Margaret Jones, the Witch of Charlestown

The 1692 witchcraft trials in Salem are the most famous of their kind in New England, but the unfortunate men and women who died in Salem weren't the first to be executed as witches in Massachusetts. That claim to fame belongs to Margaret Jones.

With her husband Thomas, Margaret was one of the earliest settlers in Charlestown (now part of Boston but at the time a separate town). Margaret was an herbalist and midwife who treated her sick neighbors with various teas and concoctions.

People who have the power to heal also have the power to harm, and eventually some of Margaret's patients began to murmur against her. They claimed she said if they refused to buy her medicines they would never get well. I suppose you can take this two ways. Obviously, if your doctor is prescribing something you should take it if you want your condition to improve. On the other hand, if you believe in witchcraft, you might think your doctor is bewitching you just so she can keep selling you medicine...

 Soon her neighbors began to openly accuse Margaret of witchcraft, claiming she

"was found to have such a malignant Touch, as many persons were taken with Deafness, or Vomiting, or other violent Pains or Sickness."

Margaret was arrested and accused of witchcraft. It was widely believed at the time that witches suckled their familiar spirits through strange "witch teats", which could be located anywhere on their body. It was also believed that these spirits needed to feed frequently, and would come to the witch for sustenance even if the witch was imprisoned.

The authorities assigned a guard to watch Margaret while she was in jail to see if her familiar appeared. It did. The guard claimed he saw her suckle a small child in her locked cell. When he opened the cell door to confront her the child disappeared. Clearly, she was a witch.

Margaret was executed by hanging on June 15, 1648. She protested her innocence until the very end, and denounced her accusers and the judges.

"The same Day and Hour she was executed, there was a very great Tempest at Connecticut, which blew down many Trees, etc. "

This was further taken as proof that she had indeed been a witch.

The law at that time required spouses of accused witches to also be arrested. Thomas tried to escape Boston by booking passage on a ship leaving the city, but the ship had trouble keeping its balance even though the weather was calm. When the crew realized that Jones was Margaret's husband they handed him over to the authorities. The ship righted itself after he was removed from the ship. It's not clear what happened to Thomas, but it doesn't seem that he was executed.

As with all the witchcraft trials, it's both interesting and upsetting to see how the belief in witchcraft colored people's perceptions. A sick person who doesn't get better? Must be witchcraft. A storm in Connecticut? Witchcraft. A rocking ship? Witchcraft. It was almost impossible to argue against it. 

I got most of this information from Rosemary Ellen Guiley's Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft, and also from Wikipedia.

Getting Familiar with the Witch's Familiar

"Sarah Good, what evil spirit have you familiarity with?"
"None."
"Have you made no contact with the Devil?"
"No."
"Why do you hurt these children?"
"I do not hurt them. I scorn it."
"Who do you employ, then, to do it?"
"I employ nobody."
"What creature do you employ, then?"

In a modern court case, when the accused is asked about accomplices everyone assumes the accomplice is human. In the Salem witch trials, the accused were interrogated about their familiar spirits. The Puritans believed familiar spirits, or familiars for short, were demonic entities given to witches by the Devil to work their mischief. They often took the form of animals, but occasionally were also humanoid or monstrous in appearance.

A 17th English century illustration of witches and their familiars.

The origin of this belief probably lies deep in mankind's past. In many societies, shamans make pacts with animal spirits to help them in their work for the community. Even in 17th century England, many cunning folk (magical practitioners who worked beneficial magic) claimed they derived their skills from familiar spirits, often a fairy of some kind.

Unfortunately, the Puritans in both old and New England didn't believe there could be beneficial familiar spirits. Familiars belonged to the realm of the Devil, and having a familiar was proof of selling yourself to that realm.

In Salem, people were accused of being served by a variety of spirits:

• Four-year old Dorcas Good accused her mother Sarah of "having three birds, one black, one yellow and that these birds hurt the children and afflicted persons." I don't think the third bird was ever described.
  

• The slave Tituba also testified that Sarah Good was served by a yellow bird, as well as a cat.

• Tituba claimed that accused witch Sarah Osburn also had a familiar spirit, with "wings and two legs and a head like a woman." The familiar could change its shape and become fully human.

• Sarah Osburn was also served by a "thing all over hairy, all the face hairy, and a long nose, and I don't know how to tell how the face looks." It walked on two legs, and was about three feet high. Tituba had seen it standing in front of the fire in the Reverend Parris' house at night.

• John Louder claimed that Bridget Bishop sent her familiar to torment him at night. The spirit, which had the body of a monkey, the feet of a rooster, and a human face, crept into his bedroom while he slept and asked Louder to become a witch. He refused, and banished it with a prayer.

Perhaps you've heard the old saying, "It's colder than a witch's tit?" It seems likely that this phrase is derived from the belief that witches suckled their familiars from small, unnatural bodily protrusions called witch's teats. Familiars fed on a witch's blood, of course, not milk. These protrusions were allegedly cold and without any feeling. During trials, accused witches were stripped and searched for witch teats. Moles, pimples, and flea bites were misidentified and used as evidence of witchcraft.

I got most of this information, and the surreal descriptions of the familiars, from Chadwick Hansen's Witchcraft at Salem.

Next week: Crazy witchcraft stories from the Merrimac Valley!