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Speaker 1: Our historian interview today is with Richard Drask. Since nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy two, he served as the archivist for the town

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Speaker 1: of Danverse, that's Old Salem Village, overseeing one of the

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Speaker 1: most extensive imprint collections on Salem witchcraft in the country.

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Speaker 1: His expertise in the Salem witchcraft era has allowed him

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Speaker 1: to direct the excavation of the Samuel Paris Parsonage archaeological site.

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Speaker 1: He's also served as curator of the sixteen seventy eight

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Speaker 1: Rebecca Nurse Homestead and is the author of the book

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Speaker 1: The Devil Hath Been Raised and co editor of the

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Speaker 1: two thousand nine Cambridge University Press volume Records of the

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Speaker 1: Salem witch Hunt. Not only that, but he's a descendant

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Speaker 1: of several witchcraft victims. He has taught American history and architecture,

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Speaker 1: was an eighteenth century re enactor for over two decades,

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Speaker 1: and has lectured extensively throughout New England. Trasca served as

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Speaker 1: a consultant for CBS News, the President John F. Kennedy

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Speaker 1: Assassination Records Review Board, and the National Archives. And I

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Speaker 1: had a chance to sit down with Trask this past

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Speaker 1: summer and we had a great chat that I can't

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Speaker 1: wait to share with you. So without further delay, let's

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Speaker 1: get on with the show. This is the Unobscured Interview

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Speaker 1: series for season one. I'm Aaron Mankey. My name is

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Speaker 1: Richard Trask. I'm a county in the town of Danvers

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Speaker 1: and most people haven't heard of the name Danvers before.

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Speaker 1: But our old name was Salem Village and this is

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Speaker 1: ground zero of the witchcraft of Salem Village in six

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Speaker 1: And as a kid, I used to go to my

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Speaker 1: grandparents very often, and my grandmother would tell me stories

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Speaker 1: about one of our ancestors who was hanged as a witch,

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Speaker 1: Mary Esty. She was a sister of Rebecca Nurris More,

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Speaker 1: well known of the witchcraft victims. And UH. I used

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Speaker 1: to look at a book in their small library, which

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Speaker 1: was early twentieth century books called Salem Witchcraft by H.

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Speaker 1: Fellow by the name of Nevins, and that just got

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Speaker 1: me very interested in the subject, and I've been with

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Speaker 1: it since almost an adolescent. Um, well, let's start with

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Speaker 1: a basic question, then, what was a witch in Salem

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Speaker 1: according to the English uh, which was and this was

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Speaker 1: the same with most of Europe at the time, which

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Speaker 1: was a person who had aid a covenant, a pact

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Speaker 1: with the devil, whereby they would gain uh knowledge power

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Speaker 1: uh and be able to do things or change things

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Speaker 1: that were typically unnatural. And for that, the devil gave

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Speaker 1: them this power and they were going to serve him. Uh.

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Speaker 1: They often were given imps or familiars which were unseeable uh,

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Speaker 1: things that would do evil to people. Uh. And they

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Speaker 1: would have to suckle energy from the witch. And that's

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Speaker 1: why and many of the witchcraft cases, they're always looking

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Speaker 1: for what are called witch marks, a witch tits that

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Speaker 1: the imps would be able to suck energy from the

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Speaker 1: witch itself and which was a diabolical thing according to

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Speaker 1: the uh people of the time. We're not talking about

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Speaker 1: Wiccan history and the witches who tend to be around

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Speaker 1: this country today. This was a diabolical thing in which

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Speaker 1: they worshiped and tried to do the devil's call and

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Speaker 1: usually took the form of afflicting the the large air

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Speaker 1: quote good Christians of the area. Yes, and in Salem

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Speaker 1: Village in siou when they discovered that which is were about,

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Speaker 1: the whole purpose of it was to bring down the

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Speaker 1: Puritan Commonwealth of Massachusetts. They looked at themselves as being

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Speaker 1: the elect of God, the the new Israelites of old

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Speaker 1: who were establishing a city upon the hill, and the

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Speaker 1: Devil obviously would want to combat that type of thing,

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Speaker 1: and that's why they believe that the Devil was coming

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Speaker 1: to Salem Village into all of mass Bay to bring

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Speaker 1: God's Kingdom on Earth down. Well, you know you mentioned

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Speaker 1: mass Bay and in this the start of this call

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Speaker 1: it a colony, but it was a lot of shots

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Speaker 1: fired of groups of people coming over. We talked before

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Speaker 1: we started recording about Ennicott and and Conan's and how

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Speaker 1: they brought people with them and it was more of

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Speaker 1: a business venture. But can you describe the way that

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Speaker 1: the Puritan faith shaped life in the New England colonies. Well,

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Speaker 1: the Puritans were a sect in Old England which believed

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Speaker 1: that the Church of England was still too Catholic, uh,

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Speaker 1: and what they wanted to do was purify, thus the

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Speaker 1: word Puritan uh the religion so that it didn't smack

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Speaker 1: of papestry or Catholicism. And Uh. They tried to live

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Speaker 1: in England. They were abused, not significantly but somewhat. A

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Speaker 1: number of them eventually decided to go to the New World. Um.

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Speaker 1: They latched onto an economic device of the mass Bay Colony,

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Speaker 1: and once they got here, they for a good generation

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Speaker 1: or two were pretty much independent to do what they wanted,

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Speaker 1: and they looked upon themselves as uh John Winthrop would

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Speaker 1: later say, establishing a new kingdom upon the Hill. And

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Speaker 1: the first Puritans in Old England and New England were

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Speaker 1: very staunch believers. As they came to the New World

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Speaker 1: and kind of um established themselves, and as they got

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Speaker 1: a little more comfortable, they backslid a bit. But the

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Speaker 1: first uh uh Puritans, John Endicott being one of them,

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Speaker 1: were very staunch in their beliefs and uh did not

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Speaker 1: countenance um outside agitated is coming in. They persecuted the

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Speaker 1: Quakers for a period of time until the Home government

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Speaker 1: said you can't do that. Uh. They didn't like Catholics,

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Speaker 1: they didn't like really any other people coming in here

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Speaker 1: because they believe that they knew the truth and they

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Speaker 1: didn't want to uh have it uh become watered down

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Speaker 1: by other people. So they weren't true democrats. They were

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Speaker 1: people who believe that they wanted to establish and continue

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Speaker 1: their believes. Well, it sounds like they they came in

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Speaker 1: early with an amount of power in autonomy, being thousands

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Speaker 1: of miles from England. UM, and held on at that power.

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Speaker 1: What did power look like in colonial New England? Um?

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Speaker 1: And who had access to that power? Well, the popular

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Speaker 1: belief is that, um, the Puritans were controlled by the clergy.

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Speaker 1: But that's really not the case, especially during the witchcraft.

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Speaker 1: We find that with a few exceptions, and the exceptions

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Speaker 1: of people who ministers within the communities that are being

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Speaker 1: affected by witchcraft, most of the others, including the very

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Speaker 1: fame Miss math or family and other theologians who lived

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Speaker 1: in the Boston area, tried to stem the tide of witchcraft, saying,

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Speaker 1: hold on, we've got to make sure we're not making

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Speaker 1: any mistakes. It was the civil authorities, and Massachusetts was

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Speaker 1: a civil established government. Uh and uh, generally the government

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Speaker 1: tended to be looking for which is much more so

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Speaker 1: than the clergy. Why do you think that was? Probably

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Speaker 1: because if you look at the original transcripts, and the

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Speaker 1: wonderful thing about Salem witchcraft is that, Um, it's a

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Speaker 1: relatively minor event in world history. UM. And if you

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Speaker 1: go to England or the continent, hundreds, if not thousands

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Speaker 1: of people were affected by it, year in and year out.

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Speaker 1: And the numbers are so much more dramatic than what

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Speaker 1: happened in Salem Village. But the thing about Salem Village

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Speaker 1: is Puritan's kept good records. And what we can do

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Speaker 1: is we can read what one of the um accused,

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Speaker 1: which is is saying uh during the civil process against them. Uh.

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Speaker 1: You can hear um. One of my favorite favorite, which

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Speaker 1: is is George Jacobs and George Jacobs when confronted at

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Speaker 1: his examination eventually after being badget and Badge had said,

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Speaker 1: well burn me and hang me, but I'll stand in

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Speaker 1: the truth of Christ. I know nothing of witchcraft. So

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Speaker 1: we can read what these people said, you know, four

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Speaker 1: years ago, and in some cases you can barely read

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Speaker 1: it because it's they didn't know good English, they didn't

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Speaker 1: know how to spell properly. And some of the petitions

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Speaker 1: or depositions done by common Yeoman farmers are very revealing

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Speaker 1: and also revealing and how they actually spoke. So we

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Speaker 1: have something in the way of about nine hundred documents

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Speaker 1: that survive that include every aspect of the legal procedures. UH.

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Speaker 1: And because of this, it's become very attractive to historians

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Speaker 1: because here you have real good, primary source material that

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Speaker 1: you can use, and you have so many wonderful quotes

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Speaker 1: in there. Uh. And those who recorded were not people

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Speaker 1: who were sympathetic to the accused witches. Reverend Samuel Paris

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Speaker 1: was asked to in court right down some of the testimony.

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Speaker 1: And although a lot of people say, oh, Paris is

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Speaker 1: so much involved in this, and how could you have

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Speaker 1: someone like him or Thomas Putnam, the father of the

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Speaker 1: chief Witchcraft accused of writing depositions, uh, they indicated often

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Speaker 1: that I'm trying to I'm paraphrasing, I'm trying to record

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Speaker 1: exactly as what was said, not being prejudicial to any side. Right,

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Speaker 1: So you do get these heroic uh quotes that people

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Speaker 1: back at that time gave, and you can kind of

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Speaker 1: see at least a little reveal of the psyche of

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Speaker 1: some of the people and what was going on and

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Speaker 1: in and in what's not said as well, in places

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Speaker 1: where the records seemed to go silent, there's something being

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Speaker 1: said there as well. Maybe it's become too overwhelming, there's

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Speaker 1: too much commotion in the room, or I don't feel

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Speaker 1: like writing this sentence down. You know that's a possibility

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Speaker 1: to and we do know that probably hundreds of other

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Speaker 1: documents have disappeared once in a while. UM. We find

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Speaker 1: some of the documents often there uh in we've just

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Speaker 1: not looked hot enough within the traditional sources that they

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Speaker 1: located there. Other times something pops up that became an

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Speaker 1: archival astroy centuries ago and it comes back in. So

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Speaker 1: UM did pop up locally, sometimes locally. Sometimes they're in

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Speaker 1: collections that people had when the witchcraft was over, many

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Speaker 1: of these documents scot scattered, uh and later historians. There

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Speaker 1: was a governor of Massachusetts during the pre Revolutionary period,

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Speaker 1: Thomas Hutchison, who wrote a history of Massachusetts, and he

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Speaker 1: actually was given a whole bunch of these very important documents.

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Speaker 1: And Hutchison was a Tory, and during the Stamp Act

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Speaker 1: crisis of seventeen sixty five, when the American Provincials were

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Speaker 1: mad at England, they attacked his house and they scattered

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Speaker 1: all of his papers outside on the ground and so forth.

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Speaker 1: So a lot of these papers went missing because of

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Speaker 1: the riots of seventeen sixty five. Wow, it's a puzzle

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Speaker 1: still finding pieces. I like that. UM. We talked sometimes

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Speaker 1: about the Salem Trials as an example of women's and

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Speaker 1: girls voices breaking into the historical record, UM, women and

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Speaker 1: girls played big roles in the crisis. As we dip

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Speaker 1: into the whole story, we see that over and over again,

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Speaker 1: both as accusers and as accused. You know, they're on

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Speaker 1: both sides of the arguments or the event. Even so,

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Speaker 1: all of the judges were men, and when the trials

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Speaker 1: are ended, men retake the center stage. Life goes on

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Speaker 1: and it's men at the center again. Can you maybe

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Speaker 1: describe some of the gender dynamics of this crisis? Sure, Um,

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Speaker 1: In the seventeenth century UM, the world was made up

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Speaker 1: of males who dominated, and then the women folk. It

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Speaker 1: is true, however, that when you can see once in

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Speaker 1: a while, in not only Witchcraft but other documents, that

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Speaker 1: women ruled the household, whether or not they were supposedly

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Speaker 1: in charge or not. And you can see that there

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Speaker 1: are some remarkable women, especially during the witchcraft. You see

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Speaker 1: some of these women aren't going to take anything from

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Speaker 1: the from the magistrates. UM. But it was a male

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Speaker 1: dominated uh society. And also it was a society in

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Speaker 1: which children were seen and not heard UH. And the

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Speaker 1: witchcraft changed a lot of this. The witchcraft, the dynamics

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Speaker 1: of Salem witchcraft was such that for one of the

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Speaker 1: first times in history you had not just the usual

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Speaker 1: suspects of witchcraft accused. These were usually women of a

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Speaker 1: lower social status who had some kind of problems with them. Well,

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Speaker 1: we started having accused full fledged church members Rebecca Nurse

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Speaker 1: Uh who belonged to the Salem Church and um Uh

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Speaker 1: Mary um Martha Corey, who belonged to the Sale of

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Speaker 1: Village Church. And in those days, what a covenant member

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Speaker 1: meant was not that you were just a little bit better,

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Speaker 1: but it meant that population of Salem Village was about

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Speaker 1: five hundred and fifty people. Of that five hundred and fifty,

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Speaker 1: about forty five to fifty of them were full church

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Speaker 1: members in sixte two. They were people who had been

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Speaker 1: given a sign by God which the other church members

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Speaker 1: acknowledged that they were one of the elect, that they

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Speaker 1: were going to make it yes, and they were the

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Speaker 1: only ones who could participate in communion uh. And it

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Speaker 1: was a high status. So as soon as the first

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Speaker 1: woman who was a full fledged church member was accused,

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Speaker 1: that got everyone very nervous because if you could have

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Speaker 1: this person who's supposed to be one of the elect

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Speaker 1: actually being a witch, that menu whole social order was

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Speaker 1: was disrupted. Also, you were having small children accused. Sarah Good,

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Speaker 1: who would have been one of the usual suspects. Her child,

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Speaker 1: who was we think somewhere between four and five, was

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Speaker 1: also accused. Then you get as time goes on, not

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Speaker 1: just the usual suspects and other women, but men begin

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Speaker 1: to be accused. And it's not unusual to have a

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Speaker 1: man accused, saying Old England or New England earlier, but

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Speaker 1: in this case you get a whole bunch of them.

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Speaker 1: You get a minister accused. You get probably the second

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Speaker 1: or third most um rich person in all of Massachusetts accused,

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Speaker 1: Philip English. Uh. They usually have something about them that

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Speaker 1: makes them a little bit different. Because Philip English's actual

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Speaker 1: name was Philippe Anglais and he was a descendant of

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Speaker 1: the Channel Islands, the frenchified Channel Island, so uh he

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Speaker 1: was an outsider. Yeah. Uh, you have uh John Alden,

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Speaker 1: the grandson of John and Priscilla accused. Um. So it

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Speaker 1: became a little more democratic and who could be accused? Uh?

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Speaker 1: And near the end of the witchcraft there was talk

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Speaker 1: never went to anything legal, but there was talk that

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Speaker 1: the governor's wife might be one. So in one sense,

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Speaker 1: It's kind of interesting in that Salem witchcraft was a

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Speaker 1: little more democratic, Uh, but still Uh, women were the

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Speaker 1: usual suspects, and it was typically a woman who was

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Speaker 1: lower class who maybe had a better uh status early

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Speaker 1: in life and just um had come down from it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we talked about examinations and trials and people in power. Um.

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Speaker 1: Obviously what they're looking for is some I guess some

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Speaker 1: justice in all of this, look for a legal and

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Speaker 1: a spiritual solution to a problem that's threatening them. How

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Speaker 1: how would you describe the Puritan sense of justice and injustice?

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Speaker 1: What would it mean for a New England Puritan to

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Speaker 1: seek justice from the law? Puritans believed very firmly in

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Speaker 1: the establishment of law, and early on they had statutes.

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Speaker 1: Every year the General Court, which was the colonial legislature,

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Speaker 1: would um promulgate all sorts of acts and so forth.

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Speaker 1: The Puritans were also very litigious. Uh, They're always suing

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Speaker 1: each other for land or something like that. Uh. They

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Speaker 1: were in the best traditions of Old England. And we

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Speaker 1: tend to think now looking at things with the twenty

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Speaker 1: one century outlook, that oh, these were kangaroo courts and

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Speaker 1: you know, they didn't have any justice well, they wanted

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Speaker 1: to have justice, but it was justice the way they thought.

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Speaker 1: In the seventeenth century, lawyers were basically unknown. Um. They

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Speaker 1: didn't trust lawyers and um. The judges was supposed to

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Speaker 1: be people who would be able to look at both

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Speaker 1: sides and be judicious and uh their uh use of

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Speaker 1: both sides as well. The Salem witchcraft trials went through

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Speaker 1: classic English um jurisprudence. UM. Unfortunately it was stacked a

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Speaker 1: bit and many other factors were involved that made it

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Speaker 1: um uh look very open and shut kind of cases.

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Speaker 1: But if if if I can, let me just go

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Speaker 1: through the procedures. It might be a little long, but

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Speaker 1: you can cut what you want. Um. Someone has looked

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Speaker 1: upon as being suspicious of practicing witchcraft. Some of the

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Speaker 1: young girls are saying, this person has come to me

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Speaker 1: his uh spirit as aflicting us uh, And an adult

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Speaker 1: will go to a local magistrate and file a complaint,

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Speaker 1: and the magistrates will have a preliminary hearing. Uh. One

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Speaker 1: of the problems with this whole Salem thing is right

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Speaker 1: now in s until May, we didn't have a sitting governor.

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Speaker 1: The whole colonial system uh of the legislature and so

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Speaker 1: forth was kind of on hold until the new governor

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Speaker 1: could come from England and the charter either correct right

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Speaker 1: that had been revoked and they were working on a

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Speaker 1: new sort of global charter for the larger colony as

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Speaker 1: a whole. Right. Uh. And because these are fact is

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Speaker 1: that um make a community not too sure of what's

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Speaker 1: going on. So there were a lot of you know,

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Speaker 1: in in plane accidents and so forth, there's always a

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Speaker 1: whole bunch of things that came together in exquisite format

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Speaker 1: that just made something bad happen. And if any of

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Speaker 1: those things were not quite the case, things could have changed.

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Speaker 1: And it was the same in sixte So what they

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Speaker 1: do is there's an accusation of witchcraft. So the local

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Speaker 1: magistrates take a listen, and depositions are made, and they

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Speaker 1: take a look at the accused, which and ask them questions. Uh.

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Speaker 1: These weren't legal eagles. They were just um uh men

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Speaker 1: who were in business and had some knowledge, maybe read

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Speaker 1: some law books and so forth. Uh. And they had

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Speaker 1: to determine whether or not the person accused had enough

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Speaker 1: going for them so that they should be held. And

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Speaker 1: in almost every case they decide yes they should be held.

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Speaker 1: So they're thrown in jail awaiting for the civil government

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Speaker 1: to formula. Late by May, the new Governor, William Phipps,

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Speaker 1: comes together with a lot of the learned people in

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Speaker 1: Massachusetts and established she is a court of oyer and

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Speaker 1: terminat to hear and determine these cases, because now the

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Speaker 1: jails are being clogged by a number of people who

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Speaker 1: have been accused and at the preliminary hearing they've just

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Speaker 1: been put in jail. So what they then do is

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Speaker 1: have just the same legal system that's done in Old England,

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Speaker 1: and that is um. You have a grand jury that

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Speaker 1: listens to the Attorney General of Massachusetts give the case.

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Speaker 1: And you know they always say you can indict a

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Speaker 1: ham sandwich. Well you could back at that time too.

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Speaker 1: Almost everyone always is indicted, and the indictments often from

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Speaker 1: two or three or four different people. Once in a

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Speaker 1: while the indictment doesn't go at least one of the accused,

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Speaker 1: one of the afflicted children. Um, they don't believe. So

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Speaker 1: there was a little bit of looking at this um

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Speaker 1: UH with with some modicum of legal ease, but generally

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Speaker 1: everyone who's held UH is indicted. Then you have the trial.

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Speaker 1: You have a pool of jurors from among the towns

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Speaker 1: in Massachusetts. Who will be the jury? You have this

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Speaker 1: um eight or nine person um special court Court of

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Speaker 1: Layer and termina. Who will be the judges? And they

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Speaker 1: supposed to have I think at least three or four

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Speaker 1: of these magistrates there. Uh, and they can ask questions

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Speaker 1: and can kind of mold what they want to have happened.

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Speaker 1: But it's basically the attorney general who gives the information.

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Speaker 1: If you're accused, you have the right of um saying

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Speaker 1: I don't like this juror ah. You also have the

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Speaker 1: right of bringing in testimony evidence people. But if you're

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Speaker 1: a farmer or if you're a farmer's wife who's never

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Speaker 1: been before a magistrate before, even though you might know

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Speaker 1: what you can and cannot do, they're relying on the

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Speaker 1: judges and they really don't know how to do things

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Speaker 1: quite as well. The same thing happens in Old England

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Speaker 1: as well. Uh. So then you have the trial, and

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Speaker 1: trials are very fast, usually within two days maybe three.

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Speaker 1: All of the evidences in the jury goes out, makes

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Speaker 1: us determination and in almost every case the people have

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Speaker 1: found guilty. Uh. You have a you have a period

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Speaker 1: between um when they found guilty and when the execution

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Speaker 1: will happen because thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.

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Speaker 1: Witchcraft is a uh hanging offense UH and um. At

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Speaker 1: that time you have some period of being able to

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Speaker 1: contact the governor, trying to do a stay or whatever.

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Speaker 1: Hardly ever happens, and within a certain period of time

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Speaker 1: the people are hanged. Uh. They weren't burned. Uh. No

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Speaker 1: Englishman was ever burned for the crime of witchcraft, because

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Speaker 1: witchcraft in English law is a UH is a felony,

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Speaker 1: and felons are hanged. On the continent, witchcraft is a

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Speaker 1: heresy against the church, and heretics are burned. So burnings

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Speaker 1: took place on the continent, but not in England or

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Speaker 1: or America. There's an exception. Matthew Hopkins, the witch finder

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Speaker 1: general during the English Civil War, in his year and

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Speaker 1: a half of activity, tried and executed in those are

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Speaker 1: loose terms, about a hundred and fifty to two hundred,

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Speaker 1: which is one of them was a woman who had

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Speaker 1: been accused of killing her husband in addition to witchcraft.

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Speaker 1: Killing your husband at that time was an act of treason.

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Speaker 1: He was seen as the head of the household, and

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Speaker 1: so she was actually burned, but she was burned for

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Speaker 1: her treason, not her witchcrist But it is a common misconception. So, um,

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Speaker 1: you can't say that these were kangaroo courts. They happened

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Speaker 1: very quickly, and um, the judges didn't appear. We don't

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Speaker 1: have a lot of information from the trials themselves. Most

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Speaker 1: of what we read about the witchcraft quote trials are

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Speaker 1: actually from the parliamentary hearings in which there is given

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Speaker 1: take the magistrates asked questions and the accused answer them.

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Speaker 1: The trial material has disappeared, We don't have it. It's

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Speaker 1: not to say that there would be a huge amount

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Speaker 1: of new information because generally with regular trials, what they

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00:26:52,160 --> 00:26:55,080
Speaker 1: do is they do a synopsis of what happens, so

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00:26:55,200 --> 00:27:00,480
Speaker 1: you don't get um new evidence being introduced. So let's

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Speaker 1: go back to the beginning, before before all of the

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Speaker 1: witch conflict came into the community here in Salem Village.

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Speaker 1: Why in in sixteen sixty six was Salem Village requesting

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Speaker 1: independence from Salem Town and why was the town refusing

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Speaker 1: that to them? If you look at a map, Salem

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Speaker 1: Town is right on the coast, uh it's a fairly

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Speaker 1: large community. In sixteen ninety two, they have about fifteen

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00:27:27,920 --> 00:27:32,800
Speaker 1: hundred residents. Uh. It looks more to the commercial ventures

387
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Speaker 1: um uh to fishing. Um. The people there tend not

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00:27:38,040 --> 00:27:44,720
Speaker 1: to be Yeoman farmers, but people who have occupations um

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00:27:44,840 --> 00:27:48,840
Speaker 1: besides farming. Salem Village, the center of Salem Village is

390
00:27:48,840 --> 00:27:52,320
Speaker 1: about seven miles from the center of Salem Town. And

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00:27:52,560 --> 00:27:56,040
Speaker 1: in the whole history of Salem. Uh, Salem started out

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Speaker 1: as a very large expanse of population of area. And

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Speaker 1: what happened was many communities Beverly broke off in sixteen

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Speaker 1: sixty four, I think it was Uh, many communities broke off.

395
00:28:13,640 --> 00:28:16,440
Speaker 1: Salem Village was looked at kind of as the bread

396
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Speaker 1: basket for Salem Town. And UM they liked the rates

397
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Speaker 1: because rates are what you get for like taxes, to

398
00:28:25,640 --> 00:28:29,360
Speaker 1: be able to take care of the community. And there

399
00:28:29,400 --> 00:28:32,760
Speaker 1: was a reluctance that went for over a hundred years

400
00:28:32,760 --> 00:28:35,560
Speaker 1: in the part of Salem Town to allow Salem Village

401
00:28:35,600 --> 00:28:39,200
Speaker 1: to become independent. Uh. That brought up an awful lot

402
00:28:39,240 --> 00:28:45,960
Speaker 1: of um uh people not liking that from the village. UH.

403
00:28:46,040 --> 00:28:48,520
Speaker 1: If you had to participate in the militia, he would

404
00:28:48,520 --> 00:28:51,600
Speaker 1: go away from your own homestead. And there was always

405
00:28:51,720 --> 00:28:55,880
Speaker 1: the the fear of Indian attack or something like that.

406
00:28:56,520 --> 00:28:59,800
Speaker 1: You'd have to go five seven miles to Salem town

407
00:29:00,040 --> 00:29:03,760
Speaker 1: to be part of the UH God for the evening,

408
00:29:03,960 --> 00:29:11,240
Speaker 1: and your own homestead, which was completely isolated, was unprotected. Also,

409
00:29:11,560 --> 00:29:14,240
Speaker 1: there was a religious part of it. It's a long

410
00:29:14,280 --> 00:29:18,160
Speaker 1: ways to go five to seven miles every week, actually

411
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Speaker 1: twice a week if you want to go to religious services.

412
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Speaker 1: So there was a real frustration on the part of

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Speaker 1: the Salem villages. They made several petitions to be broken off,

414
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Speaker 1: as many other communities were, and Salem was always very

415
00:29:32,000 --> 00:29:36,480
Speaker 1: reluctant to do that. Finally, in sixteen seventy two they

416
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Speaker 1: did acquiesce to have a Salem village have its own

417
00:29:41,440 --> 00:29:46,960
Speaker 1: meeting house. It wasn't a covenant UH congregation. They still

418
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Speaker 1: if they wanted to have communion would have to go

419
00:29:49,640 --> 00:29:53,440
Speaker 1: to Salem, but they could hire lay ministers in Salem Village,

420
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Speaker 1: build a meetinghouse, which they did, and hear the Word

421
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Speaker 1: of God UM locally UH. And this continued until six

422
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Speaker 1: when finally Salem UH ecclesiastically acquiesced and allowed Salem Village

423
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Speaker 1: to form their own covenant church and that was the

424
00:30:14,680 --> 00:30:19,640
Speaker 1: Church of Christ at Salem Village and they introduced the

425
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Speaker 1: new minister. They had been several ministers previous, but this

426
00:30:23,800 --> 00:30:27,760
Speaker 1: minister was able to do the sacraments. And his name

427
00:30:27,840 --> 00:30:32,600
Speaker 1: was the Reverend Mr. Samuel Parris. He had not been

428
00:30:33,040 --> 00:30:37,520
Speaker 1: an ordained minister. H he had I guess the term

429
00:30:37,560 --> 00:30:40,760
Speaker 1: today would be had taken courses, but you know it wasn't.

430
00:30:41,240 --> 00:30:45,480
Speaker 1: And um, he was a man who had changed his occupation.

431
00:30:45,600 --> 00:30:48,400
Speaker 1: He was a merchant. Didn't do that while there had

432
00:30:48,440 --> 00:30:52,960
Speaker 1: a belief in uh wanting to do good in and

433
00:30:53,160 --> 00:30:56,800
Speaker 1: so uh took the call in Salem Village and the

434
00:30:56,880 --> 00:31:00,520
Speaker 1: village took him on as the minister. Uh uh and

435
00:31:01,040 --> 00:31:04,800
Speaker 1: uh he was ordained in a sixteen eighty nine. But

436
00:31:04,960 --> 00:31:08,600
Speaker 1: you find that in his coming to Salem Village, you

437
00:31:08,720 --> 00:31:12,520
Speaker 1: had some problems. And the problems were you always had

438
00:31:12,640 --> 00:31:19,640
Speaker 1: within your community. The Covenant members usually like ten percent

439
00:31:19,720 --> 00:31:23,360
Speaker 1: of the population, and then the others, the outsiders who

440
00:31:23,480 --> 00:31:28,040
Speaker 1: had to contribute to the meeting house for the church. Um,

441
00:31:28,080 --> 00:31:31,440
Speaker 1: but didn't really have too much of a say that way. Uh.

442
00:31:31,480 --> 00:31:35,800
Speaker 1: They believed the outsiders believed that the Covenant members had

443
00:31:36,280 --> 00:31:40,479
Speaker 1: given Paris too good a deal, especially since he hadn't

444
00:31:40,520 --> 00:31:44,080
Speaker 1: been minister any place else. He was kind of a nubie.

445
00:31:44,600 --> 00:31:47,840
Speaker 1: And the deal was they gave him the personage, which

446
00:31:47,840 --> 00:31:51,360
Speaker 1: had been built in sixteen eighty one, as a place

447
00:31:51,440 --> 00:31:54,000
Speaker 1: that he could live in, and also they gave him

448
00:31:54,000 --> 00:31:56,440
Speaker 1: the deed to it. And most of the people in

449
00:31:56,440 --> 00:31:59,360
Speaker 1: the village say, what are you doing that for? You know,

450
00:32:00,160 --> 00:32:03,640
Speaker 1: this is stuff that we throw taxes put together. He

451
00:32:03,720 --> 00:32:08,240
Speaker 1: doesn't deserve a pass and she deserves, you know, pay. Uh.

452
00:32:08,240 --> 00:32:13,680
Speaker 1: So that brought the two tow somewhat loggerheads and Paris,

453
00:32:13,720 --> 00:32:17,080
Speaker 1: I guess, by his nature awfully hard to know what

454
00:32:17,160 --> 00:32:22,600
Speaker 1: people were like from the prospect of four hundred years later. Uh.

455
00:32:22,680 --> 00:32:25,840
Speaker 1: And you know, you really can't psychoanalyze anybody. But Paris

456
00:32:25,840 --> 00:32:28,960
Speaker 1: apparently did believe that now that he was a minister,

457
00:32:29,080 --> 00:32:34,720
Speaker 1: he deserved what ministers typically got, which was a different

458
00:32:34,920 --> 00:32:38,760
Speaker 1: differential respect within the community. And a lot of the

459
00:32:38,840 --> 00:32:41,840
Speaker 1: village is just never wanted to give him that. Uh.

460
00:32:41,960 --> 00:32:45,720
Speaker 1: He started having problems with this congregation. They were supposed

461
00:32:45,760 --> 00:32:49,880
Speaker 1: to bring to him the cord would and you needed

462
00:32:49,920 --> 00:32:53,880
Speaker 1: about fifteen cord of would a year to be able

463
00:32:53,920 --> 00:32:56,960
Speaker 1: to survive in a homestead, and they weren't doing it.

464
00:32:57,280 --> 00:33:01,760
Speaker 1: And um, he had one of his requests was before

465
00:33:01,800 --> 00:33:05,160
Speaker 1: he would agree to be minister, they should bring it

466
00:33:05,240 --> 00:33:07,880
Speaker 1: to him, and many of them thought, we'll have it,

467
00:33:08,000 --> 00:33:11,280
Speaker 1: but he's got to get it. Ministers often were also

468
00:33:11,400 --> 00:33:18,920
Speaker 1: yeoman farmers themselves, UM, and it just went badly. Uh.

469
00:33:18,960 --> 00:33:25,120
Speaker 1: Paris did not get and he actually preached UM, always

470
00:33:25,160 --> 00:33:28,520
Speaker 1: talking about this confrontation, trying to show that there shouldn't

471
00:33:28,560 --> 00:33:33,160
Speaker 1: be any uh. And by the time of the witchcraft, UM,

472
00:33:33,200 --> 00:33:36,920
Speaker 1: he wasn't being paid his salary. UH, he hardly had

473
00:33:36,960 --> 00:33:41,240
Speaker 1: any would and there was although the Covenant members still

474
00:33:41,280 --> 00:33:46,080
Speaker 1: supported him very vigorously, and several of the afflicted children

475
00:33:46,240 --> 00:33:49,960
Speaker 1: came from the Paris house itself and from the house

476
00:33:50,080 --> 00:33:55,560
Speaker 1: of other Covenant members who lived close by. So there

477
00:33:55,600 --> 00:33:59,040
Speaker 1: are a lot of factors that made this kind of

478
00:33:59,040 --> 00:34:02,160
Speaker 1: a red flag kind of thing. Not to say that

479
00:34:02,200 --> 00:34:07,720
Speaker 1: there wasn't consternation in other UH settlements, because ministers, although

480
00:34:07,760 --> 00:34:11,000
Speaker 1: today we would think, oh they puritans, they had to

481
00:34:11,080 --> 00:34:13,680
Speaker 1: love their minister and they had to get together. It

482
00:34:13,760 --> 00:34:17,040
Speaker 1: was always a contention within many communities about the pay

483
00:34:17,080 --> 00:34:20,719
Speaker 1: of the salary of of the ministers, and there was

484
00:34:21,480 --> 00:34:26,240
Speaker 1: controversy very often that would last for several years or whatever.

485
00:34:26,840 --> 00:34:29,759
Speaker 1: I love that firewood becomes the centerpiece of this conversation

486
00:34:29,800 --> 00:34:31,200
Speaker 1: a lot. I mean, it was part of his contract

487
00:34:31,280 --> 00:34:35,040
Speaker 1: negotiations that that he had firewood delivered to him. And

488
00:34:35,120 --> 00:34:37,960
Speaker 1: it sounds petty, and I think in some ways it

489
00:34:38,000 --> 00:34:41,680
Speaker 1: represents the pettiness of how they were treating their minister,

490
00:34:41,920 --> 00:34:45,360
Speaker 1: not paying him and things like that. So one of

491
00:34:45,360 --> 00:34:49,680
Speaker 1: the early conflicts, again going back to pre Witchcraft trials,

492
00:34:50,280 --> 00:34:54,560
Speaker 1: is this Putnam versus Porter rivalry that seems to be

493
00:34:54,600 --> 00:34:57,640
Speaker 1: taking place, and there are religious issues within it. I think,

494
00:34:57,680 --> 00:35:00,360
Speaker 1: you know, the fact that you've got that halfway evidence

495
00:35:00,480 --> 00:35:02,560
Speaker 1: that's I guess a little more of a leaning, a

496
00:35:02,600 --> 00:35:06,200
Speaker 1: liberal leaning Puritan faith um. And the Porters are on

497
00:35:06,239 --> 00:35:07,800
Speaker 1: that side of the fence. And then you have the

498
00:35:07,840 --> 00:35:11,440
Speaker 1: Putnam's in Salem Village. Who are they were part of

499
00:35:11,440 --> 00:35:15,040
Speaker 1: those covenant members of the church if I'm correct, um,

500
00:35:15,080 --> 00:35:17,200
Speaker 1: and they seem to be fighting a lot about that.

501
00:35:17,239 --> 00:35:19,120
Speaker 1: They are also two of the wealthiest families in the area.

502
00:35:19,640 --> 00:35:22,680
Speaker 1: But but the part that baffles me when I read

503
00:35:22,680 --> 00:35:26,280
Speaker 1: about it is how when Thomas Putnam Senior passed away

504
00:35:26,600 --> 00:35:28,880
Speaker 1: and his will was executed, you know, and the wealth

505
00:35:28,960 --> 00:35:32,759
Speaker 1: is distributed, it wasn't it wasn't a Putnam or even

506
00:35:32,760 --> 00:35:37,560
Speaker 1: in an independent party who executes that will? But it's

507
00:35:37,640 --> 00:35:41,840
Speaker 1: Israel porter Um. What can you tell us about that

508
00:35:41,840 --> 00:35:45,520
Speaker 1: that situation. First of all, you should understand that the

509
00:35:45,560 --> 00:35:52,480
Speaker 1: Putnam's controlled approximately I'm going to remember I did a

510
00:35:52,520 --> 00:35:56,120
Speaker 1: study in this and graduate school. They there were about

511
00:35:57,400 --> 00:36:01,880
Speaker 1: twelve to of the population and of Salem Village were Putnam's,

512
00:36:02,960 --> 00:36:08,799
Speaker 1: and their associative community of others who married into the

513
00:36:08,840 --> 00:36:12,279
Speaker 1: Putnam family made it so that they were a the

514
00:36:12,719 --> 00:36:17,080
Speaker 1: largest minority within Salem Village. They tended to be a

515
00:36:17,120 --> 00:36:21,480
Speaker 1: bit conservative. They were almost all Yeoman farmers believed in

516
00:36:22,120 --> 00:36:26,479
Speaker 1: uh wealth being land, so they were not rich in

517
00:36:26,520 --> 00:36:32,160
Speaker 1: the fact of money, but in land. And they tended

518
00:36:32,200 --> 00:36:35,279
Speaker 1: to live in the western part of the village, the

519
00:36:35,320 --> 00:36:38,040
Speaker 1: western part of the village being farther away from Salem

520
00:36:38,080 --> 00:36:41,440
Speaker 1: Town than other parts of Salem Village, like as far

521
00:36:41,440 --> 00:36:43,880
Speaker 1: away as you could get, essentially right, and the port

522
00:36:44,000 --> 00:36:49,600
Speaker 1: is looked more towards the east, towards the coast, towards Salem.

523
00:36:49,800 --> 00:36:54,080
Speaker 1: You might say they were perhaps a little more sophisticated,

524
00:36:54,239 --> 00:36:57,440
Speaker 1: or at least they ran around with a population that

525
00:36:57,640 --> 00:37:01,319
Speaker 1: was more looking to the outward rather than to the

526
00:37:01,360 --> 00:37:06,880
Speaker 1: in wood and Uh. Thomas Putnam when he died, Um,

527
00:37:06,920 --> 00:37:10,759
Speaker 1: he had married a second time, and the offspring from

528
00:37:10,800 --> 00:37:14,879
Speaker 1: that was Joseph Putnam. And Joseph Putnam he was named

529
00:37:14,960 --> 00:37:19,839
Speaker 1: Joseph because of the biblical Joseph, who was the youngest

530
00:37:19,840 --> 00:37:24,279
Speaker 1: and uh and I would dare say probably the other

531
00:37:24,320 --> 00:37:27,319
Speaker 1: Putnams who were a bit jealous of Joseph because he

532
00:37:27,440 --> 00:37:32,040
Speaker 1: and his mother inherited the bulk of the property that

533
00:37:32,120 --> 00:37:36,640
Speaker 1: Thomas had. In those days with primer gent sure it

534
00:37:36,719 --> 00:37:39,600
Speaker 1: was supposed to be the oldest member of the family

535
00:37:39,680 --> 00:37:44,839
Speaker 1: got most everything and the others would get basically scraps. Uh.

536
00:37:45,000 --> 00:37:51,080
Speaker 1: So there was some resentment there. Um. I'm not sure

537
00:37:51,160 --> 00:37:53,799
Speaker 1: if you can actually say that the Putnams and the

538
00:37:53,840 --> 00:37:57,680
Speaker 1: Poeties were against each other. They did come up in

539
00:37:58,120 --> 00:38:05,480
Speaker 1: ecclesiastical um uh affairs as well as um political affairs. Um.

540
00:38:06,520 --> 00:38:10,440
Speaker 1: They were often on different sides. Uh. And the whole

541
00:38:10,480 --> 00:38:15,480
Speaker 1: idea about people trying to gain land, which was a

542
00:38:15,600 --> 00:38:20,120
Speaker 1: very popular theory in the nineteenth century that much of

543
00:38:20,160 --> 00:38:24,320
Speaker 1: the witchcraft stem from land grabs, that's really not probably

544
00:38:24,360 --> 00:38:28,359
Speaker 1: the case. They were always contentious about land and if

545
00:38:28,400 --> 00:38:32,080
Speaker 1: you own something and if your tree that was supposed

546
00:38:32,120 --> 00:38:36,360
Speaker 1: to be the northeast bound of it went down. Uh,

547
00:38:36,400 --> 00:38:39,680
Speaker 1: there would be real consternation about where the where the

548
00:38:39,880 --> 00:38:45,840
Speaker 1: location of the of the boundary was. Um. But land

549
00:38:45,960 --> 00:38:49,319
Speaker 1: was just something that every community had problems with and

550
00:38:49,360 --> 00:38:51,799
Speaker 1: it wasn't a matter of trying to get land from

551
00:38:52,640 --> 00:38:58,080
Speaker 1: other people. And also one of the popular myths in

552
00:38:58,360 --> 00:39:02,239
Speaker 1: Salem witchcraft is that, uh, if you were hanged as

553
00:39:02,280 --> 00:39:05,960
Speaker 1: a witch, uh, your land would be confiscated. And that

554
00:39:06,120 --> 00:39:11,840
Speaker 1: is absolutely not the case. In some cases, the government

555
00:39:11,880 --> 00:39:15,799
Speaker 1: could take you a movable estate, which meant the ring

556
00:39:15,880 --> 00:39:20,479
Speaker 1: on your finger, the furniture in your house, uh cow

557
00:39:20,600 --> 00:39:23,640
Speaker 1: that you might have. But the land went with blood.

558
00:39:23,840 --> 00:39:28,600
Speaker 1: The land went with uh probate And you can see

559
00:39:28,600 --> 00:39:32,960
Speaker 1: that by John Proctor accused, which ready to be executed

560
00:39:33,040 --> 00:39:39,799
Speaker 1: in jail, actually gives by legal need his property to

561
00:39:40,200 --> 00:39:43,680
Speaker 1: his sons. And that was proved in probate court and

562
00:39:44,239 --> 00:39:47,920
Speaker 1: went on. So that's one of the myths in the

563
00:39:48,040 --> 00:39:50,480
Speaker 1: history of witchcraft. Well, we had talked about this a

564
00:39:50,480 --> 00:39:52,319
Speaker 1: little bit before we started recording, and I want to

565
00:39:52,320 --> 00:39:54,440
Speaker 1: get back to it because it's it's so fascinating. One

566
00:39:54,440 --> 00:39:57,799
Speaker 1: of the reasons why um we're here with you in

567
00:39:57,840 --> 00:40:00,400
Speaker 1: the archives of the p BDSX library here and Andvers

568
00:40:01,360 --> 00:40:05,040
Speaker 1: is because you have a notebook that people think of

569
00:40:05,080 --> 00:40:07,560
Speaker 1: it as Samuel Paris's notebook, but you were explained to

570
00:40:07,560 --> 00:40:10,040
Speaker 1: me that it's actually a it's a bigger document than

571
00:40:10,160 --> 00:40:13,440
Speaker 1: Samuel Paris. Tell me a little bit about this notebook.

572
00:40:13,440 --> 00:40:18,600
Speaker 1: And we were established back in n seventy two as

573
00:40:18,600 --> 00:40:21,640
Speaker 1: the Danvers Archival Center, and what we wanted to do

574
00:40:21,719 --> 00:40:24,640
Speaker 1: is bring together all of the printed and written history

575
00:40:24,680 --> 00:40:27,800
Speaker 1: of the town of Danvers. We got the public records,

576
00:40:27,960 --> 00:40:32,680
Speaker 1: we got the books of the Pivody Institute Library, we

577
00:40:32,719 --> 00:40:38,080
Speaker 1: moved to the library and new UH quarters. We also

578
00:40:38,160 --> 00:40:43,279
Speaker 1: wanted to get records of other organizations and Danvers, and

579
00:40:43,320 --> 00:40:45,720
Speaker 1: the principal one we wanted to get was the records

580
00:40:45,760 --> 00:40:50,440
Speaker 1: of the First Church Congregational that was the original First

581
00:40:50,560 --> 00:40:55,759
Speaker 1: Church of Christ at Salem Village, the oldest, actually the

582
00:40:55,800 --> 00:41:00,920
Speaker 1: oldest organization in Danvers date sixteen seventy two, and they

583
00:41:00,960 --> 00:41:03,839
Speaker 1: had several record books and one of them was the

584
00:41:03,840 --> 00:41:08,440
Speaker 1: Minister's record book kept by each minister from sixteen eighty

585
00:41:08,560 --> 00:41:11,920
Speaker 1: nine when they became a covenant church to the present.

586
00:41:12,640 --> 00:41:17,320
Speaker 1: And this is very historic material, UH and it's really

587
00:41:17,360 --> 00:41:20,440
Speaker 1: some of the lost material that was still in not

588
00:41:20,760 --> 00:41:23,640
Speaker 1: public hands, not in the library or something. It's a

589
00:41:23,640 --> 00:41:28,239
Speaker 1: matter of fact. Back in the UH late nineteen sixties,

590
00:41:28,480 --> 00:41:32,200
Speaker 1: UH Boyer and Nissenbaum, two professes from U Mass in

591
00:41:32,280 --> 00:41:35,560
Speaker 1: their book Salem Possessed. I got them into the church

592
00:41:35,680 --> 00:41:38,239
Speaker 1: to see these records, and they thought they were absolutely

593
00:41:38,239 --> 00:41:43,719
Speaker 1: fantastic because the records include the witchcraft era, in which

594
00:41:43,800 --> 00:41:48,040
Speaker 1: Paris Um talks about the excommunication of one of the witches,

595
00:41:48,480 --> 00:41:52,239
Speaker 1: Mautha Corey. UH talks about the beginning of the witchcraft

596
00:41:52,360 --> 00:41:57,160
Speaker 1: when one of his congregants made a witch cake unbeknownst

597
00:41:57,200 --> 00:42:00,960
Speaker 1: to him and which he believes brought the devil into

598
00:42:01,040 --> 00:42:05,920
Speaker 1: Salem village, has a confession of forgiveness by the chief

599
00:42:05,960 --> 00:42:09,440
Speaker 1: which accuser who later on wanted to become a covenant

600
00:42:09,480 --> 00:42:15,040
Speaker 1: member UH, and all sorts of controversy Paris when the

601
00:42:15,080 --> 00:42:18,560
Speaker 1: witchcraft was over, he had the people who had been hanged.

602
00:42:18,640 --> 00:42:22,000
Speaker 1: Their families were not really happy with Samuel Paris. They

603
00:42:22,040 --> 00:42:24,800
Speaker 1: were trying to force him out and they made life

604
00:42:24,880 --> 00:42:28,440
Speaker 1: miserable for him. And it was brought to synids to

605
00:42:28,960 --> 00:42:34,640
Speaker 1: uh UH organizations to try to rectify what was going on,

606
00:42:35,040 --> 00:42:38,120
Speaker 1: and there would be petitions and counter petitions signed by

607
00:42:38,680 --> 00:42:42,959
Speaker 1: the various farmers, and he records every single one of them.

608
00:42:43,360 --> 00:42:46,160
Speaker 1: And if you believe in graphology, which is the study

609
00:42:46,160 --> 00:42:50,799
Speaker 1: of handwriting analysis, Paris has a very readable hand You

610
00:42:50,840 --> 00:42:55,080
Speaker 1: can read it in the twenty one century UM, whereas

611
00:42:55,160 --> 00:42:59,600
Speaker 1: most seventeenth century script is pretty bad. UH. As he

612
00:42:59,680 --> 00:43:05,360
Speaker 1: gets more pressured within Salem Village sixteen ninety four ninety six,

613
00:43:05,680 --> 00:43:09,600
Speaker 1: his handwriting gets smaller and smaller and more compact, and

614
00:43:09,640 --> 00:43:13,360
Speaker 1: you can almost feel him being squeezed. So this is

615
00:43:13,600 --> 00:43:17,920
Speaker 1: really good historic stuff. We were thinking, well, the first church,

616
00:43:18,920 --> 00:43:22,279
Speaker 1: they've been here since the sixteen seventies. There were very

617
00:43:22,320 --> 00:43:25,720
Speaker 1: conservative church in New England. We had in the early

618
00:43:25,760 --> 00:43:31,200
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds the um Unitarian Revolution, in which most first

619
00:43:31,280 --> 00:43:36,680
Speaker 1: churches in Massachusetts and New England became Unitarian, a much

620
00:43:36,680 --> 00:43:41,520
Speaker 1: more liberal church. UH, and very few remained congregational. The

621
00:43:41,560 --> 00:43:45,760
Speaker 1: one in Salem Village remained congregational. Most of the people

622
00:43:45,800 --> 00:43:50,840
Speaker 1: living in Salem Village in what then was Danvers Plains.

623
00:43:51,200 --> 00:43:55,160
Speaker 1: Excuse me, let me do that over again. UM. In

624
00:43:55,200 --> 00:43:58,399
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties and sixties, most of the people who

625
00:43:58,480 --> 00:44:03,759
Speaker 1: were the congregation and of the First Church, uh were

626
00:44:03,840 --> 00:44:08,560
Speaker 1: people who had lived there for generation upon generations, so

627
00:44:08,600 --> 00:44:11,880
Speaker 1: they could trace their lineage back to the Witchcraft times.

628
00:44:12,440 --> 00:44:17,279
Speaker 1: They were so somewhat conservative and very neighborly in that

629
00:44:17,320 --> 00:44:20,000
Speaker 1: they had a speech pattern that was only known to

630
00:44:20,640 --> 00:44:23,480
Speaker 1: around Center Street in Danvers, and that was called the

631
00:44:23,520 --> 00:44:30,239
Speaker 1: Center Street twang. It's almost gone now because Invelope is

632
00:44:30,320 --> 00:44:33,880
Speaker 1: like me, moved into the neighborhood over the years. But

633
00:44:34,800 --> 00:44:36,799
Speaker 1: you know, we figured this is going to be very

634
00:44:36,840 --> 00:44:39,160
Speaker 1: hard to get them. New England has tend to be

635
00:44:39,320 --> 00:44:42,439
Speaker 1: very possessive of their stuff, even if they can't take

636
00:44:42,440 --> 00:44:44,640
Speaker 1: care of them, and we thought the First Church was

637
00:44:44,680 --> 00:44:48,200
Speaker 1: going to be that way as well. UH. For a

638
00:44:48,320 --> 00:44:52,919
Speaker 1: number of months uh and years we tried to help

639
00:44:52,960 --> 00:44:55,840
Speaker 1: them with their collections and so forth. And once the

640
00:44:56,200 --> 00:45:00,360
Speaker 1: establishment of the Archival Center came in nineteen seventy too,

641
00:45:00,800 --> 00:45:03,520
Speaker 1: they agreed and we're willing to take all of their

642
00:45:03,560 --> 00:45:07,400
Speaker 1: records and put them on permanent deposit with us. It

643
00:45:07,520 --> 00:45:10,000
Speaker 1: was a real coup, and I have to give it

644
00:45:10,040 --> 00:45:12,440
Speaker 1: to them. They they they were very good about it.

645
00:45:12,680 --> 00:45:16,439
Speaker 1: We've done well with the materials. We've actually uh spent

646
00:45:16,520 --> 00:45:20,719
Speaker 1: a lot of money conserving the books and papers, and

647
00:45:20,880 --> 00:45:24,200
Speaker 1: when that happened, it was like the floodgates open. Other

648
00:45:24,320 --> 00:45:26,680
Speaker 1: churches said, well, that's the first church is wanting to

649
00:45:26,719 --> 00:45:29,239
Speaker 1: give it. I guess it's okay. So we now have,

650
00:45:29,440 --> 00:45:32,239
Speaker 1: with the exception of the Catholic Church, which has its

651
00:45:32,280 --> 00:45:37,840
Speaker 1: own UMM archives, we have every Protestant church that either

652
00:45:38,080 --> 00:45:42,600
Speaker 1: was and became defunct or still functions. Uh. And the

653
00:45:42,640 --> 00:45:46,160
Speaker 1: first Church collection is is very good and very important.

654
00:45:46,520 --> 00:45:50,440
Speaker 1: It's amazing, and that to be able to read Samuel

655
00:45:50,440 --> 00:45:55,880
Speaker 1: Parris is I guess professional complaints and documentation of what

656
00:45:55,920 --> 00:45:58,319
Speaker 1: he's going through where church is going through in his

657
00:45:58,400 --> 00:46:01,440
Speaker 1: own handwriting. Um. And you're right. I'm glad it's legible,

658
00:46:01,640 --> 00:46:05,120
Speaker 1: because a lot of that is very illegible. Yes, and

659
00:46:05,160 --> 00:46:08,040
Speaker 1: that's because one of the reasons why Paris was asked

660
00:46:08,440 --> 00:46:13,719
Speaker 1: by the magistrates to write down testimony during the witchcraft

661
00:46:13,760 --> 00:46:16,800
Speaker 1: And you would think he is a minister, his family

662
00:46:16,960 --> 00:46:21,640
Speaker 1: is afflicted by witchcraft. Uh, he's trying to root out

663
00:46:21,640 --> 00:46:25,480
Speaker 1: the witches and they're asking him to to do the documentation.

664
00:46:25,719 --> 00:46:27,640
Speaker 1: But I think he tried to do a good job,

665
00:46:28,040 --> 00:46:30,719
Speaker 1: and at least two of the examinations he at the

666
00:46:30,800 --> 00:46:34,080
Speaker 1: end rights um. Much was going on it was very

667
00:46:34,120 --> 00:46:38,279
Speaker 1: hard to uh hear everything, but I tried to put

668
00:46:38,320 --> 00:46:42,640
Speaker 1: things down as correct as possible so that I wouldn't

669
00:46:42,920 --> 00:46:49,480
Speaker 1: be uh guilty of prejudicing either side. That's paraphrasing it,

670
00:46:49,640 --> 00:46:52,880
Speaker 1: but that's what he said. Yeah, a mission could be

671
00:46:52,960 --> 00:46:57,319
Speaker 1: an accusation. You know, he's editing the history of the event. Yeah.

672
00:46:58,040 --> 00:47:01,480
Speaker 1: One of the important families in this the whole situation,

673
00:47:01,560 --> 00:47:04,239
Speaker 1: would be the Hawthorne family. And you know, we talked

674
00:47:04,239 --> 00:47:09,400
Speaker 1: about the removal of the charter from Massachusetts in the

675
00:47:09,400 --> 00:47:12,839
Speaker 1: the sixteen eighties, early sixteen eighties, and and and how

676
00:47:13,840 --> 00:47:17,400
Speaker 1: John Hawthorne, the magistrate, his father William, was actually one

677
00:47:17,440 --> 00:47:20,960
Speaker 1: of the key people in establishing some of the laws

678
00:47:21,280 --> 00:47:23,880
Speaker 1: that were on the books and the colonies and helping

679
00:47:23,960 --> 00:47:28,560
Speaker 1: to run and govern. But he's also known for persecuting Quakers.

680
00:47:28,600 --> 00:47:30,439
Speaker 1: I think we mentioned that a little a bit ago,

681
00:47:30,560 --> 00:47:34,760
Speaker 1: that there was this animosity towards the Quakers and early

682
00:47:34,800 --> 00:47:37,640
Speaker 1: on the Puritans didn't treat them so well. Do we

683
00:47:37,680 --> 00:47:42,080
Speaker 1: know how the family legacy of the Hawthorne's influenced, um

684
00:47:42,200 --> 00:47:45,719
Speaker 1: John the magistrates legal stature in the eyes of the Puritans.

685
00:47:45,760 --> 00:47:49,040
Speaker 1: I mean, you have the charter removed there's no governor.

686
00:47:49,600 --> 00:47:51,000
Speaker 1: It almost seems that we're in a little bit of

687
00:47:51,040 --> 00:47:54,960
Speaker 1: a legal chaos for for a small amount of time. Um.

688
00:47:55,000 --> 00:47:57,640
Speaker 1: But at the center of the the examinations and the

689
00:47:57,640 --> 00:48:00,480
Speaker 1: witch trials, we have a Hawthorne. We have we have

690
00:48:00,560 --> 00:48:03,320
Speaker 1: William's son John who comes in. Is this this affect

691
00:48:03,360 --> 00:48:05,160
Speaker 1: the way he's perceived by the community around and do

692
00:48:05,160 --> 00:48:07,799
Speaker 1: they feel some trust in him? That, thank goodness, at

693
00:48:07,840 --> 00:48:11,200
Speaker 1: least John's in charge of this. Uh. Two of the

694
00:48:11,200 --> 00:48:15,200
Speaker 1: most important magistrates in Salem with John hath On uh

695
00:48:15,239 --> 00:48:21,399
Speaker 1: and Jonathan Corwin. They were both merchants, UM, learned people, uh.

696
00:48:21,560 --> 00:48:26,520
Speaker 1: Not lawyers, not professional legal people, but they had a

697
00:48:26,520 --> 00:48:30,720
Speaker 1: lot of sense. They always were for years under whatever

698
00:48:30,760 --> 00:48:34,839
Speaker 1: the government was, magistrates who would hear cases, and they

699
00:48:34,840 --> 00:48:38,280
Speaker 1: were asked to take a look at what was happening

700
00:48:38,280 --> 00:48:41,960
Speaker 1: in Salem village. So they were the initial magistrates who

701
00:48:42,000 --> 00:48:47,799
Speaker 1: came over to little Old Salem Village March first, six two.

702
00:48:48,400 --> 00:48:51,600
Speaker 1: They went to the meeting house because um, they had

703
00:48:51,680 --> 00:48:55,879
Speaker 1: to have enough space, because everybody had heard about three

704
00:48:56,000 --> 00:48:59,640
Speaker 1: people being accused of witchcraft and it became a real

705
00:48:59,680 --> 00:49:04,440
Speaker 1: public thing. We're told that the meetinghouse was absolutely filled

706
00:49:04,520 --> 00:49:08,920
Speaker 1: to the gills and people were outside looking in trying

707
00:49:08,960 --> 00:49:11,759
Speaker 1: to find out what was happened. It was cold, they

708
00:49:11,840 --> 00:49:14,160
Speaker 1: had they'd had a snowstorm just a day or two before.

709
00:49:14,520 --> 00:49:20,600
Speaker 1: Well it was actually Salem village was a relatively mild

710
00:49:20,760 --> 00:49:24,480
Speaker 1: year for snow, but it was still a cold winter. Uh.

711
00:49:24,760 --> 00:49:29,040
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's it's mud season. And uh it would

712
00:49:29,080 --> 00:49:32,080
Speaker 1: have been quite a spectacle. You have probably more than

713
00:49:32,120 --> 00:49:36,360
Speaker 1: the population of Salem villages there watching what is you know,

714
00:49:36,520 --> 00:49:40,640
Speaker 1: the first real witchcraft examination that they've had in years

715
00:49:41,400 --> 00:49:45,240
Speaker 1: and here it is in little Sale village. Uh. Hath

716
00:49:45,400 --> 00:49:52,920
Speaker 1: On was um very specific in that he asked many questions. Um. Uh.

717
00:49:53,760 --> 00:50:00,200
Speaker 1: Jonathan Corwin uh generally took down the evidence that was

718
00:50:00,320 --> 00:50:03,040
Speaker 1: hearing and didn't ask a lot of questions. But Hathon did.

719
00:50:03,520 --> 00:50:06,200
Speaker 1: And you can see he asks leading questions, how long

720
00:50:06,280 --> 00:50:08,319
Speaker 1: have you been a witch? You know, it's the kind

721
00:50:08,320 --> 00:50:10,839
Speaker 1: of thing like when did you stop beating your wife?

722
00:50:10,960 --> 00:50:17,879
Speaker 1: Kind of thing. Um. They believed, especially after Tituba, who

723
00:50:18,120 --> 00:50:25,000
Speaker 1: is Reverend Paris's slave, probably a Caribe Indian who had

724
00:50:25,040 --> 00:50:31,759
Speaker 1: come with Paris when he became minister. Um, she's confessed.

725
00:50:32,120 --> 00:50:35,560
Speaker 1: She was the first of fifty people who confessed and

726
00:50:35,680 --> 00:50:38,040
Speaker 1: in those days, you know, we still have a hard

727
00:50:38,120 --> 00:50:42,880
Speaker 1: time all that we know about psychology today when someone

728
00:50:43,040 --> 00:50:47,560
Speaker 1: confesses and later retracts it and uh, we go, well,

729
00:50:47,680 --> 00:50:50,160
Speaker 1: you know, why would you confess if you're not if

730
00:50:50,200 --> 00:50:53,160
Speaker 1: you're if you're not guilty, why would you confess? Well,

731
00:50:53,280 --> 00:50:58,800
Speaker 1: people do confess, especially under certain real strains. Uh. And

732
00:50:59,000 --> 00:51:04,680
Speaker 1: Tituba gave a real confession. There's some possible evidence that

733
00:51:04,840 --> 00:51:08,239
Speaker 1: she might have been beaten by Paris to quote tell

734
00:51:08,320 --> 00:51:11,320
Speaker 1: the truth. Uh. And she came up with something that

735
00:51:12,320 --> 00:51:18,280
Speaker 1: instead of calming the witchcraft thing. And in most witchcraft cases,

736
00:51:18,360 --> 00:51:21,560
Speaker 1: both in England and New England, what you do is

737
00:51:21,640 --> 00:51:26,319
Speaker 1: you get one, maybe two people accused. Um, they would

738
00:51:26,320 --> 00:51:29,080
Speaker 1: either be found not guilty or quickly be found guilty

739
00:51:29,160 --> 00:51:30,759
Speaker 1: and hanged, and that would be the end of it.

740
00:51:31,400 --> 00:51:35,120
Speaker 1: He have three people accused in Salem village. One is

741
00:51:35,320 --> 00:51:39,600
Speaker 1: Paris's slave. And imagine how Paris must have thought that

742
00:51:40,600 --> 00:51:44,920
Speaker 1: the witchcraft begins in his household. Here he's a minister

743
00:51:45,080 --> 00:51:49,600
Speaker 1: of God. How excruciatingly embarrassing it had to be to him.

744
00:51:49,920 --> 00:51:51,800
Speaker 1: And I think that's one of the reasons you have

745
00:51:51,960 --> 00:51:54,640
Speaker 1: to understand that Paris was going to root out this

746
00:51:54,840 --> 00:52:00,560
Speaker 1: evil because it was happening within his family. Um and

747
00:52:00,680 --> 00:52:05,360
Speaker 1: Tichama said, well, a dark man came and told me

748
00:52:05,520 --> 00:52:09,040
Speaker 1: to afflict the children, which I did, and she kind

749
00:52:09,120 --> 00:52:11,920
Speaker 1: of accused the other two who said they weren't guilty,

750
00:52:12,040 --> 00:52:15,000
Speaker 1: but they weren't sure about each other, you know. Uh,

751
00:52:15,200 --> 00:52:22,360
Speaker 1: and Titterba indicates that not only the three of them involved,

752
00:52:22,520 --> 00:52:26,399
Speaker 1: but there's several others. So instead of tapping it down,

753
00:52:27,560 --> 00:52:31,719
Speaker 1: it expands it. And when just a few weeks later,

754
00:52:31,960 --> 00:52:36,480
Speaker 1: actually a few days later, a Covenant church member is accused,

755
00:52:37,160 --> 00:52:40,920
Speaker 1: and then a three year old girl is accused, and

756
00:52:41,080 --> 00:52:43,960
Speaker 1: then another Covenant member is accused, and then a man

757
00:52:44,200 --> 00:52:49,800
Speaker 1: is accused, you suddenly get this explosion of witchcraft accusations.

758
00:52:50,320 --> 00:52:55,680
Speaker 1: And when people stopped confessing, why would you confess? And

759
00:52:56,760 --> 00:53:02,839
Speaker 1: Reverend um Hail John Hale minister in Beverley, right next

760
00:53:02,880 --> 00:53:06,120
Speaker 1: to danvers h He wrote a book later on about

761
00:53:06,160 --> 00:53:09,760
Speaker 1: the witchcraft called a Modest in Korean too, the Nature

762
00:53:09,840 --> 00:53:12,560
Speaker 1: of Witchcraft. And anytime you see a book from the

763
00:53:12,640 --> 00:53:17,080
Speaker 1: seventeenth century that says a modest inquiry, what he's gonna

764
00:53:17,160 --> 00:53:19,880
Speaker 1: do is bulk the system. He's not going to be

765
00:53:20,200 --> 00:53:25,680
Speaker 1: one who uh becomes um copasetic with the with the

766
00:53:26,280 --> 00:53:30,480
Speaker 1: company thoughts, uh, he's going to break out a little bit.

767
00:53:31,000 --> 00:53:33,279
Speaker 1: And he asked that it not be published until after

768
00:53:33,360 --> 00:53:35,680
Speaker 1: he died. And you might think, boy, this is going

769
00:53:35,719 --> 00:53:39,160
Speaker 1: to be controversial. Was actually not very controversial, except that

770
00:53:39,600 --> 00:53:44,800
Speaker 1: he said two things brought the witchcraft forward. One was

771
00:53:45,360 --> 00:53:49,840
Speaker 1: the believability of the afflicted children. They were doing things

772
00:53:50,000 --> 00:53:55,800
Speaker 1: that normally wouldn't see being done. They were profoundly tortured.

773
00:53:58,239 --> 00:54:02,360
Speaker 1: Pure tans weren't stupid. They knew what um epilepsy was,

774
00:54:02,800 --> 00:54:06,400
Speaker 1: they knew what Saint almost Fire is. They knew that

775
00:54:06,560 --> 00:54:09,640
Speaker 1: kids could be manipulative at times, but this was different.

776
00:54:09,960 --> 00:54:12,840
Speaker 1: This was something that they had never experienced before. And

777
00:54:12,960 --> 00:54:18,360
Speaker 1: this brought a profound belief, so that sometimes even families

778
00:54:18,560 --> 00:54:23,600
Speaker 1: of accused witches would say to their accused uh family,

779
00:54:24,239 --> 00:54:27,400
Speaker 1: well you must be guilty, because maybe you don't know it,

780
00:54:27,560 --> 00:54:30,839
Speaker 1: but you have to be guilty because the children say

781
00:54:30,920 --> 00:54:36,799
Speaker 1: you are. And the other thing um uh Hale said

782
00:54:37,160 --> 00:54:42,799
Speaker 1: was that by having that many people confessing, why would

783
00:54:42,880 --> 00:54:46,279
Speaker 1: you belie yourself. Today we don't think of lies as

784
00:54:46,560 --> 00:54:50,319
Speaker 1: much of anything. Back in the seventeenth century, a lie

785
00:54:50,560 --> 00:54:54,200
Speaker 1: was a smack at God's face. And uh, if you

786
00:54:54,400 --> 00:54:58,279
Speaker 1: lined for something that had to do with life and death, um,

787
00:54:58,800 --> 00:55:02,080
Speaker 1: this would not bolde well as to where you were going. Uh.

788
00:55:02,400 --> 00:55:07,160
Speaker 1: And Paris said, by these two means, we walked in

789
00:55:07,280 --> 00:55:12,759
Speaker 1: the clouds and could not find our way. So um

790
00:55:14,120 --> 00:55:17,759
Speaker 1: in the beginning, before the hysteria, I'm not supposed to

791
00:55:17,800 --> 00:55:22,040
Speaker 1: use that word so much anymore. But before this irrational

792
00:55:22,200 --> 00:55:28,120
Speaker 1: nous happened, Um, other factors were being combined to allow

793
00:55:28,840 --> 00:55:37,359
Speaker 1: a normal settlement to go into historyonics and of course

794
00:55:37,440 --> 00:55:43,160
Speaker 1: the we have the examinations, these informal magistrates and the accused,

795
00:55:43,280 --> 00:55:46,280
Speaker 1: and as you said, a meeting house pactful of people

796
00:55:47,120 --> 00:55:50,560
Speaker 1: outside as well appearing in the windows. Um. But eventually

797
00:55:50,719 --> 00:55:53,480
Speaker 1: the governor of the new governor Phipps gets involved. And

798
00:55:53,800 --> 00:55:57,279
Speaker 1: you mentioned a term earlier, the oyer and terminter um.

799
00:55:57,880 --> 00:56:00,839
Speaker 1: How we are juries selected? And this is the part

800
00:56:00,920 --> 00:56:02,640
Speaker 1: that I mean. You think about a jury being an

801
00:56:02,920 --> 00:56:06,480
Speaker 1: impartial group that needs to hear on both sides and

802
00:56:06,600 --> 00:56:09,160
Speaker 1: make decisions. But this has been running a muck for

803
00:56:09,560 --> 00:56:12,440
Speaker 1: weeks before Phips gets involved and becomes an oyer and

804
00:56:12,520 --> 00:56:16,080
Speaker 1: terminal trial. So how how do they select the juries

805
00:56:16,320 --> 00:56:20,400
Speaker 1: for oyer and terminer? In general? And and in Salem

806
00:56:20,440 --> 00:56:23,239
Speaker 1: in particular, and and what was the process like for

807
00:56:23,360 --> 00:56:25,880
Speaker 1: handling this crisis in a new type of court and

808
00:56:25,920 --> 00:56:31,440
Speaker 1: more higher court in the seventeenth century. UM, Jury selection

809
00:56:31,719 --> 00:56:38,200
Speaker 1: is much like it's still practiced today. UM. When you

810
00:56:38,800 --> 00:56:43,280
Speaker 1: have a court that's going to do a number of cases,

811
00:56:43,760 --> 00:56:47,239
Speaker 1: what you do is you contact the various communities that

812
00:56:47,440 --> 00:56:51,160
Speaker 1: the court serves, and you ask the board of selectmen

813
00:56:51,600 --> 00:56:55,560
Speaker 1: to choose jurors so they'll have a pool of jurors.

814
00:56:56,239 --> 00:56:59,560
Speaker 1: You always ask for more jurors than you need because

815
00:56:59,640 --> 00:57:04,080
Speaker 1: this will will be brought in UH to the UH,

816
00:57:04,200 --> 00:57:09,719
Speaker 1: to the courts UH and they select them. And the

817
00:57:09,840 --> 00:57:13,960
Speaker 1: one difference, however, is the selection did not include women,

818
00:57:15,040 --> 00:57:19,120
Speaker 1: did not include slaves obviously, but also had to include

819
00:57:20,000 --> 00:57:24,640
Speaker 1: those people who are full fledged church members and who

820
00:57:24,720 --> 00:57:29,760
Speaker 1: owned property. So you're talking about basically the more conservative

821
00:57:29,920 --> 00:57:33,720
Speaker 1: within a community. But that's the way it was done throughout.

822
00:57:33,840 --> 00:57:37,160
Speaker 1: There's a Salem witchcraft is not the exception, it's it's

823
00:57:37,200 --> 00:57:44,280
Speaker 1: the rule. And he would have the pettit jury UH

824
00:57:44,480 --> 00:57:49,320
Speaker 1: and the grand jury, and very often, once the trials

825
00:57:49,400 --> 00:57:54,160
Speaker 1: took place, trials winning clusters UH, the Attorney General of

826
00:57:54,440 --> 00:57:59,160
Speaker 1: the province would decide looking at who was accused, what

827
00:57:59,320 --> 00:58:01,479
Speaker 1: the best case as well, you go for the ones

828
00:58:01,600 --> 00:58:05,440
Speaker 1: that you think you're gonna slam dunk real fast. Uh.

829
00:58:05,720 --> 00:58:09,280
Speaker 1: And the jurors would be taken from a pool, so

830
00:58:09,440 --> 00:58:12,640
Speaker 1: it could be a juror from Beverly, from Topsfield, from

831
00:58:12,960 --> 00:58:18,000
Speaker 1: Boxford or whatever. And they're often used throughout the process.

832
00:58:19,160 --> 00:58:22,520
Speaker 1: And although there wasn't that doesn't seem to have been

833
00:58:22,640 --> 00:58:26,920
Speaker 1: manipulation of jurors. We do know at least one case

834
00:58:27,040 --> 00:58:31,120
Speaker 1: in which, um, the trial of Rebecca Nurus, which was

835
00:58:32,400 --> 00:58:37,600
Speaker 1: one of the more interesting trials, took place. And at trials,

836
00:58:37,680 --> 00:58:42,240
Speaker 1: what happens is depositions that were filed at the time

837
00:58:42,320 --> 00:58:48,080
Speaker 1: of the preliminary hearings given and read as testimony sworn

838
00:58:48,160 --> 00:58:52,320
Speaker 1: two before court. Uh. These depositions were added to, however,

839
00:58:53,120 --> 00:58:56,720
Speaker 1: during the legal process. UH. And it's interesting to see

840
00:58:56,760 --> 00:59:00,600
Speaker 1: because witchcraft is what's known as an exceptionable excuse me

841
00:59:00,880 --> 00:59:04,280
Speaker 1: an exceptional crime, and it meant that you had to

842
00:59:04,360 --> 00:59:08,440
Speaker 1: have at least two people witness witchcraft in order to

843
00:59:08,800 --> 00:59:12,280
Speaker 1: convict because we're talking about a capital case. And how

844
00:59:12,320 --> 00:59:15,960
Speaker 1: do you do that, Well, you do that by using

845
00:59:16,160 --> 00:59:21,200
Speaker 1: the preliminary hearing as evidence. In which you have more

846
00:59:21,280 --> 00:59:25,040
Speaker 1: than two people, two of the afflicted girls giving testimony

847
00:59:25,160 --> 00:59:29,960
Speaker 1: that the specter invisible to everyone else, of Rebecca Nurris,

848
00:59:30,280 --> 00:59:34,320
Speaker 1: is torturing them and they're being choked, or they have

849
00:59:34,480 --> 00:59:38,000
Speaker 1: marks on their hand, which they'll show the people there,

850
00:59:38,600 --> 00:59:44,480
Speaker 1: and that is used as evidence, and it's added to

851
00:59:44,680 --> 00:59:48,880
Speaker 1: on the depositions. So depositions are filed. In many cases,

852
00:59:49,440 --> 00:59:56,000
Speaker 1: people who were friends or relatives of accused also filed depositions,

853
00:59:56,520 --> 01:00:00,360
Speaker 1: but they could not swear to it. Uh. The big

854
01:00:00,440 --> 01:00:04,080
Speaker 1: difference was because they didn't want them to be belying themselves,

855
01:00:04,520 --> 01:00:07,000
Speaker 1: so you couldn't swear to it, which means that their

856
01:00:07,080 --> 01:00:10,400
Speaker 1: evidence a juror would see was not quite as good

857
01:00:10,520 --> 01:00:14,800
Speaker 1: as a sworn deposition against someone. And you also had

858
01:00:15,360 --> 01:00:19,400
Speaker 1: very often people who had been confessing witches who was

859
01:00:19,440 --> 01:00:22,240
Speaker 1: set aside. We'll take care of them later, but they're

860
01:00:22,320 --> 01:00:27,720
Speaker 1: important because they can be brought before the trial and

861
01:00:27,920 --> 01:00:31,240
Speaker 1: by voice they can give testimony that so and so

862
01:00:31,520 --> 01:00:33,959
Speaker 1: is one of us. I saw her at a which

863
01:00:34,040 --> 01:00:38,480
Speaker 1: is Sabbath few and that's used as as prime evidence

864
01:00:38,520 --> 01:00:42,360
Speaker 1: as well. So in almost every case, if you brought

865
01:00:42,480 --> 01:00:47,560
Speaker 1: up for trial, you found guilty. Rebecca Nurse was the exception. Uh.

866
01:00:47,920 --> 01:00:51,600
Speaker 1: At first, the jurors came back with a not guilty,

867
01:00:52,520 --> 01:00:57,880
Speaker 1: and it was pandemonium in the courthouse. The afflicted children

868
01:00:57,960 --> 01:01:01,760
Speaker 1: who were there and also some older afflicted ones started

869
01:01:02,760 --> 01:01:07,400
Speaker 1: going into profound fits and so forth pandemonium. One of

870
01:01:07,440 --> 01:01:10,320
Speaker 1: the magistrates us and I think it was WILLIAMS. Stolton,

871
01:01:10,400 --> 01:01:14,000
Speaker 1: he was the chief justice of the of the panel. Uh.

872
01:01:14,160 --> 01:01:19,120
Speaker 1: He said, um, have you considered some testimony um of

873
01:01:20,080 --> 01:01:24,080
Speaker 1: someone who said this or that? And the jurors asked

874
01:01:24,160 --> 01:01:29,400
Speaker 1: Rebecca Nurse a question. Uh, I accused which I confessed,

875
01:01:29,480 --> 01:01:32,440
Speaker 1: which had given testimony that she was one of us?

876
01:01:32,920 --> 01:01:37,800
Speaker 1: And they said to Rebecca, I'm sorry. Rebecca said why

877
01:01:37,960 --> 01:01:41,640
Speaker 1: she is one of us? And she was asked what

878
01:01:41,800 --> 01:01:46,280
Speaker 1: did that mean? And she didn't say anything, and the

879
01:01:46,400 --> 01:01:51,080
Speaker 1: jurors took that as being a form of guilt. And

880
01:01:51,160 --> 01:01:55,240
Speaker 1: because she couldn't hear, she was almost deaf. Uh, And

881
01:01:56,080 --> 01:01:58,320
Speaker 1: so they came back a little bit later with with

882
01:01:58,440 --> 01:02:03,120
Speaker 1: a guilty. Rebecca is interesting too. She had an uncommon

883
01:02:03,200 --> 01:02:08,000
Speaker 1: situation where community around her attempted to intervene in the

884
01:02:08,120 --> 01:02:12,560
Speaker 1: legal proceedings. Um. Friends and neighbors stepping forward. Was that

885
01:02:12,640 --> 01:02:17,480
Speaker 1: a common thing, or was that uncommon? It was about

886
01:02:17,520 --> 01:02:23,800
Speaker 1: in the middle. About of the documents that survive, we

887
01:02:24,040 --> 01:02:28,400
Speaker 1: have maybe about twenty of them in which either one person,

888
01:02:29,160 --> 01:02:32,600
Speaker 1: a couple, or a bunch of people would send in

889
01:02:32,720 --> 01:02:38,240
Speaker 1: a deposition or a petition saying that we've known her

890
01:02:38,360 --> 01:02:40,720
Speaker 1: all of our life and she never looked like she

891
01:02:40,960 --> 01:02:44,480
Speaker 1: was a witch or never deported her any any more

892
01:02:44,560 --> 01:02:48,760
Speaker 1: than a good Christian. Forty people signed the one to

893
01:02:48,880 --> 01:02:53,120
Speaker 1: Rebecca Nurse, including a couple of putnams Auh, and that

894
01:02:53,360 --> 01:02:56,520
Speaker 1: did give some weight. As a matter of fact, the

895
01:02:56,720 --> 01:03:01,400
Speaker 1: Nurse family that tended to be a little more forthcoming,

896
01:03:02,240 --> 01:03:05,240
Speaker 1: rather than just allowing the court to do what they

897
01:03:05,320 --> 01:03:07,800
Speaker 1: wanted because they didn't know any better. They went to

898
01:03:07,920 --> 01:03:11,320
Speaker 1: the governor and he stayed execution for a few days.

899
01:03:12,160 --> 01:03:19,080
Speaker 1: UM so that her case is a bit more unusual

900
01:03:19,200 --> 01:03:21,040
Speaker 1: than the others, and she was the only one who

901
01:03:21,160 --> 01:03:28,000
Speaker 1: was found not guilty at first UM. Some of those

902
01:03:28,320 --> 01:03:33,400
Speaker 1: accused the minister, Reverend George Burrows, who had served Salem

903
01:03:33,480 --> 01:03:36,840
Speaker 1: Village prior to it becoming a full covenant church back

904
01:03:36,920 --> 01:03:42,720
Speaker 1: in the sixteen eighties. It was he who um took

905
01:03:42,880 --> 01:03:45,840
Speaker 1: best advantage of the new possonage he moved into what

906
01:03:46,040 --> 01:03:48,800
Speaker 1: was the new possonage as an incentive to get him

907
01:03:48,880 --> 01:03:51,720
Speaker 1: to come to the village. Uh. He was accused, and

908
01:03:51,840 --> 01:03:54,640
Speaker 1: they really went after him because, Uh he was a

909
01:03:54,720 --> 01:03:58,800
Speaker 1: minister who wasn't the typical minister, hadn't baptized some of

910
01:03:58,880 --> 01:04:01,800
Speaker 1: his children. He was the frontier. He seemed more like

911
01:04:01,920 --> 01:04:05,800
Speaker 1: a Baptist than a than a real Puritan. Uh and

912
01:04:06,520 --> 01:04:11,280
Speaker 1: um he Uh he challenged at least one of the

913
01:04:11,400 --> 01:04:15,960
Speaker 1: people serving on his jury and tried to introduce evidence

914
01:04:16,000 --> 01:04:19,600
Speaker 1: as well. But um, he didn't do it well and

915
01:04:20,280 --> 01:04:23,600
Speaker 1: he was found guilty. And uh a Cotton math Or

916
01:04:23,800 --> 01:04:27,880
Speaker 1: particularly disliked him because he thought that was such a

917
01:04:28,000 --> 01:04:30,920
Speaker 1: stain of a minister being in league with the devil.

918
01:04:32,400 --> 01:04:36,240
Speaker 1: You mentioned earlier how one of the reasons Governor Fifth

919
01:04:36,280 --> 01:04:39,960
Speaker 1: stepped in was because the jails were packed, right, and

920
01:04:40,040 --> 01:04:42,880
Speaker 1: multiple jails were filling up with people who were either

921
01:04:42,960 --> 01:04:45,400
Speaker 1: being like you said, held for later, we'll we'll we'll

922
01:04:45,440 --> 01:04:48,680
Speaker 1: talk to you again later, or being held for execution

923
01:04:48,800 --> 01:04:52,720
Speaker 1: or trial. And one of the things that I found

924
01:04:52,720 --> 01:04:54,560
Speaker 1: interested in reading about this is some of these jails

925
01:04:54,600 --> 01:04:58,480
Speaker 1: were not very well constructed, They were very secure, and

926
01:04:58,560 --> 01:05:01,320
Speaker 1: people were escaping and there were number people who actually

927
01:05:01,400 --> 01:05:05,600
Speaker 1: escaped and went off to build new lives for themselves. Um.

928
01:05:06,800 --> 01:05:09,520
Speaker 1: When some of the prisoners escaped, it seems to me

929
01:05:09,560 --> 01:05:11,480
Speaker 1: that they would leave to a paper trail of escaping

930
01:05:11,800 --> 01:05:14,720
Speaker 1: or was there a paper trail of that? How do

931
01:05:14,800 --> 01:05:18,720
Speaker 1: we know about the escapes? Uh? In some cases um,

932
01:05:19,840 --> 01:05:24,600
Speaker 1: because warrants was sworn out for them after they had escaped.

933
01:05:25,080 --> 01:05:28,600
Speaker 1: Not an awful lot of escapes. Very often when they

934
01:05:28,720 --> 01:05:31,000
Speaker 1: heard they were about to be arrested, they would skin

935
01:05:31,040 --> 01:05:36,160
Speaker 1: attle a few of them. If you were rich, you

936
01:05:36,200 --> 01:05:39,000
Speaker 1: were treated differently and you could take care of yourself

937
01:05:39,160 --> 01:05:42,160
Speaker 1: much better in jail because in jail you had to

938
01:05:42,200 --> 01:05:45,800
Speaker 1: pay for your own fees. If you wanted to eat, uh,

939
01:05:46,160 --> 01:05:48,600
Speaker 1: there might have been a common pot in which you

940
01:05:48,680 --> 01:05:52,200
Speaker 1: could partake. But if you wanted to eat, often your

941
01:05:52,280 --> 01:05:56,040
Speaker 1: family brought to the food. They'd bring you fresh straw

942
01:05:56,240 --> 01:05:59,000
Speaker 1: so that you would have a mattress that would have

943
01:05:59,520 --> 01:06:02,440
Speaker 1: fresh are in it. Uh. You wanted a stool so

944
01:06:02,600 --> 01:06:06,400
Speaker 1: you didn't go on the cold ground all the time

945
01:06:06,680 --> 01:06:11,960
Speaker 1: that could be brought in. Uh. People like Philip English,

946
01:06:12,920 --> 01:06:18,720
Speaker 1: one of the most richest people in the province, and

947
01:06:18,880 --> 01:06:21,960
Speaker 1: his wife were in jail in Boston, and they were

948
01:06:22,080 --> 01:06:25,880
Speaker 1: given UH freedom during the daytime so they could go

949
01:06:26,000 --> 01:06:29,240
Speaker 1: out and do what they wanted. UH. As we're a

950
01:06:29,320 --> 01:06:34,440
Speaker 1: couple others. He went to a Sunday service in which

951
01:06:34,880 --> 01:06:40,840
Speaker 1: UM Reverend Willard gave a sermon, and his sermon basically said,

952
01:06:41,160 --> 01:06:45,400
Speaker 1: if you are persecuted, you should flee, and it was

953
01:06:45,640 --> 01:06:53,080
Speaker 1: a unadulterated UH message, and both of them left. They

954
01:06:53,160 --> 01:06:57,200
Speaker 1: went to New York until the witchcraft crazies was over,

955
01:06:57,360 --> 01:07:03,600
Speaker 1: and then came back. A few others escaped. The majority

956
01:07:03,640 --> 01:07:06,920
Speaker 1: of them, howevious, were required to stay in jail. And

957
01:07:07,120 --> 01:07:10,520
Speaker 1: after a period of time when it looked like the

958
01:07:10,760 --> 01:07:16,640
Speaker 1: apparitions this specters of the witches, even in jail were

959
01:07:16,720 --> 01:07:19,480
Speaker 1: hurting people. For some reason, they thought if they were

960
01:07:19,560 --> 01:07:23,280
Speaker 1: put in shackles and chains, this would prevent the specter

961
01:07:23,400 --> 01:07:26,360
Speaker 1: from getting away, so many of them then were were

962
01:07:26,440 --> 01:07:31,800
Speaker 1: put in chains for the duration. H. So you've mentioned

963
01:07:32,000 --> 01:07:36,320
Speaker 1: the Mather family a couple of times. Ministers around Massachusetts

964
01:07:36,560 --> 01:07:41,120
Speaker 1: or the Colony of Massachusetts read Mother's book from the

965
01:07:41,200 --> 01:07:46,440
Speaker 1: pulpit as as if it was doctrine um and and

966
01:07:46,600 --> 01:07:52,360
Speaker 1: Brattle circulates a critical letter. How common was it for

967
01:07:52,440 --> 01:07:57,600
Speaker 1: the Massachusetts ministers to coordinate this kind of deeply political messaging.

968
01:07:59,760 --> 01:08:04,160
Speaker 1: Very often the civil magistrates would ask the opinion of

969
01:08:04,400 --> 01:08:07,280
Speaker 1: the learned ministers on something that had to do with

970
01:08:07,400 --> 01:08:11,600
Speaker 1: spiritualism or good contact of that sort of thing. And

971
01:08:11,760 --> 01:08:15,040
Speaker 1: after the execution of Bridget Bishop, who was the first

972
01:08:16,880 --> 01:08:20,160
Speaker 1: accused convicted which to hang, and that was I think

973
01:08:20,240 --> 01:08:26,679
Speaker 1: June tenth, there was a lot of um uh, people

974
01:08:26,800 --> 01:08:29,160
Speaker 1: not happy about what what what had happened and if

975
01:08:29,200 --> 01:08:33,680
Speaker 1: they had done everything properly. So they asked the ministers

976
01:08:33,960 --> 01:08:37,040
Speaker 1: if they would comment about it, and one of the

977
01:08:37,160 --> 01:08:42,680
Speaker 1: comments that came from that was that, um, better ten

978
01:08:42,800 --> 01:08:46,640
Speaker 1: guilty go free than one innocent be executed. They were

979
01:08:46,720 --> 01:08:51,120
Speaker 1: basically saying, take it easy. You've got to use restraint

980
01:08:51,280 --> 01:08:55,200
Speaker 1: on what you're doing because this is a capital case. Um.

981
01:08:56,160 --> 01:08:59,200
Speaker 1: The magistrates, the ones who were there every day and

982
01:08:59,360 --> 01:09:03,360
Speaker 1: saw all these things, really wanted to proceed, and the

983
01:09:04,640 --> 01:09:10,280
Speaker 1: Chief Magistrate, William Stoughton, was absolutely sure that witchcraft was

984
01:09:10,400 --> 01:09:13,479
Speaker 1: a brew and wanted to root it out as quickly

985
01:09:13,560 --> 01:09:17,200
Speaker 1: as possible, even after most of the others had kind

986
01:09:17,280 --> 01:09:21,120
Speaker 1: of thought, at least all we've made some mistakes. If not,

987
01:09:21,479 --> 01:09:25,439
Speaker 1: we've made terrible mistakes. Uh. Stoughton was still pretty sure

988
01:09:25,560 --> 01:09:27,760
Speaker 1: that he had got a bunch of the witches and

989
01:09:27,840 --> 01:09:31,400
Speaker 1: wanted to get more. But it did turn over a

990
01:09:31,479 --> 01:09:34,200
Speaker 1: period of time. It took it was about eight months

991
01:09:34,280 --> 01:09:39,280
Speaker 1: from the first examination to the last execution, and in

992
01:09:39,439 --> 01:09:42,880
Speaker 1: that time a lot of UH minds had been changed.

993
01:09:43,080 --> 01:09:47,840
Speaker 1: Thomas Brattle, who really tells us the workings of the

994
01:09:48,560 --> 01:09:56,000
Speaker 1: court from some of his um writings, UH, if not changes.

995
01:09:56,160 --> 01:09:59,160
Speaker 1: He he did see the light on the other side.

996
01:09:59,640 --> 01:10:02,719
Speaker 1: In smath Or, who was the father of Cotton, probably

997
01:10:02,800 --> 01:10:08,320
Speaker 1: the most learned of the residents of New England at

998
01:10:08,360 --> 01:10:13,520
Speaker 1: the time. UH. He had written a book Remarkable Remarkable Providences,

999
01:10:13,680 --> 01:10:17,439
Speaker 1: in which he had told back in the sixteen eighties

1000
01:10:17,680 --> 01:10:20,800
Speaker 1: of all the witchcraft cases that had happened, and people

1001
01:10:21,000 --> 01:10:26,320
Speaker 1: used his book as good evidence and a way of

1002
01:10:26,560 --> 01:10:29,880
Speaker 1: proceeding on the cases. As he continued to see what

1003
01:10:30,120 --> 01:10:34,720
Speaker 1: was happening, he eventually wrote a book called It was

1004
01:10:34,800 --> 01:10:40,680
Speaker 1: a pamphlet called Cases of Conscience, and that was circulated

1005
01:10:41,160 --> 01:10:45,680
Speaker 1: UH in manuscript two Ministers, two Magistrates, and was the

1006
01:10:45,800 --> 01:10:51,839
Speaker 1: thing that really kind of moved things to being extremely cautious.

1007
01:10:52,320 --> 01:10:54,560
Speaker 1: And it's usually looked upon as being one of the

1008
01:10:54,680 --> 01:10:58,800
Speaker 1: things that uh kind of stopped the witchcraft. H he

1009
01:10:59,240 --> 01:11:02,479
Speaker 1: had a problem with the idea of spectral evidence. How

1010
01:11:02,560 --> 01:11:06,599
Speaker 1: can the person accusing someone else be the only person

1011
01:11:06,720 --> 01:11:10,240
Speaker 1: who sees the evidence that would help haying that person.

1012
01:11:10,680 --> 01:11:14,559
Speaker 1: It just doesn't make a lot of sense, right, Um,

1013
01:11:16,760 --> 01:11:21,679
Speaker 1: So things changed slowly, but those always in the thick

1014
01:11:21,760 --> 01:11:27,760
Speaker 1: of things, UM didn't have that distance to be able

1015
01:11:27,800 --> 01:11:30,960
Speaker 1: to see things a little more clearly. Right. You talk

1016
01:11:30,960 --> 01:11:33,400
Speaker 1: about the sentiment changing over those eight months and the

1017
01:11:34,120 --> 01:11:38,040
Speaker 1: minds being changed little by little and eventually increase. Publishing

1018
01:11:38,120 --> 01:11:42,040
Speaker 1: this pamphlet that really helps people see more. I feel

1019
01:11:42,080 --> 01:11:45,280
Speaker 1: like it's a little bit more logically that they're seeing things. Um.

1020
01:11:45,920 --> 01:11:49,599
Speaker 1: But what it's all said and done, Governor Phipps bans

1021
01:11:49,680 --> 01:11:55,760
Speaker 1: the publication of writing and publishing about these trials. How

1022
01:11:55,920 --> 01:11:59,680
Speaker 1: common was this sort of attempt at I don't know,

1023
01:12:00,080 --> 01:12:03,840
Speaker 1: lencing current events, was it common at all? Or was

1024
01:12:03,920 --> 01:12:08,600
Speaker 1: this very unique in you know, I'm not positive. My

1025
01:12:08,720 --> 01:12:12,000
Speaker 1: inclination is that it happened on occasion when something was

1026
01:12:12,160 --> 01:12:15,920
Speaker 1: very controversial and was was having a life of its own.

1027
01:12:16,960 --> 01:12:20,439
Speaker 1: I think he did it because contrary publications were coming

1028
01:12:20,520 --> 01:12:24,600
Speaker 1: out and it wasn't adding light to the events. It

1029
01:12:24,760 --> 01:12:30,040
Speaker 1: was just helping to muddy everything. And um, so that

1030
01:12:30,280 --> 01:12:33,240
Speaker 1: was kind of put as a caution although things still happen.

1031
01:12:33,840 --> 01:12:37,240
Speaker 1: Many of the printers pretended they were printers in Philadelphia

1032
01:12:37,360 --> 01:12:40,439
Speaker 1: or whatever and still published their stuff, but with a

1033
01:12:40,520 --> 01:12:44,320
Speaker 1: Philadelphia rather than a Boston imprint. And in Old England

1034
01:12:44,840 --> 01:12:48,519
Speaker 1: a number of things were being published. Cotton Matha wrote, um,

1035
01:12:49,800 --> 01:12:53,439
Speaker 1: Wonders of the Invisible World. Uh, he's looked upon today

1036
01:12:53,479 --> 01:12:55,760
Speaker 1: as being the bad guy in all of this, and

1037
01:12:55,880 --> 01:12:59,639
Speaker 1: I think he's just had a real bad press since

1038
01:12:59,760 --> 01:13:02,960
Speaker 1: the eventeenth century. He was more of a cautionary person,

1039
01:13:03,840 --> 01:13:06,880
Speaker 1: but was sure that there were witches. And the governor

1040
01:13:07,000 --> 01:13:10,200
Speaker 1: asked if he would write a narrative of what had happened,

1041
01:13:10,840 --> 01:13:13,920
Speaker 1: and sure, he wanted to show that the government had

1042
01:13:13,960 --> 01:13:16,439
Speaker 1: done the right thing. They always believe that the people

1043
01:13:17,120 --> 01:13:20,800
Speaker 1: uh in power were not doing things capricously, that they

1044
01:13:20,840 --> 01:13:23,360
Speaker 1: were trying to do the right thing. It's just that

1045
01:13:23,520 --> 01:13:28,720
Speaker 1: the information they had was incorrect. Um. So what math

1046
01:13:28,880 --> 01:13:30,920
Speaker 1: did was he took the best cases, the ones that

1047
01:13:31,000 --> 01:13:34,559
Speaker 1: he thought, gotcha, you're a witch, and and recorded those

1048
01:13:34,760 --> 01:13:37,559
Speaker 1: and didn't record the other ones. And then a guy

1049
01:13:37,640 --> 01:13:40,880
Speaker 1: in Boston whose name he was a merchant. His name

1050
01:13:41,000 --> 01:13:45,639
Speaker 1: was Robert caliph Uh. He wrote a book UM actually

1051
01:13:46,120 --> 01:13:49,240
Speaker 1: at the end of the witchcraft controversy, and one of

1052
01:13:49,320 --> 01:13:52,120
Speaker 1: the things that made uh phips say that's it for

1053
01:13:52,200 --> 01:13:56,240
Speaker 1: publications more wonders of the Invisible World. And he tried

1054
01:13:56,280 --> 01:13:59,360
Speaker 1: to show that the math Is were manipulating things. He

1055
01:13:59,520 --> 01:14:03,000
Speaker 1: gave some evidence that we would not have known about

1056
01:14:03,920 --> 01:14:08,360
Speaker 1: UM that was kind of contrary to what supposedly was happening,

1057
01:14:08,880 --> 01:14:15,040
Speaker 1: and was much more sympathetic to the witchcraft victims. Uh

1058
01:14:15,680 --> 01:14:22,760
Speaker 1: hail uh six comes out with this manuscript UM. It's published.

1059
01:14:24,840 --> 01:14:30,360
Speaker 1: The chapter specifically on witchcraft trials is published in Cotton

1060
01:14:30,439 --> 01:14:34,880
Speaker 1: math Is Magnelli Christie Americana, but the full book isn't

1061
01:14:34,920 --> 01:14:41,360
Speaker 1: published until UM the late seventeenth century, and that now

1062
01:14:41,600 --> 01:14:44,960
Speaker 1: is the rarest of the witchcraft volumes. And it's one

1063
01:14:45,040 --> 01:14:48,280
Speaker 1: in which he's trying to say that we, you know,

1064
01:14:48,479 --> 01:14:52,360
Speaker 1: we made mistakes, and primarily the mistakes where we used

1065
01:14:52,920 --> 01:14:57,479
Speaker 1: English precedents rather than the Bible to discover witches. Mhm.

1066
01:14:58,000 --> 01:15:01,840
Speaker 1: It's an interesting take on it. And and he was

1067
01:15:01,920 --> 01:15:07,080
Speaker 1: the one who started from sevent hundred to the present,

1068
01:15:07,840 --> 01:15:10,839
Speaker 1: every generation comes up with their new books of theories

1069
01:15:10,960 --> 01:15:15,280
Speaker 1: and why it happened, and and it always has you know,

1070
01:15:15,439 --> 01:15:19,280
Speaker 1: it has, it has what historians drew over one. It

1071
01:15:19,400 --> 01:15:22,719
Speaker 1: has great primary sources that you can use a number

1072
01:15:22,760 --> 01:15:27,000
Speaker 1: of different ways to it's ay, uh, you know, kind

1073
01:15:27,040 --> 01:15:31,519
Speaker 1: of intriguing aspect of history in which you've got the

1074
01:15:31,640 --> 01:15:35,519
Speaker 1: devil and all that kind of thing. Uh. And it's

1075
01:15:35,560 --> 01:15:38,479
Speaker 1: still a who done it right? And who done it's

1076
01:15:38,520 --> 01:15:43,920
Speaker 1: in history? Always bring the books for it. Um. Sometimes

1077
01:15:43,960 --> 01:15:46,439
Speaker 1: it gets a little boring and nobody talks about it.

1078
01:15:46,520 --> 01:15:50,800
Speaker 1: But we're in a period that's lasted now for thirty

1079
01:15:50,920 --> 01:15:53,519
Speaker 1: years and which a major book comes out every year.

1080
01:15:53,720 --> 01:15:56,920
Speaker 1: You mentioned Stacy Schiff, who did what I think is

1081
01:15:57,000 --> 01:16:00,080
Speaker 1: one of the best books on Salem witchcraft because she

1082
01:16:00,240 --> 01:16:04,479
Speaker 1: takes not just the usual victims that everybody writes about,

1083
01:16:04,560 --> 01:16:09,520
Speaker 1: but she tries to incorporate the entire history of the witchcraft,

1084
01:16:09,680 --> 01:16:13,080
Speaker 1: what happened in and over which was a major aspect

1085
01:16:13,160 --> 01:16:19,639
Speaker 1: of the witchcraft delusion. And um. Other books from about

1086
01:16:19,720 --> 01:16:23,639
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies on come out, and they're always trying

1087
01:16:23,680 --> 01:16:27,760
Speaker 1: to give the definitive theory. And if you look at

1088
01:16:27,840 --> 01:16:30,520
Speaker 1: the books and if you take a look at historiography,

1089
01:16:31,080 --> 01:16:35,960
Speaker 1: of the witchcraft books often to reflect as much of

1090
01:16:36,200 --> 01:16:39,160
Speaker 1: the culture in which they are written as they do

1091
01:16:39,320 --> 01:16:43,000
Speaker 1: about the historic facts. You come up with theories that

1092
01:16:43,080 --> 01:16:47,439
Speaker 1: are now pregnant within our own society, and I have

1093
01:16:47,560 --> 01:16:51,120
Speaker 1: an explanation for it based on what we see and

1094
01:16:51,479 --> 01:16:57,720
Speaker 1: and as observable in uh in eighteen nine century America,

1095
01:16:58,400 --> 01:17:01,320
Speaker 1: being in the area. I live in the Danverus Salem area,

1096
01:17:01,439 --> 01:17:03,360
Speaker 1: so this is all sort of my backyard like it

1097
01:17:03,520 --> 01:17:07,280
Speaker 1: is for you. Um, there's a place in Salem today

1098
01:17:07,439 --> 01:17:11,479
Speaker 1: called Gallows Hill. It's a big, open grassy hill with

1099
01:17:11,560 --> 01:17:13,760
Speaker 1: a park and there's a playground and things like that.

1100
01:17:14,760 --> 01:17:19,080
Speaker 1: But that's not Gallows Hill, is it? Or is this

1101
01:17:19,160 --> 01:17:23,000
Speaker 1: a controversy. Um, it's not so much a controversy. When

1102
01:17:23,040 --> 01:17:26,840
Speaker 1: I was growing up from the from the nineteenth century on,

1103
01:17:27,560 --> 01:17:30,120
Speaker 1: Gallows Hill is a drumlin. It's one of the New

1104
01:17:30,160 --> 01:17:34,200
Speaker 1: England Drumlinds that were created when the ice flows went back.

1105
01:17:34,479 --> 01:17:38,320
Speaker 1: And Uh. You go to the top of Gallows Hill,

1106
01:17:38,439 --> 01:17:40,880
Speaker 1: which I did as a kid. Uh, there's a little

1107
01:17:41,040 --> 01:17:45,320
Speaker 1: um playground there. And when I was very young, they

1108
01:17:45,439 --> 01:17:48,400
Speaker 1: used to show a stump that had been burned and

1109
01:17:48,680 --> 01:17:51,519
Speaker 1: that was supposedly the tree that they used to hang

1110
01:17:51,680 --> 01:17:55,760
Speaker 1: the victims on and that was the popular tradition that

1111
01:17:55,920 --> 01:18:00,400
Speaker 1: they went in a cot with the people can demmed

1112
01:18:00,840 --> 01:18:03,599
Speaker 1: and when all the way up to the top, uh,

1113
01:18:03,720 --> 01:18:06,240
Speaker 1: and then hang them on a tree. Well, that doesn't

1114
01:18:06,280 --> 01:18:08,439
Speaker 1: make a lot of sense. Why would you go that

1115
01:18:08,640 --> 01:18:10,720
Speaker 1: far up? It would be very hard to get to

1116
01:18:10,880 --> 01:18:16,799
Speaker 1: and so forth. Um. Although a lot of primary source

1117
01:18:16,920 --> 01:18:20,320
Speaker 1: materials come down to us, things that have to do

1118
01:18:20,439 --> 01:18:24,040
Speaker 1: with the executions, the gory pot of it generally don't

1119
01:18:24,120 --> 01:18:29,599
Speaker 1: tend to We do have the record that UM Robert

1120
01:18:29,680 --> 01:18:35,040
Speaker 1: Califf did talking about the executions, and he mentioned that

1121
01:18:35,200 --> 01:18:38,320
Speaker 1: after they were executed, a number of the bodies were

1122
01:18:38,400 --> 01:18:42,439
Speaker 1: taken to crevices near the place of execution, thrown in

1123
01:18:42,520 --> 01:18:48,479
Speaker 1: there and very frivolously uh uh covered over, although you

1124
01:18:48,560 --> 01:18:50,880
Speaker 1: could see a hand sticking up of that type of thing.

1125
01:18:51,760 --> 01:18:55,519
Speaker 1: And in the seventeen nineties there's a record of UM

1126
01:18:56,720 --> 01:18:59,240
Speaker 1: finding some bodies up there, but they were in shrouds.

1127
01:19:00,160 --> 01:19:03,640
Speaker 1: And it's always been kind of a nebulous thing of

1128
01:19:03,960 --> 01:19:08,160
Speaker 1: what was going on. A very good researcher back in

1129
01:19:08,479 --> 01:19:12,400
Speaker 1: the late nineteenth century uh and then UH did a

1130
01:19:12,439 --> 01:19:15,439
Speaker 1: couple of articles in the early twentieth century. His name

1131
01:19:15,520 --> 01:19:20,840
Speaker 1: was Sydney Pearly, and he was a great historian. UH.

1132
01:19:21,240 --> 01:19:27,040
Speaker 1: And he came up with the belief that the execution

1133
01:19:27,160 --> 01:19:30,320
Speaker 1: place was actually at the bottom of the hill uh

1134
01:19:30,479 --> 01:19:35,679
Speaker 1: near Proctor Street in Salem, right on the Salem Peabody

1135
01:19:35,760 --> 01:19:40,000
Speaker 1: border today. UH. And he took pictures of the crevices

1136
01:19:40,120 --> 01:19:43,840
Speaker 1: that he thought they would have been thrown into and

1137
01:19:44,080 --> 01:19:49,120
Speaker 1: came up with a very good, uh believable story. UH

1138
01:19:49,439 --> 01:19:53,840
Speaker 1: used one piece of evidence that showed UH someone was

1139
01:19:53,920 --> 01:19:56,280
Speaker 1: in a house at the time of execution and from

1140
01:19:56,360 --> 01:20:02,120
Speaker 1: their house they could see the gallows of bodies hanging. UM.

1141
01:20:02,880 --> 01:20:05,719
Speaker 1: Then a few years ago, UM, there was some interest

1142
01:20:05,800 --> 01:20:08,840
Speaker 1: in seeing if they could find where this was located.

1143
01:20:09,360 --> 01:20:16,400
Speaker 1: And a group UH including a cinematographer, UM, professor from

1144
01:20:16,520 --> 01:20:20,640
Speaker 1: Salem State and a few others UM got together and

1145
01:20:21,439 --> 01:20:24,439
Speaker 1: came up with an area that was still public land.

1146
01:20:25,160 --> 01:20:32,519
Speaker 1: UM behind I think it's a CVS Walgreens. Okay, And

1147
01:20:33,520 --> 01:20:38,800
Speaker 1: they pretty much confirmed. And a woman by the name

1148
01:20:38,880 --> 01:20:44,240
Speaker 1: of Maryland Roach and nice researcher does exquisite work. She

1149
01:20:44,360 --> 01:20:47,360
Speaker 1: found another couple of little pieces of evidence that seemed

1150
01:20:47,400 --> 01:20:54,799
Speaker 1: to relate to their They did um UM underground scanning

1151
01:20:55,080 --> 01:20:57,200
Speaker 1: and some other stuff didn't really come up with any

1152
01:20:57,240 --> 01:21:02,559
Speaker 1: evidence there, but they basically confer uh, using modern day

1153
01:21:02,640 --> 01:21:05,439
Speaker 1: mapping and so forth, that this was the area that

1154
01:21:05,520 --> 01:21:08,439
Speaker 1: Pearley had talked about, and to them it was probably

1155
01:21:08,520 --> 01:21:14,240
Speaker 1: the most logical place. UM. Like some things that happened

1156
01:21:14,280 --> 01:21:19,080
Speaker 1: in life. UM, it just exploded. Uh and everybody around

1157
01:21:19,120 --> 01:21:23,519
Speaker 1: the world UMU who was interested saw this story about

1158
01:21:23,800 --> 01:21:29,080
Speaker 1: discovering where the victims were executed. And then the city

1159
01:21:29,360 --> 01:21:35,240
Speaker 1: of Salem decided to put a little memorial there. It's

1160
01:21:35,280 --> 01:21:39,960
Speaker 1: a very tasteful one. UM. I'm out of the memorial business. Now.

1161
01:21:40,080 --> 01:21:43,320
Speaker 1: I think we have memorialized the Salem, which is more

1162
01:21:43,400 --> 01:21:47,959
Speaker 1: than ever in. We made a major memorial in Danvers,

1163
01:21:48,439 --> 01:21:51,080
Speaker 1: right across the street from where the original meeting house

1164
01:21:51,200 --> 01:21:56,479
Speaker 1: was located. UM. Salem did a wonderful memorial uh next

1165
01:21:56,560 --> 01:22:03,960
Speaker 1: to the Chatti Street burial ground. UH. Middleton tops Field, UM.

1166
01:22:04,560 --> 01:22:08,280
Speaker 1: Rowley also did memorials uh, and now we have a

1167
01:22:08,360 --> 01:22:12,320
Speaker 1: second one in Salem. So I've said, you know, that's

1168
01:22:12,400 --> 01:22:17,679
Speaker 1: enough memorials uh, But they did it, and UM last summer,

1169
01:22:17,720 --> 01:22:20,160
Speaker 1: I think it was I went to the to the

1170
01:22:20,280 --> 01:22:24,519
Speaker 1: dedication there and I believe that's probably a logical place

1171
01:22:24,600 --> 01:22:27,160
Speaker 1: for it to be. I still have a problem with

1172
01:22:27,360 --> 01:22:32,280
Speaker 1: some of the researches in the mode of execution. UH.

1173
01:22:32,439 --> 01:22:34,640
Speaker 1: This is kind of a real minor thing, but what

1174
01:22:35,040 --> 01:22:39,920
Speaker 1: historians always like to talk about. Um uh. For years,

1175
01:22:40,000 --> 01:22:44,040
Speaker 1: I've been involved in witchcraft studies and I UH was

1176
01:22:44,320 --> 01:22:48,200
Speaker 1: historical consultant to a PBS American Playhouse movie back in

1177
01:22:48,320 --> 01:22:51,960
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties called Three Sovereignts for Sarah. It's stodd

1178
01:22:52,080 --> 01:22:56,400
Speaker 1: Vanessa Redgrave, and it had to do with my ancestors sister,

1179
01:22:57,000 --> 01:23:02,040
Speaker 1: Sarah Klois who survived, and Mary Esty and Rebecca Durasaw,

1180
01:23:02,160 --> 01:23:06,679
Speaker 1: three of them being sisters. And UM, I really loved

1181
01:23:06,840 --> 01:23:09,400
Speaker 1: the program. I had a lot to do with how

1182
01:23:09,520 --> 01:23:13,120
Speaker 1: it looks. They gave me that UM. It wasn't a

1183
01:23:13,160 --> 01:23:17,559
Speaker 1: commercial thing, so we used public money, so the historian

1184
01:23:17,640 --> 01:23:21,560
Speaker 1: Steve nisson Baum and I with a consultants. UM. The

1185
01:23:21,640 --> 01:23:24,439
Speaker 1: one thing I think I did a major mistake was

1186
01:23:24,600 --> 01:23:28,920
Speaker 1: having it as the hanging tree. We found a tree.

1187
01:23:28,960 --> 01:23:31,280
Speaker 1: We had to look all over Essex County to find one,

1188
01:23:31,560 --> 01:23:35,720
Speaker 1: and we finally found one fairly big in um in

1189
01:23:36,080 --> 01:23:40,160
Speaker 1: uh Hamilton's UH, and we did the thing there and

1190
01:23:40,280 --> 01:23:43,320
Speaker 1: I was saying, this is very awkward to do. And

1191
01:23:43,520 --> 01:23:47,160
Speaker 1: then I did research on the method of hanging in

1192
01:23:47,200 --> 01:23:50,479
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century England and New England. All of the

1193
01:23:51,640 --> 01:23:54,920
Speaker 1: prince to come out show a gallows and it's very

1194
01:23:55,000 --> 01:23:58,240
Speaker 1: simple gallows. I believe that the one used in Salem

1195
01:23:58,400 --> 01:24:06,120
Speaker 1: was two up posts and a horizontal beam uh nicely Chamford,

1196
01:24:06,240 --> 01:24:09,040
Speaker 1: so that it was smooth. It didn't look natural. Puritans

1197
01:24:09,160 --> 01:24:13,280
Speaker 1: didn't Puritans always had to manipulate nature. They didn't believe

1198
01:24:14,439 --> 01:24:18,360
Speaker 1: that that humans should use natural things in their own state,

1199
01:24:18,680 --> 01:24:22,720
Speaker 1: because what good to humans if they can't manipulate nature? Um,

1200
01:24:23,680 --> 01:24:25,639
Speaker 1: And what you do is you put a ladder against

1201
01:24:25,720 --> 01:24:28,320
Speaker 1: the tree. And you know you've seen the old West

1202
01:24:29,040 --> 01:24:33,599
Speaker 1: uh hanging nooses, the thirteen coils and the drop front

1203
01:24:33,680 --> 01:24:36,479
Speaker 1: which is supposed to break your neck. That's not how

1204
01:24:36,560 --> 01:24:40,920
Speaker 1: they died, unfortunately. In sixte two, the executioner and the

1205
01:24:41,240 --> 01:24:46,200
Speaker 1: executed one went up the ladder. Ah she was or

1206
01:24:46,320 --> 01:24:50,040
Speaker 1: he was bound, and the four the term is they

1207
01:24:50,080 --> 01:24:55,599
Speaker 1: were turned off, which meant the executioner would take their

1208
01:24:55,760 --> 01:24:58,920
Speaker 1: legs and turn them off the ladder and then they

1209
01:24:58,920 --> 01:25:02,479
Speaker 1: would swing and after a period of time they would

1210
01:25:02,520 --> 01:25:05,320
Speaker 1: strangle to death. And the next one they would just

1211
01:25:05,439 --> 01:25:08,920
Speaker 1: move the ladder and do it much more efficient, uh,

1212
01:25:09,479 --> 01:25:13,840
Speaker 1: much more in keeping with the historic record. UM. They

1213
01:25:13,960 --> 01:25:20,479
Speaker 1: refer to the gallows on a few different uh um documents. UH.

1214
01:25:20,720 --> 01:25:23,000
Speaker 1: And I think that's how it was done. That's the

1215
01:25:23,040 --> 01:25:26,760
Speaker 1: way Puritans, I believe, would have done it. Clearly, there

1216
01:25:26,800 --> 01:25:31,720
Speaker 1: are a lot of hobbyist historians who they find a

1217
01:25:31,840 --> 01:25:35,600
Speaker 1: historical moment in time that they are passionate about, and

1218
01:25:35,680 --> 01:25:38,880
Speaker 1: a lot of people it's salem for them. But you

1219
01:25:40,320 --> 01:25:42,600
Speaker 1: you've shown that this is this is your career. You know,

1220
01:25:42,680 --> 01:25:45,920
Speaker 1: you talk about memories of childhood being in your grandmother's

1221
01:25:46,120 --> 01:25:49,479
Speaker 1: library reading old books, but then grad school and here

1222
01:25:49,520 --> 01:25:51,439
Speaker 1: you are today. You know, this has been your life.

1223
01:25:51,720 --> 01:25:55,200
Speaker 1: And so at the end of the day, if there's

1224
01:25:57,120 --> 01:25:59,519
Speaker 1: if there's one thing you hope people can take away

1225
01:25:59,600 --> 01:26:05,200
Speaker 1: from the moment in time, what is it? Uh? To me?

1226
01:26:05,400 --> 01:26:11,360
Speaker 1: The witchcraft really boils down to UM two lessons. And

1227
01:26:11,880 --> 01:26:16,960
Speaker 1: back in we had the three anniversary and for over

1228
01:26:17,040 --> 01:26:21,160
Speaker 1: a year, all of the communities around us, UH, we're

1229
01:26:21,240 --> 01:26:25,920
Speaker 1: doing major programs and projects and so forth. And UM,

1230
01:26:27,240 --> 01:26:29,920
Speaker 1: I thought that this should be a real commemoration and

1231
01:26:31,160 --> 01:26:36,639
Speaker 1: weird word a celebration. Um. To me, there are two

1232
01:26:36,720 --> 01:26:40,120
Speaker 1: major things that came out of the witchcraft. One is

1233
01:26:40,240 --> 01:26:43,479
Speaker 1: the thing we have here at Bantaid every day now.

1234
01:26:43,920 --> 01:26:46,559
Speaker 1: The President of the United States is always talking about

1235
01:26:47,400 --> 01:26:50,960
Speaker 1: being involved in a witch hunt. That term has been

1236
01:26:51,080 --> 01:26:56,040
Speaker 1: used for a hundred more years about when uh, you

1237
01:26:56,200 --> 01:27:00,240
Speaker 1: take a little scanned evidence and a whole bunch of

1238
01:27:00,320 --> 01:27:03,519
Speaker 1: people who are frightened by some things and create a

1239
01:27:03,640 --> 01:27:08,320
Speaker 1: witch hunt. Um. And it stems back to six six

1240
01:27:08,920 --> 01:27:11,280
Speaker 1: two was a witch hunt And what it was was

1241
01:27:11,439 --> 01:27:16,160
Speaker 1: a period in which normal, sensible, reasonable people, because of

1242
01:27:16,280 --> 01:27:23,280
Speaker 1: certain fears, frustrations, and a culture that was undergoing certain crises,

1243
01:27:23,920 --> 01:27:29,680
Speaker 1: start acting irrationally. And I thought that the Salem witchcraft

1244
01:27:29,800 --> 01:27:33,200
Speaker 1: is a good example of being picked up and used.

1245
01:27:33,280 --> 01:27:36,439
Speaker 1: And we we did this without a memorial. We actually

1246
01:27:36,680 --> 01:27:40,559
Speaker 1: uh say it on a couple of signages there. Um.

1247
01:27:42,080 --> 01:27:45,840
Speaker 1: You have to confront your own period of witch hunts

1248
01:27:45,960 --> 01:27:51,120
Speaker 1: with clear vision and bravery, because this is not something

1249
01:27:51,240 --> 01:27:54,840
Speaker 1: that happened back in sixto. It's almost always with us,

1250
01:27:55,280 --> 01:28:00,519
Speaker 1: from the interment of the h Japanese American h in

1251
01:28:00,640 --> 01:28:05,479
Speaker 1: concentration camps UH to the Army McCarthy hearings, the Red

1252
01:28:05,560 --> 01:28:09,519
Speaker 1: scare to time and time again. These kinds of things

1253
01:28:09,640 --> 01:28:13,560
Speaker 1: happen even in our own times. Most of us experienced

1254
01:28:13,600 --> 01:28:19,000
Speaker 1: back in the nineteen eighties the horrendous UH legal prostigures

1255
01:28:19,240 --> 01:28:23,720
Speaker 1: against um uh nursery school teachers who were accused of

1256
01:28:23,840 --> 01:28:28,519
Speaker 1: doing sexually deviant things, including killing children and killing animals

1257
01:28:29,160 --> 01:28:34,360
Speaker 1: uh in nursery UH schools um, which turned out really

1258
01:28:34,439 --> 01:28:36,880
Speaker 1: not to be the case, and there are still people

1259
01:28:36,960 --> 01:28:39,920
Speaker 1: in this country who are in prison because of it.

1260
01:28:40,960 --> 01:28:44,479
Speaker 1: And the evidence that has come out afterwards shows that

1261
01:28:44,720 --> 01:28:48,800
Speaker 1: it was a period in which people were because of

1262
01:28:48,920 --> 01:28:52,000
Speaker 1: fears and so forth, they were seeing boogeyman and they

1263
01:28:52,040 --> 01:28:56,880
Speaker 1: were seeing things that not a shred of real evidence existed. Uh.

1264
01:28:57,200 --> 01:29:04,240
Speaker 1: And by our mistake, things that we should understand go bad.

1265
01:29:05,360 --> 01:29:07,960
Speaker 1: And if you bring it back to the period itself

1266
01:29:08,120 --> 01:29:13,040
Speaker 1: six Uh. In Danvers, we used to not like to

1267
01:29:13,120 --> 01:29:17,040
Speaker 1: talk about witchcraft. It was a scourge on our town

1268
01:29:17,720 --> 01:29:20,000
Speaker 1: and was something that if people want to go and

1269
01:29:20,120 --> 01:29:23,000
Speaker 1: see the witchcraft, send them to Salem. Uh. You know,

1270
01:29:23,200 --> 01:29:25,920
Speaker 1: let him, let them see the tourism in Salem, but

1271
01:29:26,080 --> 01:29:27,720
Speaker 1: we don't want to talk about it. When I was

1272
01:29:27,760 --> 01:29:31,479
Speaker 1: growing up, that was the case. You didn't talk about

1273
01:29:31,520 --> 01:29:35,360
Speaker 1: witchcraft in polite society. As a matter of fact, when

1274
01:29:35,400 --> 01:29:40,559
Speaker 1: I started doing the excavation of the Paris House site seventy,

1275
01:29:40,880 --> 01:29:44,200
Speaker 1: I can remember early on we would try to bring

1276
01:29:44,280 --> 01:29:46,479
Speaker 1: school groups up and give them a little talk about

1277
01:29:46,520 --> 01:29:49,360
Speaker 1: the excavation we were doing and stuff. And there was

1278
01:29:49,520 --> 01:29:55,559
Speaker 1: a two sisters across, straight elderly women who I can

1279
01:29:55,600 --> 01:29:58,280
Speaker 1: remember on one occasion when I was bringing a group up,

1280
01:29:59,000 --> 01:30:01,799
Speaker 1: they came out in the which and they actually shook

1281
01:30:01,960 --> 01:30:05,080
Speaker 1: their fist at me and said, why are you bringing

1282
01:30:05,160 --> 01:30:08,960
Speaker 1: this up? This is not something we should be talking about. UM.

1283
01:30:09,880 --> 01:30:12,439
Speaker 1: It changed a bit after we did the excavation and

1284
01:30:12,560 --> 01:30:17,479
Speaker 1: so forth, and my take on it is that, yeah,

1285
01:30:17,520 --> 01:30:21,400
Speaker 1: it was a terrible time. The civil authorities failed, the population,

1286
01:30:21,920 --> 01:30:28,920
Speaker 1: the religious uh people failed the situation. UM families even

1287
01:30:29,560 --> 01:30:33,000
Speaker 1: urged people in their own family to confess because they

1288
01:30:33,080 --> 01:30:37,960
Speaker 1: must be witches. Every institution failed. But what you do

1289
01:30:38,160 --> 01:30:43,120
Speaker 1: have is really a shining example of average people, some

1290
01:30:43,320 --> 01:30:46,639
Speaker 1: of them really kind of bastards, and some of them

1291
01:30:46,960 --> 01:30:50,960
Speaker 1: nice religious people who, when confronted with the worst crisis

1292
01:30:51,080 --> 01:30:54,240
Speaker 1: in their life, uh, you know that you're a witch,

1293
01:30:54,400 --> 01:30:57,320
Speaker 1: that you're gonna go to hell, that uh you're you're

1294
01:30:57,360 --> 01:31:01,080
Speaker 1: trying to destroy us instead of confessed sing like fifty

1295
01:31:01,160 --> 01:31:05,160
Speaker 1: people did to at least stay execution. And luckily for them,

1296
01:31:06,520 --> 01:31:09,479
Speaker 1: things worked out because the witchcraft was over and people

1297
01:31:09,520 --> 01:31:13,480
Speaker 1: started realizing their mistakes, so that none of those confesses

1298
01:31:13,640 --> 01:31:17,479
Speaker 1: ever were executed. But the nineteen who were executed by

1299
01:31:17,600 --> 01:31:21,439
Speaker 1: hanging UH don't share much in common except that they

1300
01:31:21,560 --> 01:31:26,080
Speaker 1: believed in truth being much more important than life itself.

1301
01:31:26,479 --> 01:31:31,680
Speaker 1: They would not belie themselves UH for survival. And I

1302
01:31:31,880 --> 01:31:39,639
Speaker 1: think that's remarkable, especially with you know, fairly uneducated, hard

1303
01:31:39,720 --> 01:31:43,760
Speaker 1: working people who always tried to do what they were

1304
01:31:43,760 --> 01:31:46,640
Speaker 1: supposed to do, and then when told by authority you

1305
01:31:46,760 --> 01:31:51,040
Speaker 1: must confess, said no. Uh. As as I mentioned before,

1306
01:31:52,680 --> 01:31:59,200
Speaker 1: George Jacobs, when confronted with us, said, um, uh, I'll

1307
01:31:59,280 --> 01:32:02,080
Speaker 1: stand in the true of Christ. I know nothing of witchcraft.

1308
01:32:02,400 --> 01:32:07,240
Speaker 1: And you do get these heroic words from these average people,

1309
01:32:07,640 --> 01:32:11,720
Speaker 1: And to me, that's so important. We in history talk

1310
01:32:11,760 --> 01:32:14,679
Speaker 1: about the famous and the infamous, and the battles and whatever,

1311
01:32:15,040 --> 01:32:19,200
Speaker 1: But here the personal crisis occurred and these people would

1312
01:32:19,280 --> 01:32:25,439
Speaker 1: not bend to anything and UH. Because of it, we

1313
01:32:25,640 --> 01:32:30,960
Speaker 1: probably know more about the pilgrims who went on the Mayflower.

1314
01:32:31,360 --> 01:32:36,160
Speaker 1: Average people and the witches in Swo than anybody else

1315
01:32:36,479 --> 01:32:40,320
Speaker 1: who was just a common person who lived four years ago.

1316
01:32:40,920 --> 01:32:45,760
Speaker 1: And the monument we have in danvers Um tries to

1317
01:32:45,880 --> 01:32:50,840
Speaker 1: kind of show that in that uh, we have the

1318
01:32:50,960 --> 01:32:55,240
Speaker 1: shackles of the past, the chains that once we're around

1319
01:32:55,320 --> 01:32:59,360
Speaker 1: their feet and arms being broken by the book of

1320
01:32:59,479 --> 01:33:04,639
Speaker 1: life history, which eventually will tell the truth of what happens.

1321
01:33:05,320 --> 01:33:10,280
Speaker 1: And here people who are universally condemned in now become

1322
01:33:10,880 --> 01:33:14,880
Speaker 1: more heroic than they actually were, but still people whose

1323
01:33:15,200 --> 01:33:20,680
Speaker 1: um beliefs really should be emulated. Richard, thank you so

1324
01:33:20,880 --> 01:33:24,479
Speaker 1: much for talking with me. You greatly appreciate it. My pleasure.

1325
01:33:34,040 --> 01:33:37,920
Speaker 1: This episode of Unobscured was executive produced by Me, Matt Frederick,

1326
01:33:38,080 --> 01:33:41,400
Speaker 1: and Alex Williams, with music by Chad Lawson and audio

1327
01:33:41,520 --> 01:33:46,120
Speaker 1: engineering by Alex Williams. The Unobscured website has everything you

1328
01:33:46,280 --> 01:33:48,800
Speaker 1: need to get the most out of the podcast. There's

1329
01:33:48,840 --> 01:33:52,400
Speaker 1: a resource library of maps, charts, and links to Salem

1330
01:33:52,479 --> 01:33:56,200
Speaker 1: document archives online, as well as a suggested reading list

1331
01:33:56,439 --> 01:34:00,040
Speaker 1: and a page with all of our historian biographies. And

1332
01:34:00,120 --> 01:34:03,479
Speaker 1: as always, thanks for supporting this show. If you love it,

1333
01:34:03,800 --> 01:34:07,880
Speaker 1: head over to Apple podcasts dot com. Slash Unobscured and

1334
01:34:08,200 --> 01:34:10,960
Speaker 1: leave a written review and a star rating. It makes

1335
01:34:11,000 --> 01:34:14,759
Speaker 1: a huge difference for the show's growth, and as always,

1336
01:34:15,720 --> 01:34:22,240
Speaker 1: thanks for listening. H