicted of any crimes, despite Joseph's insistence that he was a witch of the most devilish kind. 

Joseph Ring's story gives me a lot to think about. Some historians think his intense fear and fantasies about Thomas Hardy were misplaced traumas actually caused by what he saw at Casco, Maine or by stories he heard about Indian attacks. Psychologically that makes a lot of sense to me. His mind focused on the minor issue of a two pound debt rather than process the horror he saw in Maine. 

As someone who likes weird stories I'm also intrigued by his account of being abducted by witches, which echo accounts of people abducted by fairies or even UFOs. The phenomenon remains constant but the explanation changes over time and across cultures. 

I'm also saddened that his testimony contributed to the death of Susannah Martin. Joseph clearly believed Thomas Hardy was the witch most responsible for tormenting him, but in 17th century Massachusetts women were much more likely than men to be convicted of witchcraft. Something psychological was clearly happening to Joseph but it was not Susannah Martin's fault.

It probably wasn't Thomas Hardy's either. I do wonder if Joseph continued to live in fear of Hardy and the debt he owed even after the Salem witch trials concluded. Sadly Joseph Ring died only twelve years after the Salem witch trials ended. In 1704 he was captured by Indians in a raid and burned alive. Ironically, Joseph Ring's life ended right back where his trauma began. 

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Information about Joseph Ring can be found in the Salem witch trial transcripts and in documents from that time by Cotton Mather and Robert Calef. There is also some good information online. Marilynne Roach's The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-by-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege was also incredibly helpful.

Were There Really Witches in Salem?

Were there really any witches involved in the Salem witchcraft trials?

I think most people would answer "No!" Rational folks know the 19 people executed in 1692 were innocent victims of a warped judicial system in a theocratic Puritan society. But I also think that for other people the question lingers unanswered. Maybe, just maybe, there was something behind those trials other than just land-grabs and simmering small-town grudges? Maybe (just maybe) something uncanny occurred in Salem Village 350 years ago...

Witch is a word with several different meanings. It can mean people who get magical powers from the Devil and use them to harm people. It can mean practitioners of a nature-focused religion like Wicca. And sometimes it can even just mean people who use folk magic. Were any of these present in 1692 Essex County?

DIABOLIC WITCHES

The Puritans of Salem believed the Massachusetts Bay Colony was under assault by a conspiracy of witches. These witches looked like ordinary members of colonial society but secretly had sold themselves to the Devil. In return the Evil One gave them magical powers they used to torment their neighbors with illness, convulsions, nightmares, and even death. Testimony from the Salem trials contains terrifying accounts of demons, Satanic gatherings in the woods, and murderous magic. Surprisingly, dozens of women and men from all levels of society confessed to being witches in league with the Devil.

The Lords of Salem

A scientific worldview claims all of this is false. Witchcraft simply doesn't exist and neither does the Devil. There's no evidence that any kind of magic exists but diabolic witches still remain a persistent theme in pop culture. The 1960 film Horror Hotel featured a coven of Devil-worshipping witches in a small New England town, as did the 2014 TV show Salem, which showed diabolic witches in 1692 Salem. Rob Zombie's 2012 film The Lords of Salem did the same. Netflix's Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is also about a secret society of Satanic witches in New England, and was just renewed for two more seasons. Clearly viewers like watching devilish witches cause trouble.

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

This idea is not just confined to pop culture. Some Christian denominations still believe in the literal truth of the Devil and his witchy minions. But hopefully even the most fundamentalist modern Christian knows you can't prove there were any Devil-worshipping witches in Salem. Why? Because the Puritans, who were the original fundamentalists, ultimately came to that very same conclusion. 

Governor William Phipps ended the Salem trials when he realized they were getting out of control - and after his own wife was accused of being a witch. Once the trials were over Massachusetts Puritans did a lot of soul-searching. They realized the huge number of confessions had been elicited under torture and because the only way to avoid the gallows was to confess and accuse others of being witches. Ann Putnam, one of the leading witnesses, confessed in 1706 that her testimony was false and had sent innocent people to their death. Reverend Samuel Sewall, who served as a judge during the trials, also confessed to wrongly convicting innocent people.

These confessions didn't mean the Puritans stopped believing in witches. Hardly. Many of them still did, and also in the machinations of Satan. They simply realized it was impossible to prove someone was a witch. The Reverend John Hale examined this problem in his 1697 book A Modest Enquiry into The Nature of Witchcraft. He concluded that evidence supporting claims of witchcraft was probably trickery caused by the Devil himself. Satan was behind the Salem witchcraft trials after all, but he used fake evidence to divide the community and kill innocent people. The Devil caused all the trouble, not witches.

PAGAN WITCHES

I think if the Puritans realized there weren't any diabolic witches 350 years ago we can accept the same thing today. But perhaps, though, there were pagan witches? You know, the kind who practice ancient fertility religions and dance around Maypoles? There are plenty of them in modern Salem so perhaps they were around in 1692 as well?

The idea of witchcraft as a pagan religion was popularized by the anthropologist and Egyptologist Margaret Murray in her 1921 book The Witch Cult in Western Europe. According to Murray, an ancient pagan fertility cult survived in Western Europe until the 17th century when it was finally eliminated by the dominant Christian culture. Cult members worshipped an ancient horned god similar to Pan that their Christian persecutors thought was the the Devil. The cult's rituals, intended to bring fertility to the land, were misinterpreted as demonic ceremonies and black magic by its enemies. In short, Murray believed there really had been witches but they had actually been misunderstood and oppressed pagans.

Margaret Murray

Murray's book received a lot of criticism from her fellow academics when it was published. One complaint was that she assumed testimony from the European witch trials was an accurate reflection of reality instead of realizing it was elicited through torture and shaped to provide judges what they wanted to hear. For example, Murray claimed testimony about the Devil appearing to witches was really about a cult member wearing a horned mask. Testimony about cursing a farmer's field was really a misinterpretation of a fertility ceremony.

You get the idea. Murray had a conclusion she wanted to reach and shaped the evidence to support it. Still, despite all the criticism Murray's hypothesis was influential for much of the 20th century. Academics didn't give her much credence but her work was influential on pop culture. For example, horror writer H.P. Lovecraft mentions her work in several stories, and he personally felt there may have been some pagan elements at work in Salem:

“For my part – I doubt if a compact coven existed, but certainly think that people had come to Salem who had a direct personal knowledge of the cult, and who were perhaps initiated members of it. I think that some of the rites and formulae of the cult must have been talked about secretly among certain elements, and perhaps furtively practiced by the few degenerates involved… Most of the people hanged were probably innocent, yet I do think there was a concrete, sordid background not present in any other New England witch case.” (H.P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters, 1929 – 1931, 1971, p. 181, edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei)

The idea of pagan witches hasn't influenced pop culture the way the idea of diabolic witches has, possibly because it is newer. However, you can find it in (spoiler alert) Thomas Tryon's 1973 novel Harvest Home, which features a pagan cult in a small rural Connecticut town and also Robin Hardy's 1973 film The Wicker Man, although it is set in England, not New England. I guess '73 was a banner for pagan witches in pop culture!

Some Wiccans have claimed there were actual pagan practitioners in 17th century Salem. The late Gwen Thompson, an important New England Wiccan leader in the 1970s, used to say "The real Witches in Salem were never caught or arrested because they were busy sleeping with the judges." She may have been joking, but she did trace her ancestry back to the 17th century Salem and hinted that her family practiced Wicca even before they immigrated to Massachusetts from England in the 1600s.

In 2005, Robert Mathiesen (a professor of Slavic and Medieval studies at Brown University) and Andrew Theitic (a Wiccan high priest initiated by Gwen Thompson) co-authored The Rede of The Wiccae: Adriana Porter, Gwen Thompson and The Birth of A Witchcraft Tradition. Thompson said she inherited her witchcraft from her grandmother Adriana Porter, and in their book Mathiesen and Theitic analyze a piece of ritual poetry attributed to Porter to see if it originated in the 17th century or even earlier.

Scene from The Wicker Man (1973)

Their textual analysis showed that parts of the poem had been written in the 20th century but parts of it incorporated older folklore. However, Mathiesen and Theitic didn't find anything to support Thompson's claim that her version of Wicca was practiced in the 17th century. They did find that Thompson had ancestors in Salem during the trials and that members of her family had later studied esoteric topics like Spiritualism. It seems likely that Thompson had inherited some occult lore from her grandmother but it was probably not older than the 19th century.

Finally what would a discussion of pagan witchcraft be without a mention of Tituba, the Parris family's female slave? She was an important figure in the Salem trials, being one of the first accused and one of the first to confess. Some older histories (like Marion Starkey's The Devil in Massachusetts) state that Tituba practiced Voudoun, a non-Christian religion with African roots, and that she terrified Betty Parris and her cousin into hysteria by demonstrating traditional African magic to them. 

There is no evidence for this. Trial records only show that Tituba made a witch-cake (a type of English folk magic) at the urging of Mary Sibley, an English Puritan neighbor of the Parrises. There's no record of her practicing any type of Voudoun. Folklorist Samuel Drake and the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow are probably responsible for the idea that Tituba practiced Voudoun and it continues to spread today through Arthur Miller's play The Crucible and Ryan Murphy's TV show American Horror Story. Some historians think that Tituba was an Arawak Indian, not African, which makes it unlikely she would be familiar with an African religion. 

FOLK MAGIC

While there probably weren't any diabolic or even pagan witches in Salem there was still a lot of magic being practiced. For example here are more details about witch-cake Tituba made. It was made from flour and urine from an allegedly bewitched girl at the behest of the Parris's neighbor Mary Sibley. The cake would have been fed to a dog to see if the witchcraft symptoms (convulsions, fits, uncontrolled vocalizations, etc.) were transferred to the animal. If they were it meant the girl was bewitched. 

Mary Sibley did not think this was witchcraft, although I think a lot of modern people might. She was just trying to be a helpful neighbor. Historians know that people from all levels of New England society practiced magic or consulted people who did. Ship captains met with astrologers to determine the best date to embark on a voyage. Young women examined egg whites to learn the career of their future husband. Homeowners nailed horseshoes above doors to keep out witches.

Various types of magic are mentioned in the Salem trial documents and in the sermons of New England's Puritan ministers, who exhorted their congregants to abandon magic and turn to God. The ministers thought that all types of magic came from the Devil, but the average person in colonial New England had a different view. Magic wasn't good or evil, it was just a tool to get things done. They weren't witches - they were just normal 17th century colonial English people.

Some forms of magic were probably passed on through oral tradition, like the witch-cake or using a horseshoe to protect your home. Others were learned from books. Accused witch Dorcas Hoar practiced palm-reading, which she said she read about in a book. Perhaps that's also how she learned to examine the veins in someone's eyes to foretell their longevity. Some of these magical techniques are still practiced today and you can get your palm read in Salem only a few block from where alleged witches were interrogated. 

So were there really any witches in Salem? Probably not, but there were a lot of people practicing magic and it's amazing that we know so much about what they did. Sometimes history can be just as weird as any legend or myth. 

Cat, Crow and Cream: Perils of Being A Witch

Lots of younger people are interested in traditional forms of witchcraft these days, as a quick search through Tumblr will demonstrate. I think that's fine. Many people dabble in the occult and it's definitely an interesting topic. However, be aware that witchcraft is not all fun and games.  

For example, here is a little folk story about witches from late 19th century Western Massachusetts:

BEWITCHED CREAM

Daniel Smith was churning. He looked into the churn and then to see what progress he was making, but the butter was no nearer to coming the last time he looked than it was the first. The suspicion grew on Mr. Smith that there was something uncanny about this fact. The more he thought about it the more certain he became that there was a witch in the cream. To expel the evil spirit he dipped up a little of the cream, and threw it into the fire. Immediately after that the butter came. That same day it was reported that Widow Brown had burned herself. Then Mr. Smith knew it was the Widow Brown who had bewitched his cream. (Clifton Johnson, What They Say in New England, 1896)

Now compare that with this story collected in the 1930s in Peterborough, New Hampshire about a witch named Mrs. Stinson:

A cat somewhere in town was observed to act strangely; hot water was thrown upon her and straightaway Mrs. Stinson's back was dreadfully afflicted with St. Anthony's (erysipelas). On another occasion a good man near Sharon shot at a crow many times, but the bird only flew around and laughed at him. He at last took off a silver sleeve button and with it broke the crow's wing; immediately Mrs. Stinson was found to have a broken arm. (Eva Speare, New Hampshire Folk Tales, 1932)

Although we tend to think of folk stories about witches as spooky or creepy, most of them are actually instructional tales about how to defeat witches. They usually end with the the wise farmer or clever housewife defeating the witch through a little defensive magic, as the stories above illustrate. The heroine of these tales is not the witch.

Witches were believed to work their mischief by sending their souls out of their bodies and into food, animals, or farm implements. This was a cool magical power, but left the witches very vulnerable because their bodies experienced any harm inflicted on the food or animal. A silver object (a button or a bullet) could injure or kill even the toughest witch. 

So just a word of caution for young people thinking about practicing traditional forms of witchcraft. Watch out! Someone might throw the cream into the fire.