Six Women of Salem

by Marilynne K. Roach

  The next day, August 25, 1706, young Ann rose to stand at her place in the meeting house while Reverend Green read her confession aloud to the seated congregation:

  I desire to be humbled before god for that sad and humbling providence that befell my father’s family in the year about ’92: that I, then being in my childhood, should, by such a providence of God, be made an instrument for the accusing of several persons of a grievous crime, whereby their lives were taken away from them, whom I now have just grounds and good reason to believe they were innocent persons: and that it was a great delusion of Satan that deceived me in that sad time, whereby I Justly fear, I have been instrumental, with others, though ignorantly and unwittingly, to bring upon myself and this land the guilt of innocent blood: though what was said or done by me against any person I can truly and uprightly say, before god and man, I did it not out of any anger, malice, or ill-will to any person, for I had no such thing against one of them; but what I did was ignorantly, being deluded by Satan. And particularly, as I was a chief instrument of accusing Goodwife Nurse and her two sisters, I desire to lie in the dust, and to be humbled for it, in that I was a cause, with others, of so sad a calamity to them and their families; for which cause I desire to lie in the dust, and earnestly beg forgiveness of God, and from all those unto whom I have given just cause of sorrow and offence, whose relations were taken away or accused.

  “She acknowledged it,” Green wrote, the members accepted her into communion, and Green read the statement of faith to which Ann had pledged.

  She lived nine more years, making her will on May 20, 1715, when she was in uncertain health, and dying aged about thirty-six sometime before her will was probated in June 1716. By tradition she was the last to be buried in the family plot, a raised mound in the family burying ground on land held by her Uncle Joseph. No individual stones seem to have marked the site, and the mound sank over the centuries, obliterating the memorial—but not the history in which the family had played such a dangerous and deadly role.

  Tituba

  In May 1693 TITUBA found her case dismissed by the grand jury sitting at Ipswich for lack of evidence. “Ignoramus,” foreman Robert Payne wrote on the indictment, but her jail bills still needed to be paid, and Reverend Parris refused to do this. So she was taken back to the Salem jail, her relative freedom still elusive, though without the threat of hanging.

  If she had admitted to being a witch, thus justifying his actions throughout 1692, Parris might have paid the bill, according to what Tituba later said. But having an admitted witch in his household—even a supposedly repentant witch—would hardly be safe for his reputation. In any case he would likely have sold her to someone else. As it was, she would now be sold to whoever paid the bill, and that sum increased the longer she stayed.

  At some point during 1693 Salem jailor William Dounton submitted to the county court a list of unpaid fees for several prisoners’ diet and a reminder that his own salary had been only partially paid for the last nine years. Several entries were crossed out, apparently bills no longer outstanding, and the court refused reimbursement of this messy account. Dounton submitted a neater copy dated December 1693 that omitted the crossed-out entries.

  Heading the list in the first copy was the following:

  for tetabe Indan A whole year and 1 month.

  The sum is illegible. In 1692 she was in Salem jail from March 1 through 7, then removed to Boston jail, where she was held until June 1, when she was moved back to Salem. Boston jailer John Arnold listed her bill, covering both room and board, as

  Tituba an Indian Woman from the

  7th of March 1691/2 to the 1st of June

  12 Weekes 2 Dayes at 2/6 1//10//8

  Not counting her time in Boston, this places her in the Salem jail until July or early August 1693.

  But who purchased her from Dounton?

  None of the parties who paid the outstanding bills were included in the list. Whoever it was evidently lived in the general area. Salem was a shire town, and people traveled there from other communities to attend court or to trade at the markets. Robert Calef seems to have known where Tituba was when he compiled his book More Wonders of the Invisible World, his scathing commentary of the trials, in 1697. “She was,” he wrote, “Committed to Prison, and lay there till Sold for her Fees. The account she since gives of it is, that her Master did beat her and otherwise abuse her, to make her confess and accuse (such as he call’d) her Sister Witches, and that whatsoever she said by way of confessing or accusing others, was the effect of such usage.”

  From Calef’s account it is clear that Tituba related the information to him or to others after being sold for her fees. Her position being even more precarious than others of “witch lineage,” she was possibly sold and resold. After Calef’s mention she disappears from the records.

  As generations passed, Tituba would be referred to in print as a “half-breed” (half Indian and half African), then as African or Negro, dismissed in either case as an ignorant savage practicing pagan rites, even though the only magic she certainly participated in was the English witch-cake charm at the suggestion of a white neighbor. That her white contemporaries always referred to her as Indian, in contrast to other slaves they consistently called Negro, led to Elaine Breslaw’s study of the woman’s possible origin in South America. Peter Hoffer, however, concluded that Tituba was a Yoruba name, and therefore, the Salem Village woman was African, though there are other possible origins for her name.

  If the debate over Tituba’s origin remains undecided, at least, having shed the “savage” stereotype, her memory can be that of not just a slave but also a survivor, a woman in a dangerous situation with no one to speak for her, a woman who, in her efforts to endure, managed to turn her accusers’ fears back upon themselves.

  Mary Warren

  MARY WARREN was, like Tituba, among those in William Dounton’s first list of unpaid fees, though the amount of the bill is illegible:

  Mary waren 6 months diet

  As the crossed-out notation was not included in the clean list submitted to the December court, someone must have paid her debt before then. She was questioned by the magistrates for the first time on April 19, 1692, was listed in a Salem prison census in May 1692, and was still among the afflicted the following January. The recorded debt was for food only, not the room fee, so the surviving bill alone does not explain her whereabouts or how her bills were paid.

  Her former mistress and object of her scorn, Elizabeth Procter, saved from the noose by the delay her pregnancy caused, returned to the Procter farm to the relief of her own children and to the resentment of her stepchildren. In May 1696 she had to petition the General Court for help. Instead of being granted the usual widow’s third of her late husband’s estate, she found herself cut out of John’s will entirely:

  [I]n that sad time of darknes before my said husband was executed, it is evident sombody had Contrived a will and brought it to him to signe wherin his wholl estat is disposed of not having Regard to a contract in wrighting mad[e] with me before mariag with him. [Now the stepchildren] will not suffer me to have one peny of the Estat nither upon the acount of my husbands Contract with me before mariage nor yet upon the acount of the dowr which as I humbly conceive doth belong or ought to belong to me by the law for thay say that I am dead in the law.

  With the guilty verdict and the death sentence passed upon her, she was, as far as the stepchildren interpreted the law, as good as dead, and the dead have no property rights. Probate Judge Bartholomew Gedney thought otherwise and, on April 19, 1697, considered her “absolutely pardoned” of the witch charge and, therefore, “alive in the law, whereby to Recover her Right of Dowry.” He so informed the estate’s executors, but Benjamin Procter and John Procter Jr. had already divided the estate among John Sr.’s children, with no mention of the widow.

  The petition of 1703, asking the legislature to clear the names of several of those once found guilty of witchcraft, included the cases of John a
nd Elizabeth Procter. The result, the following year, reversed the attainder for Elizabeth so that she was “reinstated in their just Credit and reputation.”

  In 1711, when Governor Joseph Dudley signed the order for restitution, he allotted £150 to the cases of “John Procter (and wife).” By then Elizabeth had married Daniel Richards of Lynn, for she is noted in the compensation list of February 1712 as John Procter’s “widow, alias Richards.” Although stepsons John and Thorndike seem to have collected most of the sums on behalf of their siblings, Elizabeth Richards “alias Procter” signed another list with an X, indicating she had collected something.

  But what happened to Mary Warren?

  Once the majority of the population ceased to accept the claims of the afflicted, sentiment turned against them, and many of these who were formerly eager to believe were willing to suspect the worst. The Reversal of Attainder blamed the afflicted: “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.”

  In his criticism of the trials and their handling, Robert Calef had only contempt for the “several Wenches in Boston, etc. who pretended to be Afflicted, and accused several” as well as for “the generality of those Accusers [who] may have since convinc’d the Ministers by their vicious courses that they might err in extending too much Charity to them.” He also called the afflicted “Vile Varlets as not only were known before, but have been further apparent since by their Manifest Lives, Whordoms, Incest, etc.” Writing in 1697, Calef did not specifically explain his charges or to whom each charge applied. Females perceived as overly forward have often been assumed to be sexually corrupt as well, regardless of whether any evidence supported those claims.

  But the subsequent histories of a few of the young accusers seemed to support Calef’s views, however biased they might have been. In their later lives some were fined for fornication, and another was excommunicated from her church for adultery, another gave birth out of wedlock—not as uncommon an occurrence as one might think in a Puritan society—and one was even cast out of town as “a person of evil fame.”

  Others moved away or simply married, possibly seldom or never speaking of the terrible year and the parts they played in it. Changing their names upon marriage helped to conceal their earlier histories if they distanced themselves from local gossip to other towns.

  In any case the December 1693 jail bill is the last known surviving historical scrap that mentions Mary Warren, once so prevalent in court transcripts. If she, like Tituba, had not been part of the witch trials, their presence in the world might never have been preserved at all. Where Mary went, how long she lived, whether her father and her deafened sister still lived—none of that is known. The trail of her life evaporates like frost in sunlight, as insubstantial as a phantom.

  CODA &

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  SALEM IS A TOURIST DESTINATION now. The maritime trades, so important to Philip English, flowered in the heady days of the China trade and then moved to deeper water ports. The manufacturing that replaced this, in turn, faltered, and tourism filled the void.

  To be fair, tourists themselves preceded tourism as an industry once transportation became more accessible. As early as 1892 sightseers descended from the trains, wanting to know the whereabouts of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s birthplace and the spot where the “witches” were hanged.

  In Salem individuals and institutions now wrestle with overlapping and often conflicting approaches to the witch trials. The historical approach tries to find and present in context the facts of what actually happened. The commercial tries to make a living answering tourists’ demands and may or may not strive for accuracy. Another approach is to try to ignore the topic, leaving its presentation in the hands of others.

  October’s month-long Haunted Happenings draws throngs of tourists and other merrymakers, rendering the drawbacks of this potential conflict all too clear when the carnival atmosphere—sausage vendors, fog machines, blaring music, and strolling zombies—intrudes on the Witch Trial Memorial (intended for quiet contemplation) and the adjacent Burial Ground, with its vulnerable stones.

  The memory of the actual people involved in the original tragedy of 1692 can become lost, replaced by stereotypes, or disregarded. They deserve to be acknowledged.

  ***

  The living deserve acknowledgement and thanks as well. To the many who have helped me with this book: Michael Dorr, my agent, who suggested the topic and shepherded the manuscript into a presentable state; Elizabeth Bouvier, archivist for the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, who provided me with digital dockets at a vital point; the staffs of the Massachusetts Archives in Dorchester, the New England Historic Genealogical Society library in Boston, and the South Essex Registry of Deeds in Salem; Irene Axelrod of the Phillips Library of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem; Jeanne Gamble of Historic New England and Professor Robert Saint-George, who aided my search for some still-elusive poppets; fellow witch trial researchers Margo Burns, Bernard Rosenthal, Richard Trask, and Ben Ray; Tina Jordan, Stacy Tilney, and Alison D’Amario of the Salem Witch Museum over the years, for no end of encouragement and practical help; ditto for Elizabeth Peterson, director of the Witch House/Corwin House site in Salem; Ben Schafer for having the faith to take on the book; Christine Marra and her crew for leading the Luddite through the unfamiliar territory of computer editing at a brisk trot; Gerard McMahon, for vital Internet assistance; and my mother, Priscilla Roach, for her continuing patience.

  NOTES

  PART ONE: INTRODUCTIONS

  Rebecca Nurse

  Great Yarmouth: Lupson, Saint Nicholas Church 1–8, 49–50, 60, 68–69, 70–71; “Where I Live, Norfolk”; “Plan of Great Yarmouth.”

  Rebecca’s family: Davis, Massachusetts and Maine Families, “Towne,” 3: 485–491, 504–507, “Blessing,” 1: 193–199; Hoover, Towne Family, 1–3.

  East Anglia: R. Thompson, Mobility and Migration, 17–23.

  Book of Sports: “Book of Sports,” Britania.com.

  Townes in Salem: Hoover, Towne Family, 1; Perley, “Northfields No. 3,” 190, and map opp. 187.

  Skerry: Perley, The History of Salem, 1: 433; Bentley, Diary, 2: 45.

  Francis Nurse: EQC, 1: 16; OED, 10: 99 “tray.”

  Margaret Jones: Hale, A Modest Enquiry, 17.

  Quakers: Perley, The History of Salem, 2: 270.

  Porter-Nurse suit: EQC, 1: 363.

  Francis’s health: EQC, 1: 428.

  Rebecca’s health: Docs, 340, 31.

  Joanna Towne and Reverend Gilbert: EQC, 4: 249, 369–370; Rapaport, “Turbulent Topsfield.”

  Rebecca joins church: Salem Church. Church Records, 127.

  SV parish status: Roach, The Salem Witch Trials, xxvii.

  Clungen: EQC, 5: 430–431, 419–420; Perley, The History of Salem, 3: 32.

  Goodale: EQC, 6: 190–191

  Nurse Farm: Perley, “Endicott Lands,” maps opp. 361 and 379; 361–362, 379–382; C. Upham, Salem Witchcraft, 53–55; Suffolk Deeds: 12: 10–11; Perley, “The Nurse House,” 3. C. Upham (53) says that when Francis Nurse purchased the farm in 1678 he had lived about forty years “near Skerry’s” on the North River in Salem Town near the Beverly ferry. Francis’s inclusion in the 1676 coroner’s jury [EQC, 6: 190–191] shows that he was already living in the same neighborhood as what would become his farm. Upham, as usual, gave no source for the statement.

  Towne will: Essex, Probate, 2: 358.

  Hadlock-Nurse agreement: EQC-VT, 57–63–1–57–65–4.

  Bridget Bishop

  Playfer, Wasselbee, Oliver, Bishop, and Mason: Anderson, “Bridget”; D. Greene, “Bridget Bishop.”

  Thomas and Mary Oliver: EQC, 1: 160, 173, 112, 182–183, 3: 116; Salem. Vital Records, 2: 112.

  Marriage to Oliver: EQC, 4: 90–91, 6: 386–387.

  Suspicions: Docs, 230 (Gray), 231 (Stacy).

  Oliver probate: Oliver, Essex Probate Docket 200
09; Essex, County of. The Probate Records of Essex County, Massachusetts, 3: 319; EQC 7: 237–238; Perley, “Northfield No. 1,” 18, and map opp. 173.

  1679 witchcraft case: EQC, 7: 329–330 (Juan is “Wonn, John Ingerson’s Negro”).

  Shattuck: Doc, 279.

  Sale to Epps: Perley, “Salem, No. 14,” 34.

  Goody Whatford: C. Mather, Wonders, 249.

  Marriage to Edward Bishop and new house: D. Greene, “Bridget Bishop,” 131; Essex, Probate, 303: 184; Essex Deeds 10: 112; Perley, “Salem No. 14,” 35–36; Doc, 280.

  More suspicions: C. Mather, Wonders, 249; Docs, 280 (Bly), 278 (Louder); Perley, “Salem, No. 14,” 23–25.

  Alice Parker: Doc, 573.

  Mill brass case: EQC–VT, 47–80–4, 47–83–1.

  Clothing: Docs, 282, 23; Textiles, British History Online.

  Mary English

  Hollingworths and kin: GM, 3: 472–477 (Hunter), 3: 380–84 (Hollingsworth); Barclay, “Notes,” 77–84; Mahler, “The English Origin,” 241–244; Cheever, “A Sketch,” 159; Perley, “Salem, No. 20,” 114–115, 120–121.

  Mary (Hollingworth) English: Bentley, Diary, 2: 24; Richter and Peabody, Painted, 8–9; Fairbanks and Trent, New England Begins, #420 in vol. 3: 403–404. Mary gave her age as thirty-nine in 1692 and was supposed to be forty-two in 1694.

  William Hollingworth property: Perley, The History of Salem, 3: 88–89; Perley “Salem, No. 21,” 164, 167–168; Essex, Probate, 3: 191–192.

  Eleanor Hollingworth: Perley, The History of Salem, 2: 82–83; EQC, 4: 174, 230–231 (struck unconscious).

  Eleanor’s business transactions and Blue Anchor: Perley, The History of Salem, 3: 88–89; Salem, Vital Records, 3: 44; Essex Deeds 2: 121, 3: 160–161, 6: 42.