Speaker 1: Our historian interview today is with Richard Drask. Since nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two, he served as the archivist for the town
Speaker 1: of Danverse, that's Old Salem Village, overseeing one of the
Speaker 1: most extensive imprint collections on Salem witchcraft in the country.
Speaker 1: His expertise in the Salem witchcraft era has allowed him
Speaker 1: to direct the excavation of the Samuel Paris Parsonage archaeological site.
Speaker 1: He's also served as curator of the sixteen seventy eight
Speaker 1: Rebecca Nurse Homestead and is the author of the book
Speaker 1: The Devil Hath Been Raised and co editor of the
Speaker 1: two thousand nine Cambridge University Press volume Records of the
Speaker 1: Salem witch Hunt. Not only that, but he's a descendant
Speaker 1: of several witchcraft victims. He has taught American history and architecture,
Speaker 1: was an eighteenth century re enactor for over two decades,
Speaker 1: and has lectured extensively throughout New England. Trasca served as
Speaker 1: a consultant for CBS News, the President John F. Kennedy
Speaker 1: Assassination Records Review Board, and the National Archives. And I
Speaker 1: had a chance to sit down with Trask this past
Speaker 1: summer and we had a great chat that I can't
Speaker 1: wait to share with you. So without further delay, let's
Speaker 1: get on with the show. This is the Unobscured Interview
Speaker 1: series for season one. I'm Aaron Mankey. My name is
Speaker 1: Richard Trask. I'm a county in the town of Danvers
Speaker 1: and most people haven't heard of the name Danvers before.
Speaker 1: But our old name was Salem Village and this is
Speaker 1: ground zero of the witchcraft of Salem Village in six
Speaker 1: And as a kid, I used to go to my
Speaker 1: grandparents very often, and my grandmother would tell me stories
Speaker 1: about one of our ancestors who was hanged as a witch,
Speaker 1: Mary Esty. She was a sister of Rebecca Nurris More,
Speaker 1: well known of the witchcraft victims. And UH. I used
Speaker 1: to look at a book in their small library, which
Speaker 1: was early twentieth century books called Salem Witchcraft by H.
Speaker 1: Fellow by the name of Nevins, and that just got
Speaker 1: me very interested in the subject, and I've been with
Speaker 1: it since almost an adolescent. Um, well, let's start with
Speaker 1: a basic question, then, what was a witch in Salem
Speaker 1: according to the English uh, which was and this was
Speaker 1: the same with most of Europe at the time, which
Speaker 1: was a person who had aid a covenant, a pact
Speaker 1: with the devil, whereby they would gain uh knowledge power
Speaker 1: uh and be able to do things or change things
Speaker 1: that were typically unnatural. And for that, the devil gave
Speaker 1: them this power and they were going to serve him. Uh.
Speaker 1: They often were given imps or familiars which were unseeable uh,
Speaker 1: things that would do evil to people. Uh. And they
Speaker 1: would have to suckle energy from the witch. And that's
Speaker 1: why and many of the witchcraft cases, they're always looking
Speaker 1: for what are called witch marks, a witch tits that
Speaker 1: the imps would be able to suck energy from the
Speaker 1: witch itself and which was a diabolical thing according to
Speaker 1: the uh people of the time. We're not talking about
Speaker 1: Wiccan history and the witches who tend to be around
Speaker 1: this country today. This was a diabolical thing in which
Speaker 1: they worshiped and tried to do the devil's call and
Speaker 1: usually took the form of afflicting the the large air
Speaker 1: quote good Christians of the area. Yes, and in Salem
Speaker 1: Village in siou when they discovered that which is were about,
Speaker 1: the whole purpose of it was to bring down the
Speaker 1: Puritan Commonwealth of Massachusetts. They looked at themselves as being
Speaker 1: the elect of God, the the new Israelites of old
Speaker 1: who were establishing a city upon the hill, and the
Speaker 1: Devil obviously would want to combat that type of thing,
Speaker 1: and that's why they believe that the Devil was coming
Speaker 1: to Salem Village into all of mass Bay to bring
Speaker 1: God's Kingdom on Earth down. Well, you know you mentioned
Speaker 1: mass Bay and in this the start of this call
Speaker 1: it a colony, but it was a lot of shots
Speaker 1: fired of groups of people coming over. We talked before
Speaker 1: we started recording about Ennicott and and Conan's and how
Speaker 1: they brought people with them and it was more of
Speaker 1: a business venture. But can you describe the way that
Speaker 1: the Puritan faith shaped life in the New England colonies. Well,
Speaker 1: the Puritans were a sect in Old England which believed
Speaker 1: that the Church of England was still too Catholic, uh,
Speaker 1: and what they wanted to do was purify, thus the
Speaker 1: word Puritan uh the religion so that it didn't smack
Speaker 1: of papestry or Catholicism. And Uh. They tried to live
Speaker 1: in England. They were abused, not significantly but somewhat. A
Speaker 1: number of them eventually decided to go to the New World. Um.
Speaker 1: They latched onto an economic device of the mass Bay Colony,
Speaker 1: and once they got here, they for a good generation
Speaker 1: or two were pretty much independent to do what they wanted,
Speaker 1: and they looked upon themselves as uh John Winthrop would
Speaker 1: later say, establishing a new kingdom upon the Hill. And
Speaker 1: the first Puritans in Old England and New England were
Speaker 1: very staunch believers. As they came to the New World
Speaker 1: and kind of um established themselves, and as they got
Speaker 1: a little more comfortable, they backslid a bit. But the
Speaker 1: first uh uh Puritans, John Endicott being one of them,
Speaker 1: were very staunch in their beliefs and uh did not
Speaker 1: countenance um outside agitated is coming in. They persecuted the
Speaker 1: Quakers for a period of time until the Home government
Speaker 1: said you can't do that. Uh. They didn't like Catholics,
Speaker 1: they didn't like really any other people coming in here
Speaker 1: because they believe that they knew the truth and they
Speaker 1: didn't want to uh have it uh become watered down
Speaker 1: by other people. So they weren't true democrats. They were
Speaker 1: people who believe that they wanted to establish and continue
Speaker 1: their believes. Well, it sounds like they they came in
Speaker 1: early with an amount of power in autonomy, being thousands
Speaker 1: of miles from England. UM, and held on at that power.
Speaker 1: What did power look like in colonial New England? Um?
Speaker 1: And who had access to that power? Well, the popular
Speaker 1: belief is that, um, the Puritans were controlled by the clergy.
Speaker 1: But that's really not the case, especially during the witchcraft.
Speaker 1: We find that with a few exceptions, and the exceptions
Speaker 1: of people who ministers within the communities that are being
Speaker 1: affected by witchcraft, most of the others, including the very
Speaker 1: fame Miss math or family and other theologians who lived
Speaker 1: in the Boston area, tried to stem the tide of witchcraft, saying,
Speaker 1: hold on, we've got to make sure we're not making
Speaker 1: any mistakes. It was the civil authorities, and Massachusetts was
Speaker 1: a civil established government. Uh and uh, generally the government
Speaker 1: tended to be looking for which is much more so
Speaker 1: than the clergy. Why do you think that was? Probably
Speaker 1: because if you look at the original transcripts, and the
Speaker 1: wonderful thing about Salem witchcraft is that, Um, it's a
Speaker 1: relatively minor event in world history. UM. And if you
Speaker 1: go to England or the continent, hundreds, if not thousands
Speaker 1: of people were affected by it, year in and year out.
Speaker 1: And the numbers are so much more dramatic than what
Speaker 1: happened in Salem Village. But the thing about Salem Village
Speaker 1: is Puritan's kept good records. And what we can do
Speaker 1: is we can read what one of the um accused,
Speaker 1: which is is saying uh during the civil process against them. Uh.
Speaker 1: You can hear um. One of my favorite favorite, which
Speaker 1: is is George Jacobs and George Jacobs when confronted at
Speaker 1: his examination eventually after being badget and Badge had said,
Speaker 1: well burn me and hang me, but I'll stand in
Speaker 1: the truth of Christ. I know nothing of witchcraft. So
Speaker 1: we can read what these people said, you know, four
Speaker 1: years ago, and in some cases you can barely read
Speaker 1: it because it's they didn't know good English, they didn't
Speaker 1: know how to spell properly. And some of the petitions
Speaker 1: or depositions done by common Yeoman farmers are very revealing
Speaker 1: and also revealing and how they actually spoke. So we
Speaker 1: have something in the way of about nine hundred documents
Speaker 1: that survive that include every aspect of the legal procedures. UH.
Speaker 1: And because of this, it's become very attractive to historians
Speaker 1: because here you have real good, primary source material that
Speaker 1: you can use, and you have so many wonderful quotes
Speaker 1: in there. Uh. And those who recorded were not people
Speaker 1: who were sympathetic to the accused witches. Reverend Samuel Paris
Speaker 1: was asked to in court right down some of the testimony.
Speaker 1: And although a lot of people say, oh, Paris is
Speaker 1: so much involved in this, and how could you have
Speaker 1: someone like him or Thomas Putnam, the father of the
Speaker 1: chief Witchcraft accused of writing depositions, uh, they indicated often
Speaker 1: that I'm trying to I'm paraphrasing, I'm trying to record
Speaker 1: exactly as what was said, not being prejudicial to any side. Right,
Speaker 1: So you do get these heroic uh quotes that people
Speaker 1: back at that time gave, and you can kind of
Speaker 1: see at least a little reveal of the psyche of
Speaker 1: some of the people and what was going on and
Speaker 1: in and in what's not said as well, in places
Speaker 1: where the records seemed to go silent, there's something being
Speaker 1: said there as well. Maybe it's become too overwhelming, there's
Speaker 1: too much commotion in the room, or I don't feel
Speaker 1: like writing this sentence down. You know that's a possibility
Speaker 1: to and we do know that probably hundreds of other
Speaker 1: documents have disappeared once in a while. UM. We find
Speaker 1: some of the documents often there uh in we've just
Speaker 1: not looked hot enough within the traditional sources that they
Speaker 1: located there. Other times something pops up that became an
Speaker 1: archival astroy centuries ago and it comes back in. So
Speaker 1: UM did pop up locally, sometimes locally. Sometimes they're in
Speaker 1: collections that people had when the witchcraft was over, many
Speaker 1: of these documents scot scattered, uh and later historians. There
Speaker 1: was a governor of Massachusetts during the pre Revolutionary period,
Speaker 1: Thomas Hutchison, who wrote a history of Massachusetts, and he
Speaker 1: actually was given a whole bunch of these very important documents.
Speaker 1: And Hutchison was a Tory, and during the Stamp Act
Speaker 1: crisis of seventeen sixty five, when the American Provincials were
Speaker 1: mad at England, they attacked his house and they scattered
Speaker 1: all of his papers outside on the ground and so forth.
Speaker 1: So a lot of these papers went missing because of
Speaker 1: the riots of seventeen sixty five. Wow, it's a puzzle
Speaker 1: still finding pieces. I like that. UM. We talked sometimes
Speaker 1: about the Salem Trials as an example of women's and
Speaker 1: girls voices breaking into the historical record, UM, women and
Speaker 1: girls played big roles in the crisis. As we dip
Speaker 1: into the whole story, we see that over and over again,
Speaker 1: both as accusers and as accused. You know, they're on
Speaker 1: both sides of the arguments or the event. Even so,
Speaker 1: all of the judges were men, and when the trials
Speaker 1: are ended, men retake the center stage. Life goes on
Speaker 1: and it's men at the center again. Can you maybe
Speaker 1: describe some of the gender dynamics of this crisis? Sure, Um,
Speaker 1: In the seventeenth century UM, the world was made up
Speaker 1: of males who dominated, and then the women folk. It
Speaker 1: is true, however, that when you can see once in
Speaker 1: a while, in not only Witchcraft but other documents, that
Speaker 1: women ruled the household, whether or not they were supposedly
Speaker 1: in charge or not. And you can see that there
Speaker 1: are some remarkable women, especially during the witchcraft. You see
Speaker 1: some of these women aren't going to take anything from
Speaker 1: the from the magistrates. UM. But it was a male
Speaker 1: dominated uh society. And also it was a society in
Speaker 1: which children were seen and not heard UH. And the
Speaker 1: witchcraft changed a lot of this. The witchcraft, the dynamics
Speaker 1: of Salem witchcraft was such that for one of the
Speaker 1: first times in history you had not just the usual
Speaker 1: suspects of witchcraft accused. These were usually women of a
Speaker 1: lower social status who had some kind of problems with them. Well,
Speaker 1: we started having accused full fledged church members Rebecca Nurse
Speaker 1: Uh who belonged to the Salem Church and um Uh
Speaker 1: Mary um Martha Corey, who belonged to the Sale of
Speaker 1: Village Church. And in those days, what a covenant member
Speaker 1: meant was not that you were just a little bit better,
Speaker 1: but it meant that population of Salem Village was about
Speaker 1: five hundred and fifty people. Of that five hundred and fifty,
Speaker 1: about forty five to fifty of them were full church
Speaker 1: members in sixte two. They were people who had been
Speaker 1: given a sign by God which the other church members
Speaker 1: acknowledged that they were one of the elect, that they
Speaker 1: were going to make it yes, and they were the
Speaker 1: only ones who could participate in communion uh. And it
Speaker 1: was a high status. So as soon as the first
Speaker 1: woman who was a full fledged church member was accused,
Speaker 1: that got everyone very nervous because if you could have
Speaker 1: this person who's supposed to be one of the elect
Speaker 1: actually being a witch, that menu whole social order was
Speaker 1: was disrupted. Also, you were having small children accused. Sarah Good,
Speaker 1: who would have been one of the usual suspects. Her child,
Speaker 1: who was we think somewhere between four and five, was
Speaker 1: also accused. Then you get as time goes on, not
Speaker 1: just the usual suspects and other women, but men begin
Speaker 1: to be accused. And it's not unusual to have a
Speaker 1: man accused, saying Old England or New England earlier, but
Speaker 1: in this case you get a whole bunch of them.
Speaker 1: You get a minister accused. You get probably the second
Speaker 1: or third most um rich person in all of Massachusetts accused,
Speaker 1: Philip English. Uh. They usually have something about them that
Speaker 1: makes them a little bit different. Because Philip English's actual
Speaker 1: name was Philippe Anglais and he was a descendant of
Speaker 1: the Channel Islands, the frenchified Channel Island, so uh he
Speaker 1: was an outsider. Yeah. Uh, you have uh John Alden,
Speaker 1: the grandson of John and Priscilla accused. Um. So it
Speaker 1: became a little more democratic and who could be accused? Uh?
Speaker 1: And near the end of the witchcraft there was talk
Speaker 1: never went to anything legal, but there was talk that
Speaker 1: the governor's wife might be one. So in one sense,
Speaker 1: It's kind of interesting in that Salem witchcraft was a
Speaker 1: little more democratic, Uh, but still Uh, women were the
Speaker 1: usual suspects, and it was typically a woman who was
Speaker 1: lower class who maybe had a better uh status early
Speaker 1: in life and just um had come down from it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we talked about examinations and trials and people in power. Um.
Speaker 1: Obviously what they're looking for is some I guess some
Speaker 1: justice in all of this, look for a legal and
Speaker 1: a spiritual solution to a problem that's threatening them. How
Speaker 1: how would you describe the Puritan sense of justice and injustice?
Speaker 1: What would it mean for a New England Puritan to
Speaker 1: seek justice from the law? Puritans believed very firmly in
Speaker 1: the establishment of law, and early on they had statutes.
Speaker 1: Every year the General Court, which was the colonial legislature,
Speaker 1: would um promulgate all sorts of acts and so forth.
Speaker 1: The Puritans were also very litigious. Uh, They're always suing
Speaker 1: each other for land or something like that. Uh. They
Speaker 1: were in the best traditions of Old England. And we
Speaker 1: tend to think now looking at things with the twenty
Speaker 1: one century outlook, that oh, these were kangaroo courts and
Speaker 1: you know, they didn't have any justice well, they wanted
Speaker 1: to have justice, but it was justice the way they thought.
Speaker 1: In the seventeenth century, lawyers were basically unknown. Um. They
Speaker 1: didn't trust lawyers and um. The judges was supposed to
Speaker 1: be people who would be able to look at both
Speaker 1: sides and be judicious and uh their uh use of
Speaker 1: both sides as well. The Salem witchcraft trials went through
Speaker 1: classic English um jurisprudence. UM. Unfortunately it was stacked a
Speaker 1: bit and many other factors were involved that made it
Speaker 1: um uh look very open and shut kind of cases.
Speaker 1: But if if if I can, let me just go
Speaker 1: through the procedures. It might be a little long, but
Speaker 1: you can cut what you want. Um. Someone has looked
Speaker 1: upon as being suspicious of practicing witchcraft. Some of the
Speaker 1: young girls are saying, this person has come to me
Speaker 1: his uh spirit as aflicting us uh, And an adult
Speaker 1: will go to a local magistrate and file a complaint,
Speaker 1: and the magistrates will have a preliminary hearing. Uh. One
Speaker 1: of the problems with this whole Salem thing is right
Speaker 1: now in s until May, we didn't have a sitting governor.
Speaker 1: The whole colonial system uh of the legislature and so
Speaker 1: forth was kind of on hold until the new governor
Speaker 1: could come from England and the charter either correct right
Speaker 1: that had been revoked and they were working on a
Speaker 1: new sort of global charter for the larger colony as
Speaker 1: a whole. Right. Uh. And because these are fact is
Speaker 1: that um make a community not too sure of what's
Speaker 1: going on. So there were a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: in in plane accidents and so forth, there's always a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of things that came together in exquisite format
Speaker 1: that just made something bad happen. And if any of
Speaker 1: those things were not quite the case, things could have changed.
Speaker 1: And it was the same in sixte So what they
Speaker 1: do is there's an accusation of witchcraft. So the local
Speaker 1: magistrates take a listen, and depositions are made, and they
Speaker 1: take a look at the accused, which and ask them questions. Uh.
Speaker 1: These weren't legal eagles. They were just um uh men
Speaker 1: who were in business and had some knowledge, maybe read
Speaker 1: some law books and so forth. Uh. And they had
Speaker 1: to determine whether or not the person accused had enough
Speaker 1: going for them so that they should be held. And
Speaker 1: in almost every case they decide yes they should be held.
Speaker 1: So they're thrown in jail awaiting for the civil government
Speaker 1: to formula. Late by May, the new Governor, William Phipps,
Speaker 1: comes together with a lot of the learned people in
Speaker 1: Massachusetts and established she is a court of oyer and
Speaker 1: terminat to hear and determine these cases, because now the
Speaker 1: jails are being clogged by a number of people who
Speaker 1: have been accused and at the preliminary hearing they've just
Speaker 1: been put in jail. So what they then do is
Speaker 1: have just the same legal system that's done in Old England,
Speaker 1: and that is um. You have a grand jury that
Speaker 1: listens to the Attorney General of Massachusetts give the case.
Speaker 1: And you know they always say you can indict a
Speaker 1: ham sandwich. Well you could back at that time too.
Speaker 1: Almost everyone always is indicted, and the indictments often from
Speaker 1: two or three or four different people. Once in a
Speaker 1: while the indictment doesn't go at least one of the accused,
Speaker 1: one of the afflicted children. Um, they don't believe. So
Speaker 1: there was a little bit of looking at this um
Speaker 1: UH with with some modicum of legal ease, but generally
Speaker 1: everyone who's held UH is indicted. Then you have the trial.
Speaker 1: You have a pool of jurors from among the towns
Speaker 1: in Massachusetts. Who will be the jury? You have this
Speaker 1: um eight or nine person um special court Court of
Speaker 1: Layer and termina. Who will be the judges? And they
Speaker 1: supposed to have I think at least three or four
Speaker 1: of these magistrates there. Uh, and they can ask questions
Speaker 1: and can kind of mold what they want to have happened.
Speaker 1: But it's basically the attorney general who gives the information.
Speaker 1: If you're accused, you have the right of um saying
Speaker 1: I don't like this juror ah. You also have the
Speaker 1: right of bringing in testimony evidence people. But if you're
Speaker 1: a farmer or if you're a farmer's wife who's never
Speaker 1: been before a magistrate before, even though you might know
Speaker 1: what you can and cannot do, they're relying on the
Speaker 1: judges and they really don't know how to do things
Speaker 1: quite as well. The same thing happens in Old England
Speaker 1: as well. Uh. So then you have the trial, and
Speaker 1: trials are very fast, usually within two days maybe three.
Speaker 1: All of the evidences in the jury goes out, makes
Speaker 1: us determination and in almost every case the people have
Speaker 1: found guilty. Uh. You have a you have a period
Speaker 1: between um when they found guilty and when the execution
Speaker 1: will happen because thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
Speaker 1: Witchcraft is a uh hanging offense UH and um. At
Speaker 1: that time you have some period of being able to
Speaker 1: contact the governor, trying to do a stay or whatever.
Speaker 1: Hardly ever happens, and within a certain period of time
Speaker 1: the people are hanged. Uh. They weren't burned. Uh. No
Speaker 1: Englishman was ever burned for the crime of witchcraft, because
Speaker 1: witchcraft in English law is a UH is a felony,
Speaker 1: and felons are hanged. On the continent, witchcraft is a
Speaker 1: heresy against the church, and heretics are burned. So burnings
Speaker 1: took place on the continent, but not in England or
Speaker 1: or America. There's an exception. Matthew Hopkins, the witch finder
Speaker 1: general during the English Civil War, in his year and
Speaker 1: a half of activity, tried and executed in those are
Speaker 1: loose terms, about a hundred and fifty to two hundred,
Speaker 1: which is one of them was a woman who had
Speaker 1: been accused of killing her husband in addition to witchcraft.
Speaker 1: Killing your husband at that time was an act of treason.
Speaker 1: He was seen as the head of the household, and
Speaker 1: so she was actually burned, but she was burned for
Speaker 1: her treason, not her witchcrist But it is a common misconception. So, um,
Speaker 1: you can't say that these were kangaroo courts. They happened
Speaker 1: very quickly, and um, the judges didn't appear. We don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of information from the trials themselves. Most
Speaker 1: of what we read about the witchcraft quote trials are
Speaker 1: actually from the parliamentary hearings in which there is given
Speaker 1: take the magistrates asked questions and the accused answer them.
Speaker 1: The trial material has disappeared, We don't have it. It's
Speaker 1: not to say that there would be a huge amount
Speaker 1: of new information because generally with regular trials, what they
Speaker 1: do is they do a synopsis of what happens, so
Speaker 1: you don't get um new evidence being introduced. So let's
Speaker 1: go back to the beginning, before before all of the
Speaker 1: witch conflict came into the community here in Salem Village.
Speaker 1: Why in in sixteen sixty six was Salem Village requesting
Speaker 1: independence from Salem Town and why was the town refusing
Speaker 1: that to them? If you look at a map, Salem
Speaker 1: Town is right on the coast, uh it's a fairly
Speaker 1: large community. In sixteen ninety two, they have about fifteen
Speaker 1: hundred residents. Uh. It looks more to the commercial ventures
Speaker 1: um uh to fishing. Um. The people there tend not
Speaker 1: to be Yeoman farmers, but people who have occupations um
Speaker 1: besides farming. Salem Village, the center of Salem Village is
Speaker 1: about seven miles from the center of Salem Town. And
Speaker 1: in the whole history of Salem. Uh, Salem started out
Speaker 1: as a very large expanse of population of area. And
Speaker 1: what happened was many communities Beverly broke off in sixteen
Speaker 1: sixty four, I think it was Uh, many communities broke off.
Speaker 1: Salem Village was looked at kind of as the bread
Speaker 1: basket for Salem Town. And UM they liked the rates
Speaker 1: because rates are what you get for like taxes, to
Speaker 1: be able to take care of the community. And there
Speaker 1: was a reluctance that went for over a hundred years
Speaker 1: in the part of Salem Town to allow Salem Village
Speaker 1: to become independent. Uh. That brought up an awful lot
Speaker 1: of um uh people not liking that from the village. UH.
Speaker 1: If you had to participate in the militia, he would
Speaker 1: go away from your own homestead. And there was always
Speaker 1: the the fear of Indian attack or something like that.
Speaker 1: You'd have to go five seven miles to Salem town
Speaker 1: to be part of the UH God for the evening,
Speaker 1: and your own homestead, which was completely isolated, was unprotected. Also,
Speaker 1: there was a religious part of it. It's a long
Speaker 1: ways to go five to seven miles every week, actually
Speaker 1: twice a week if you want to go to religious services.
Speaker 1: So there was a real frustration on the part of
Speaker 1: the Salem villages. They made several petitions to be broken off,
Speaker 1: as many other communities were, and Salem was always very
Speaker 1: reluctant to do that. Finally, in sixteen seventy two they
Speaker 1: did acquiesce to have a Salem village have its own
Speaker 1: meeting house. It wasn't a covenant UH congregation. They still
Speaker 1: if they wanted to have communion would have to go
Speaker 1: to Salem, but they could hire lay ministers in Salem Village,
Speaker 1: build a meetinghouse, which they did, and hear the Word
Speaker 1: of God UM locally UH. And this continued until six
Speaker 1: when finally Salem UH ecclesiastically acquiesced and allowed Salem Village
Speaker 1: to form their own covenant church and that was the
Speaker 1: Church of Christ at Salem Village and they introduced the
Speaker 1: new minister. They had been several ministers previous, but this
Speaker 1: minister was able to do the sacraments. And his name
Speaker 1: was the Reverend Mr. Samuel Parris. He had not been
Speaker 1: an ordained minister. H he had I guess the term
Speaker 1: today would be had taken courses, but you know it wasn't.
Speaker 1: And um, he was a man who had changed his occupation.
Speaker 1: He was a merchant. Didn't do that while there had
Speaker 1: a belief in uh wanting to do good in and
Speaker 1: so uh took the call in Salem Village and the
Speaker 1: village took him on as the minister. Uh uh and
Speaker 1: uh he was ordained in a sixteen eighty nine. But
Speaker 1: you find that in his coming to Salem Village, you
Speaker 1: had some problems. And the problems were you always had
Speaker 1: within your community. The Covenant members usually like ten percent
Speaker 1: of the population, and then the others, the outsiders who
Speaker 1: had to contribute to the meeting house for the church. Um,
Speaker 1: but didn't really have too much of a say that way. Uh.
Speaker 1: They believed the outsiders believed that the Covenant members had
Speaker 1: given Paris too good a deal, especially since he hadn't
Speaker 1: been minister any place else. He was kind of a nubie.
Speaker 1: And the deal was they gave him the personage, which
Speaker 1: had been built in sixteen eighty one, as a place
Speaker 1: that he could live in, and also they gave him
Speaker 1: the deed to it. And most of the people in
Speaker 1: the village say, what are you doing that for? You know,
Speaker 1: this is stuff that we throw taxes put together. He
Speaker 1: doesn't deserve a pass and she deserves, you know, pay. Uh.
Speaker 1: So that brought the two tow somewhat loggerheads and Paris,
Speaker 1: I guess, by his nature awfully hard to know what
Speaker 1: people were like from the prospect of four hundred years later. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you know, you really can't psychoanalyze anybody. But Paris
Speaker 1: apparently did believe that now that he was a minister,
Speaker 1: he deserved what ministers typically got, which was a different
Speaker 1: differential respect within the community. And a lot of the
Speaker 1: village is just never wanted to give him that. Uh.
Speaker 1: He started having problems with this congregation. They were supposed
Speaker 1: to bring to him the cord would and you needed
Speaker 1: about fifteen cord of would a year to be able
Speaker 1: to survive in a homestead, and they weren't doing it.
Speaker 1: And um, he had one of his requests was before
Speaker 1: he would agree to be minister, they should bring it
Speaker 1: to him, and many of them thought, we'll have it,
Speaker 1: but he's got to get it. Ministers often were also
Speaker 1: yeoman farmers themselves, UM, and it just went badly. Uh.
Speaker 1: Paris did not get and he actually preached UM, always
Speaker 1: talking about this confrontation, trying to show that there shouldn't
Speaker 1: be any uh. And by the time of the witchcraft, UM,
Speaker 1: he wasn't being paid his salary. UH, he hardly had
Speaker 1: any would and there was although the Covenant members still
Speaker 1: supported him very vigorously, and several of the afflicted children
Speaker 1: came from the Paris house itself and from the house
Speaker 1: of other Covenant members who lived close by. So there
Speaker 1: are a lot of factors that made this kind of
Speaker 1: a red flag kind of thing. Not to say that
Speaker 1: there wasn't consternation in other UH settlements, because ministers, although
Speaker 1: today we would think, oh they puritans, they had to
Speaker 1: love their minister and they had to get together. It
Speaker 1: was always a contention within many communities about the pay
Speaker 1: of the salary of of the ministers, and there was
Speaker 1: controversy very often that would last for several years or whatever.
Speaker 1: I love that firewood becomes the centerpiece of this conversation
Speaker 1: a lot. I mean, it was part of his contract
Speaker 1: negotiations that that he had firewood delivered to him. And
Speaker 1: it sounds petty, and I think in some ways it
Speaker 1: represents the pettiness of how they were treating their minister,
Speaker 1: not paying him and things like that. So one of
Speaker 1: the early conflicts, again going back to pre Witchcraft trials,
Speaker 1: is this Putnam versus Porter rivalry that seems to be
Speaker 1: taking place, and there are religious issues within it. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, the fact that you've got that halfway evidence
Speaker 1: that's I guess a little more of a leaning, a
Speaker 1: liberal leaning Puritan faith um. And the Porters are on
Speaker 1: that side of the fence. And then you have the
Speaker 1: Putnam's in Salem Village. Who are they were part of
Speaker 1: those covenant members of the church if I'm correct, um,
Speaker 1: and they seem to be fighting a lot about that.
Speaker 1: They are also two of the wealthiest families in the area.
Speaker 1: But but the part that baffles me when I read
Speaker 1: about it is how when Thomas Putnam Senior passed away
Speaker 1: and his will was executed, you know, and the wealth
Speaker 1: is distributed, it wasn't it wasn't a Putnam or even
Speaker 1: in an independent party who executes that will? But it's
Speaker 1: Israel porter Um. What can you tell us about that
Speaker 1: that situation. First of all, you should understand that the
Speaker 1: Putnam's controlled approximately I'm going to remember I did a
Speaker 1: study in this and graduate school. They there were about
Speaker 1: twelve to of the population and of Salem Village were Putnam's,
Speaker 1: and their associative community of others who married into the
Speaker 1: Putnam family made it so that they were a the
Speaker 1: largest minority within Salem Village. They tended to be a
Speaker 1: bit conservative. They were almost all Yeoman farmers believed in
Speaker 1: uh wealth being land, so they were not rich in
Speaker 1: the fact of money, but in land. And they tended
Speaker 1: to live in the western part of the village, the
Speaker 1: western part of the village being farther away from Salem
Speaker 1: Town than other parts of Salem Village, like as far
Speaker 1: away as you could get, essentially right, and the port
Speaker 1: is looked more towards the east, towards the coast, towards Salem.
Speaker 1: You might say they were perhaps a little more sophisticated,
Speaker 1: or at least they ran around with a population that
Speaker 1: was more looking to the outward rather than to the
Speaker 1: in wood and Uh. Thomas Putnam when he died, Um,
Speaker 1: he had married a second time, and the offspring from
Speaker 1: that was Joseph Putnam. And Joseph Putnam he was named
Speaker 1: Joseph because of the biblical Joseph, who was the youngest
Speaker 1: and uh and I would dare say probably the other
Speaker 1: Putnams who were a bit jealous of Joseph because he
Speaker 1: and his mother inherited the bulk of the property that
Speaker 1: Thomas had. In those days with primer gent sure it
Speaker 1: was supposed to be the oldest member of the family
Speaker 1: got most everything and the others would get basically scraps. Uh.
Speaker 1: So there was some resentment there. Um. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if you can actually say that the Putnams and the
Speaker 1: Poeties were against each other. They did come up in
Speaker 1: ecclesiastical um uh affairs as well as um political affairs. Um.
Speaker 1: They were often on different sides. Uh. And the whole
Speaker 1: idea about people trying to gain land, which was a
Speaker 1: very popular theory in the nineteenth century that much of
Speaker 1: the witchcraft stem from land grabs, that's really not probably
Speaker 1: the case. They were always contentious about land and if
Speaker 1: you own something and if your tree that was supposed
Speaker 1: to be the northeast bound of it went down. Uh,
Speaker 1: there would be real consternation about where the where the
Speaker 1: location of the of the boundary was. Um. But land
Speaker 1: was just something that every community had problems with and
Speaker 1: it wasn't a matter of trying to get land from
Speaker 1: other people. And also one of the popular myths in
Speaker 1: Salem witchcraft is that, uh, if you were hanged as
Speaker 1: a witch, uh, your land would be confiscated. And that
Speaker 1: is absolutely not the case. In some cases, the government
Speaker 1: could take you a movable estate, which meant the ring
Speaker 1: on your finger, the furniture in your house, uh cow
Speaker 1: that you might have. But the land went with blood.
Speaker 1: The land went with uh probate And you can see
Speaker 1: that by John Proctor accused, which ready to be executed
Speaker 1: in jail, actually gives by legal need his property to
Speaker 1: his sons. And that was proved in probate court and
Speaker 1: went on. So that's one of the myths in the
Speaker 1: history of witchcraft. Well, we had talked about this a
Speaker 1: little bit before we started recording, and I want to
Speaker 1: get back to it because it's it's so fascinating. One
Speaker 1: of the reasons why um we're here with you in
Speaker 1: the archives of the p BDSX library here and Andvers
Speaker 1: is because you have a notebook that people think of
Speaker 1: it as Samuel Paris's notebook, but you were explained to
Speaker 1: me that it's actually a it's a bigger document than
Speaker 1: Samuel Paris. Tell me a little bit about this notebook.
Speaker 1: And we were established back in n seventy two as
Speaker 1: the Danvers Archival Center, and what we wanted to do
Speaker 1: is bring together all of the printed and written history
Speaker 1: of the town of Danvers. We got the public records,
Speaker 1: we got the books of the Pivody Institute Library, we
Speaker 1: moved to the library and new UH quarters. We also
Speaker 1: wanted to get records of other organizations and Danvers, and
Speaker 1: the principal one we wanted to get was the records
Speaker 1: of the First Church Congregational that was the original First
Speaker 1: Church of Christ at Salem Village, the oldest, actually the
Speaker 1: oldest organization in Danvers date sixteen seventy two, and they
Speaker 1: had several record books and one of them was the
Speaker 1: Minister's record book kept by each minister from sixteen eighty
Speaker 1: nine when they became a covenant church to the present.
Speaker 1: And this is very historic material, UH and it's really
Speaker 1: some of the lost material that was still in not
Speaker 1: public hands, not in the library or something. It's a
Speaker 1: matter of fact. Back in the UH late nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: UH Boyer and Nissenbaum, two professes from U Mass in
Speaker 1: their book Salem Possessed. I got them into the church
Speaker 1: to see these records, and they thought they were absolutely
Speaker 1: fantastic because the records include the witchcraft era, in which
Speaker 1: Paris Um talks about the excommunication of one of the witches,
Speaker 1: Mautha Corey. UH talks about the beginning of the witchcraft
Speaker 1: when one of his congregants made a witch cake unbeknownst
Speaker 1: to him and which he believes brought the devil into
Speaker 1: Salem village, has a confession of forgiveness by the chief
Speaker 1: which accuser who later on wanted to become a covenant
Speaker 1: member UH, and all sorts of controversy Paris when the
Speaker 1: witchcraft was over, he had the people who had been hanged.
Speaker 1: Their families were not really happy with Samuel Paris. They
Speaker 1: were trying to force him out and they made life
Speaker 1: miserable for him. And it was brought to synids to
Speaker 1: uh UH organizations to try to rectify what was going on,
Speaker 1: and there would be petitions and counter petitions signed by
Speaker 1: the various farmers, and he records every single one of them.
Speaker 1: And if you believe in graphology, which is the study
Speaker 1: of handwriting analysis, Paris has a very readable hand You
Speaker 1: can read it in the twenty one century UM, whereas
Speaker 1: most seventeenth century script is pretty bad. UH. As he
Speaker 1: gets more pressured within Salem Village sixteen ninety four ninety six,
Speaker 1: his handwriting gets smaller and smaller and more compact, and
Speaker 1: you can almost feel him being squeezed. So this is
Speaker 1: really good historic stuff. We were thinking, well, the first church,
Speaker 1: they've been here since the sixteen seventies. There were very
Speaker 1: conservative church in New England. We had in the early
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds the um Unitarian Revolution, in which most first
Speaker 1: churches in Massachusetts and New England became Unitarian, a much
Speaker 1: more liberal church. UH, and very few remained congregational. The
Speaker 1: one in Salem Village remained congregational. Most of the people
Speaker 1: living in Salem Village in what then was Danvers Plains.
Speaker 1: Excuse me, let me do that over again. UM. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties and sixties, most of the people who
Speaker 1: were the congregation and of the First Church, uh were
Speaker 1: people who had lived there for generation upon generations, so
Speaker 1: they could trace their lineage back to the Witchcraft times.
Speaker 1: They were so somewhat conservative and very neighborly in that
Speaker 1: they had a speech pattern that was only known to
Speaker 1: around Center Street in Danvers, and that was called the
Speaker 1: Center Street twang. It's almost gone now because Invelope is
Speaker 1: like me, moved into the neighborhood over the years. But
Speaker 1: you know, we figured this is going to be very
Speaker 1: hard to get them. New England has tend to be
Speaker 1: very possessive of their stuff, even if they can't take
Speaker 1: care of them, and we thought the First Church was
Speaker 1: going to be that way as well. UH. For a
Speaker 1: number of months uh and years we tried to help
Speaker 1: them with their collections and so forth. And once the
Speaker 1: establishment of the Archival Center came in nineteen seventy too,
Speaker 1: they agreed and we're willing to take all of their
Speaker 1: records and put them on permanent deposit with us. It
Speaker 1: was a real coup, and I have to give it
Speaker 1: to them. They they they were very good about it.
Speaker 1: We've done well with the materials. We've actually uh spent
Speaker 1: a lot of money conserving the books and papers, and
Speaker 1: when that happened, it was like the floodgates open. Other
Speaker 1: churches said, well, that's the first church is wanting to
Speaker 1: give it. I guess it's okay. So we now have,
Speaker 1: with the exception of the Catholic Church, which has its
Speaker 1: own UMM archives, we have every Protestant church that either
Speaker 1: was and became defunct or still functions. Uh. And the
Speaker 1: first Church collection is is very good and very important.
Speaker 1: It's amazing, and that to be able to read Samuel
Speaker 1: Parris is I guess professional complaints and documentation of what
Speaker 1: he's going through where church is going through in his
Speaker 1: own handwriting. Um. And you're right. I'm glad it's legible,
Speaker 1: because a lot of that is very illegible. Yes, and
Speaker 1: that's because one of the reasons why Paris was asked
Speaker 1: by the magistrates to write down testimony during the witchcraft
Speaker 1: And you would think he is a minister, his family
Speaker 1: is afflicted by witchcraft. Uh, he's trying to root out
Speaker 1: the witches and they're asking him to to do the documentation.
Speaker 1: But I think he tried to do a good job,
Speaker 1: and at least two of the examinations he at the
Speaker 1: end rights um. Much was going on it was very
Speaker 1: hard to uh hear everything, but I tried to put
Speaker 1: things down as correct as possible so that I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be uh guilty of prejudicing either side. That's paraphrasing it,
Speaker 1: but that's what he said. Yeah, a mission could be
Speaker 1: an accusation. You know, he's editing the history of the event. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the important families in this the whole situation,
Speaker 1: would be the Hawthorne family. And you know, we talked
Speaker 1: about the removal of the charter from Massachusetts in the
Speaker 1: the sixteen eighties, early sixteen eighties, and and and how
Speaker 1: John Hawthorne, the magistrate, his father William, was actually one
Speaker 1: of the key people in establishing some of the laws
Speaker 1: that were on the books and the colonies and helping
Speaker 1: to run and govern. But he's also known for persecuting Quakers.
Speaker 1: I think we mentioned that a little a bit ago,
Speaker 1: that there was this animosity towards the Quakers and early
Speaker 1: on the Puritans didn't treat them so well. Do we
Speaker 1: know how the family legacy of the Hawthorne's influenced, um
Speaker 1: John the magistrates legal stature in the eyes of the Puritans.
Speaker 1: I mean, you have the charter removed there's no governor.
Speaker 1: It almost seems that we're in a little bit of
Speaker 1: a legal chaos for for a small amount of time. Um.
Speaker 1: But at the center of the the examinations and the
Speaker 1: witch trials, we have a Hawthorne. We have we have
Speaker 1: William's son John who comes in. Is this this affect
Speaker 1: the way he's perceived by the community around and do
Speaker 1: they feel some trust in him? That, thank goodness, at
Speaker 1: least John's in charge of this. Uh. Two of the
Speaker 1: most important magistrates in Salem with John hath On uh
Speaker 1: and Jonathan Corwin. They were both merchants, UM, learned people, uh.
Speaker 1: Not lawyers, not professional legal people, but they had a
Speaker 1: lot of sense. They always were for years under whatever
Speaker 1: the government was, magistrates who would hear cases, and they
Speaker 1: were asked to take a look at what was happening
Speaker 1: in Salem village. So they were the initial magistrates who
Speaker 1: came over to little Old Salem Village March first, six two.
Speaker 1: They went to the meeting house because um, they had
Speaker 1: to have enough space, because everybody had heard about three
Speaker 1: people being accused of witchcraft and it became a real
Speaker 1: public thing. We're told that the meetinghouse was absolutely filled
Speaker 1: to the gills and people were outside looking in trying
Speaker 1: to find out what was happened. It was cold, they
Speaker 1: had they'd had a snowstorm just a day or two before.
Speaker 1: Well it was actually Salem village was a relatively mild
Speaker 1: year for snow, but it was still a cold winter. Uh.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's it's mud season. And uh it would
Speaker 1: have been quite a spectacle. You have probably more than
Speaker 1: the population of Salem villages there watching what is you know,
Speaker 1: the first real witchcraft examination that they've had in years
Speaker 1: and here it is in little Sale village. Uh. Hath
Speaker 1: On was um very specific in that he asked many questions. Um. Uh.
Speaker 1: Jonathan Corwin uh generally took down the evidence that was
Speaker 1: hearing and didn't ask a lot of questions. But Hathon did.
Speaker 1: And you can see he asks leading questions, how long
Speaker 1: have you been a witch? You know, it's the kind
Speaker 1: of thing like when did you stop beating your wife?
Speaker 1: Kind of thing. Um. They believed, especially after Tituba, who
Speaker 1: is Reverend Paris's slave, probably a Caribe Indian who had
Speaker 1: come with Paris when he became minister. Um, she's confessed.
Speaker 1: She was the first of fifty people who confessed and
Speaker 1: in those days, you know, we still have a hard
Speaker 1: time all that we know about psychology today when someone
Speaker 1: confesses and later retracts it and uh, we go, well,
Speaker 1: you know, why would you confess if you're not if
Speaker 1: you're if you're not guilty, why would you confess? Well,
Speaker 1: people do confess, especially under certain real strains. Uh. And
Speaker 1: Tituba gave a real confession. There's some possible evidence that
Speaker 1: she might have been beaten by Paris to quote tell
Speaker 1: the truth. Uh. And she came up with something that
Speaker 1: instead of calming the witchcraft thing. And in most witchcraft cases,
Speaker 1: both in England and New England, what you do is
Speaker 1: you get one, maybe two people accused. Um, they would
Speaker 1: either be found not guilty or quickly be found guilty
Speaker 1: and hanged, and that would be the end of it.
Speaker 1: He have three people accused in Salem village. One is
Speaker 1: Paris's slave. And imagine how Paris must have thought that
Speaker 1: the witchcraft begins in his household. Here he's a minister
Speaker 1: of God. How excruciatingly embarrassing it had to be to him.
Speaker 1: And I think that's one of the reasons you have
Speaker 1: to understand that Paris was going to root out this
Speaker 1: evil because it was happening within his family. Um and
Speaker 1: Tichama said, well, a dark man came and told me
Speaker 1: to afflict the children, which I did, and she kind
Speaker 1: of accused the other two who said they weren't guilty,
Speaker 1: but they weren't sure about each other, you know. Uh,
Speaker 1: and Titterba indicates that not only the three of them involved,
Speaker 1: but there's several others. So instead of tapping it down,
Speaker 1: it expands it. And when just a few weeks later,
Speaker 1: actually a few days later, a Covenant church member is accused,
Speaker 1: and then a three year old girl is accused, and
Speaker 1: then another Covenant member is accused, and then a man
Speaker 1: is accused, you suddenly get this explosion of witchcraft accusations.
Speaker 1: And when people stopped confessing, why would you confess? And
Speaker 1: Reverend um Hail John Hale minister in Beverley, right next
Speaker 1: to danvers h He wrote a book later on about
Speaker 1: the witchcraft called a Modest in Korean too, the Nature
Speaker 1: of Witchcraft. And anytime you see a book from the
Speaker 1: seventeenth century that says a modest inquiry, what he's gonna
Speaker 1: do is bulk the system. He's not going to be
Speaker 1: one who uh becomes um copasetic with the with the
Speaker 1: company thoughts, uh, he's going to break out a little bit.
Speaker 1: And he asked that it not be published until after
Speaker 1: he died. And you might think, boy, this is going
Speaker 1: to be controversial. Was actually not very controversial, except that
Speaker 1: he said two things brought the witchcraft forward. One was
Speaker 1: the believability of the afflicted children. They were doing things
Speaker 1: that normally wouldn't see being done. They were profoundly tortured.
Speaker 1: Pure tans weren't stupid. They knew what um epilepsy was,
Speaker 1: they knew what Saint almost Fire is. They knew that
Speaker 1: kids could be manipulative at times, but this was different.
Speaker 1: This was something that they had never experienced before. And
Speaker 1: this brought a profound belief, so that sometimes even families
Speaker 1: of accused witches would say to their accused uh family,
Speaker 1: well you must be guilty, because maybe you don't know it,
Speaker 1: but you have to be guilty because the children say
Speaker 1: you are. And the other thing um uh Hale said
Speaker 1: was that by having that many people confessing, why would
Speaker 1: you belie yourself. Today we don't think of lies as
Speaker 1: much of anything. Back in the seventeenth century, a lie
Speaker 1: was a smack at God's face. And uh, if you
Speaker 1: lined for something that had to do with life and death, um,
Speaker 1: this would not bolde well as to where you were going. Uh.
Speaker 1: And Paris said, by these two means, we walked in
Speaker 1: the clouds and could not find our way. So um
Speaker 1: in the beginning, before the hysteria, I'm not supposed to
Speaker 1: use that word so much anymore. But before this irrational
Speaker 1: nous happened, Um, other factors were being combined to allow
Speaker 1: a normal settlement to go into historyonics and of course
Speaker 1: the we have the examinations, these informal magistrates and the accused,
Speaker 1: and as you said, a meeting house pactful of people
Speaker 1: outside as well appearing in the windows. Um. But eventually
Speaker 1: the governor of the new governor Phipps gets involved. And
Speaker 1: you mentioned a term earlier, the oyer and terminter um.
Speaker 1: How we are juries selected? And this is the part
Speaker 1: that I mean. You think about a jury being an
Speaker 1: impartial group that needs to hear on both sides and
Speaker 1: make decisions. But this has been running a muck for
Speaker 1: weeks before Phips gets involved and becomes an oyer and
Speaker 1: terminal trial. So how how do they select the juries
Speaker 1: for oyer and terminer? In general? And and in Salem
Speaker 1: in particular, and and what was the process like for
Speaker 1: handling this crisis in a new type of court and
Speaker 1: more higher court in the seventeenth century. UM, Jury selection
Speaker 1: is much like it's still practiced today. UM. When you
Speaker 1: have a court that's going to do a number of cases,
Speaker 1: what you do is you contact the various communities that
Speaker 1: the court serves, and you ask the board of selectmen
Speaker 1: to choose jurors so they'll have a pool of jurors.
Speaker 1: You always ask for more jurors than you need because
Speaker 1: this will will be brought in UH to the UH,
Speaker 1: to the courts UH and they select them. And the
Speaker 1: one difference, however, is the selection did not include women,
Speaker 1: did not include slaves obviously, but also had to include
Speaker 1: those people who are full fledged church members and who
Speaker 1: owned property. So you're talking about basically the more conservative
Speaker 1: within a community. But that's the way it was done throughout.
Speaker 1: There's a Salem witchcraft is not the exception, it's it's
Speaker 1: the rule. And he would have the pettit jury UH
Speaker 1: and the grand jury, and very often, once the trials
Speaker 1: took place, trials winning clusters UH, the Attorney General of
Speaker 1: the province would decide looking at who was accused, what
Speaker 1: the best case as well, you go for the ones
Speaker 1: that you think you're gonna slam dunk real fast. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the jurors would be taken from a pool, so
Speaker 1: it could be a juror from Beverly, from Topsfield, from
Speaker 1: Boxford or whatever. And they're often used throughout the process.
Speaker 1: And although there wasn't that doesn't seem to have been
Speaker 1: manipulation of jurors. We do know at least one case
Speaker 1: in which, um, the trial of Rebecca Nurus, which was
Speaker 1: one of the more interesting trials, took place. And at trials,
Speaker 1: what happens is depositions that were filed at the time
Speaker 1: of the preliminary hearings given and read as testimony sworn
Speaker 1: two before court. Uh. These depositions were added to, however,
Speaker 1: during the legal process. UH. And it's interesting to see
Speaker 1: because witchcraft is what's known as an exceptionable excuse me
Speaker 1: an exceptional crime, and it meant that you had to
Speaker 1: have at least two people witness witchcraft in order to
Speaker 1: convict because we're talking about a capital case. And how
Speaker 1: do you do that, Well, you do that by using
Speaker 1: the preliminary hearing as evidence. In which you have more
Speaker 1: than two people, two of the afflicted girls giving testimony
Speaker 1: that the specter invisible to everyone else, of Rebecca Nurris,
Speaker 1: is torturing them and they're being choked, or they have
Speaker 1: marks on their hand, which they'll show the people there,
Speaker 1: and that is used as evidence, and it's added to
Speaker 1: on the depositions. So depositions are filed. In many cases,
Speaker 1: people who were friends or relatives of accused also filed depositions,
Speaker 1: but they could not swear to it. Uh. The big
Speaker 1: difference was because they didn't want them to be belying themselves,
Speaker 1: so you couldn't swear to it, which means that their
Speaker 1: evidence a juror would see was not quite as good
Speaker 1: as a sworn deposition against someone. And you also had
Speaker 1: very often people who had been confessing witches who was
Speaker 1: set aside. We'll take care of them later, but they're
Speaker 1: important because they can be brought before the trial and
Speaker 1: by voice they can give testimony that so and so
Speaker 1: is one of us. I saw her at a which
Speaker 1: is Sabbath few and that's used as as prime evidence
Speaker 1: as well. So in almost every case, if you brought
Speaker 1: up for trial, you found guilty. Rebecca Nurse was the exception. Uh.
Speaker 1: At first, the jurors came back with a not guilty,
Speaker 1: and it was pandemonium in the courthouse. The afflicted children
Speaker 1: who were there and also some older afflicted ones started
Speaker 1: going into profound fits and so forth pandemonium. One of
Speaker 1: the magistrates us and I think it was WILLIAMS. Stolton,
Speaker 1: he was the chief justice of the of the panel. Uh.
Speaker 1: He said, um, have you considered some testimony um of
Speaker 1: someone who said this or that? And the jurors asked
Speaker 1: Rebecca Nurse a question. Uh, I accused which I confessed,
Speaker 1: which had given testimony that she was one of us?
Speaker 1: And they said to Rebecca, I'm sorry. Rebecca said why
Speaker 1: she is one of us? And she was asked what
Speaker 1: did that mean? And she didn't say anything, and the
Speaker 1: jurors took that as being a form of guilt. And
Speaker 1: because she couldn't hear, she was almost deaf. Uh, And
Speaker 1: so they came back a little bit later with with
Speaker 1: a guilty. Rebecca is interesting too. She had an uncommon
Speaker 1: situation where community around her attempted to intervene in the
Speaker 1: legal proceedings. Um. Friends and neighbors stepping forward. Was that
Speaker 1: a common thing, or was that uncommon? It was about
Speaker 1: in the middle. About of the documents that survive, we
Speaker 1: have maybe about twenty of them in which either one person,
Speaker 1: a couple, or a bunch of people would send in
Speaker 1: a deposition or a petition saying that we've known her
Speaker 1: all of our life and she never looked like she
Speaker 1: was a witch or never deported her any any more
Speaker 1: than a good Christian. Forty people signed the one to
Speaker 1: Rebecca Nurse, including a couple of putnams Auh, and that
Speaker 1: did give some weight. As a matter of fact, the
Speaker 1: Nurse family that tended to be a little more forthcoming,
Speaker 1: rather than just allowing the court to do what they
Speaker 1: wanted because they didn't know any better. They went to
Speaker 1: the governor and he stayed execution for a few days.
Speaker 1: UM so that her case is a bit more unusual
Speaker 1: than the others, and she was the only one who
Speaker 1: was found not guilty at first UM. Some of those
Speaker 1: accused the minister, Reverend George Burrows, who had served Salem
Speaker 1: Village prior to it becoming a full covenant church back
Speaker 1: in the sixteen eighties. It was he who um took
Speaker 1: best advantage of the new possonage he moved into what
Speaker 1: was the new possonage as an incentive to get him
Speaker 1: to come to the village. Uh. He was accused, and
Speaker 1: they really went after him because, Uh he was a
Speaker 1: minister who wasn't the typical minister, hadn't baptized some of
Speaker 1: his children. He was the frontier. He seemed more like
Speaker 1: a Baptist than a than a real Puritan. Uh and
Speaker 1: um he Uh he challenged at least one of the
Speaker 1: people serving on his jury and tried to introduce evidence
Speaker 1: as well. But um, he didn't do it well and
Speaker 1: he was found guilty. And uh a Cotton math Or
Speaker 1: particularly disliked him because he thought that was such a
Speaker 1: stain of a minister being in league with the devil.
Speaker 1: You mentioned earlier how one of the reasons Governor Fifth
Speaker 1: stepped in was because the jails were packed, right, and
Speaker 1: multiple jails were filling up with people who were either
Speaker 1: being like you said, held for later, we'll we'll we'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again later, or being held for execution
Speaker 1: or trial. And one of the things that I found
Speaker 1: interested in reading about this is some of these jails
Speaker 1: were not very well constructed, They were very secure, and
Speaker 1: people were escaping and there were number people who actually
Speaker 1: escaped and went off to build new lives for themselves. Um.
Speaker 1: When some of the prisoners escaped, it seems to me
Speaker 1: that they would leave to a paper trail of escaping
Speaker 1: or was there a paper trail of that? How do
Speaker 1: we know about the escapes? Uh? In some cases um,
Speaker 1: because warrants was sworn out for them after they had escaped.
Speaker 1: Not an awful lot of escapes. Very often when they
Speaker 1: heard they were about to be arrested, they would skin
Speaker 1: attle a few of them. If you were rich, you
Speaker 1: were treated differently and you could take care of yourself
Speaker 1: much better in jail because in jail you had to
Speaker 1: pay for your own fees. If you wanted to eat, uh,
Speaker 1: there might have been a common pot in which you
Speaker 1: could partake. But if you wanted to eat, often your
Speaker 1: family brought to the food. They'd bring you fresh straw
Speaker 1: so that you would have a mattress that would have
Speaker 1: fresh are in it. Uh. You wanted a stool so
Speaker 1: you didn't go on the cold ground all the time
Speaker 1: that could be brought in. Uh. People like Philip English,
Speaker 1: one of the most richest people in the province, and
Speaker 1: his wife were in jail in Boston, and they were
Speaker 1: given UH freedom during the daytime so they could go
Speaker 1: out and do what they wanted. UH. As we're a
Speaker 1: couple others. He went to a Sunday service in which
Speaker 1: UM Reverend Willard gave a sermon, and his sermon basically said,
Speaker 1: if you are persecuted, you should flee, and it was
Speaker 1: a unadulterated UH message, and both of them left. They
Speaker 1: went to New York until the witchcraft crazies was over,
Speaker 1: and then came back. A few others escaped. The majority
Speaker 1: of them, howevious, were required to stay in jail. And
Speaker 1: after a period of time when it looked like the
Speaker 1: apparitions this specters of the witches, even in jail were
Speaker 1: hurting people. For some reason, they thought if they were
Speaker 1: put in shackles and chains, this would prevent the specter
Speaker 1: from getting away, so many of them then were were
Speaker 1: put in chains for the duration. H. So you've mentioned
Speaker 1: the Mather family a couple of times. Ministers around Massachusetts
Speaker 1: or the Colony of Massachusetts read Mother's book from the
Speaker 1: pulpit as as if it was doctrine um and and
Speaker 1: Brattle circulates a critical letter. How common was it for
Speaker 1: the Massachusetts ministers to coordinate this kind of deeply political messaging.
Speaker 1: Very often the civil magistrates would ask the opinion of
Speaker 1: the learned ministers on something that had to do with
Speaker 1: spiritualism or good contact of that sort of thing. And
Speaker 1: after the execution of Bridget Bishop, who was the first
Speaker 1: accused convicted which to hang, and that was I think
Speaker 1: June tenth, there was a lot of um uh, people
Speaker 1: not happy about what what what had happened and if
Speaker 1: they had done everything properly. So they asked the ministers
Speaker 1: if they would comment about it, and one of the
Speaker 1: comments that came from that was that, um, better ten
Speaker 1: guilty go free than one innocent be executed. They were
Speaker 1: basically saying, take it easy. You've got to use restraint
Speaker 1: on what you're doing because this is a capital case. Um.
Speaker 1: The magistrates, the ones who were there every day and
Speaker 1: saw all these things, really wanted to proceed, and the
Speaker 1: Chief Magistrate, William Stoughton, was absolutely sure that witchcraft was
Speaker 1: a brew and wanted to root it out as quickly
Speaker 1: as possible, even after most of the others had kind
Speaker 1: of thought, at least all we've made some mistakes. If not,
Speaker 1: we've made terrible mistakes. Uh. Stoughton was still pretty sure
Speaker 1: that he had got a bunch of the witches and
Speaker 1: wanted to get more. But it did turn over a
Speaker 1: period of time. It took it was about eight months
Speaker 1: from the first examination to the last execution, and in
Speaker 1: that time a lot of UH minds had been changed.
Speaker 1: Thomas Brattle, who really tells us the workings of the
Speaker 1: court from some of his um writings, UH, if not changes.
Speaker 1: He he did see the light on the other side.
Speaker 1: In smath Or, who was the father of Cotton, probably
Speaker 1: the most learned of the residents of New England at
Speaker 1: the time. UH. He had written a book Remarkable Remarkable Providences,
Speaker 1: in which he had told back in the sixteen eighties
Speaker 1: of all the witchcraft cases that had happened, and people
Speaker 1: used his book as good evidence and a way of
Speaker 1: proceeding on the cases. As he continued to see what
Speaker 1: was happening, he eventually wrote a book called It was
Speaker 1: a pamphlet called Cases of Conscience, and that was circulated
Speaker 1: UH in manuscript two Ministers, two Magistrates, and was the
Speaker 1: thing that really kind of moved things to being extremely cautious.
Speaker 1: And it's usually looked upon as being one of the
Speaker 1: things that uh kind of stopped the witchcraft. H he
Speaker 1: had a problem with the idea of spectral evidence. How
Speaker 1: can the person accusing someone else be the only person
Speaker 1: who sees the evidence that would help haying that person.
Speaker 1: It just doesn't make a lot of sense, right, Um,
Speaker 1: So things changed slowly, but those always in the thick
Speaker 1: of things, UM didn't have that distance to be able
Speaker 1: to see things a little more clearly. Right. You talk
Speaker 1: about the sentiment changing over those eight months and the
Speaker 1: minds being changed little by little and eventually increase. Publishing
Speaker 1: this pamphlet that really helps people see more. I feel
Speaker 1: like it's a little bit more logically that they're seeing things. Um.
Speaker 1: But what it's all said and done, Governor Phipps bans
Speaker 1: the publication of writing and publishing about these trials. How
Speaker 1: common was this sort of attempt at I don't know,
Speaker 1: lencing current events, was it common at all? Or was
Speaker 1: this very unique in you know, I'm not positive. My
Speaker 1: inclination is that it happened on occasion when something was
Speaker 1: very controversial and was was having a life of its own.
Speaker 1: I think he did it because contrary publications were coming
Speaker 1: out and it wasn't adding light to the events. It
Speaker 1: was just helping to muddy everything. And um, so that
Speaker 1: was kind of put as a caution although things still happen.
Speaker 1: Many of the printers pretended they were printers in Philadelphia
Speaker 1: or whatever and still published their stuff, but with a
Speaker 1: Philadelphia rather than a Boston imprint. And in Old England
Speaker 1: a number of things were being published. Cotton Matha wrote, um,
Speaker 1: Wonders of the Invisible World. Uh, he's looked upon today
Speaker 1: as being the bad guy in all of this, and
Speaker 1: I think he's just had a real bad press since
Speaker 1: the eventeenth century. He was more of a cautionary person,
Speaker 1: but was sure that there were witches. And the governor
Speaker 1: asked if he would write a narrative of what had happened,
Speaker 1: and sure, he wanted to show that the government had
Speaker 1: done the right thing. They always believe that the people
Speaker 1: uh in power were not doing things capricously, that they
Speaker 1: were trying to do the right thing. It's just that
Speaker 1: the information they had was incorrect. Um. So what math
Speaker 1: did was he took the best cases, the ones that
Speaker 1: he thought, gotcha, you're a witch, and and recorded those
Speaker 1: and didn't record the other ones. And then a guy
Speaker 1: in Boston whose name he was a merchant. His name
Speaker 1: was Robert caliph Uh. He wrote a book UM actually
Speaker 1: at the end of the witchcraft controversy, and one of
Speaker 1: the things that made uh phips say that's it for
Speaker 1: publications more wonders of the Invisible World. And he tried
Speaker 1: to show that the math Is were manipulating things. He
Speaker 1: gave some evidence that we would not have known about
Speaker 1: UM that was kind of contrary to what supposedly was happening,
Speaker 1: and was much more sympathetic to the witchcraft victims. Uh
Speaker 1: hail uh six comes out with this manuscript UM. It's published.
Speaker 1: The chapter specifically on witchcraft trials is published in Cotton
Speaker 1: math Is Magnelli Christie Americana, but the full book isn't
Speaker 1: published until UM the late seventeenth century, and that now
Speaker 1: is the rarest of the witchcraft volumes. And it's one
Speaker 1: in which he's trying to say that we, you know,
Speaker 1: we made mistakes, and primarily the mistakes where we used
Speaker 1: English precedents rather than the Bible to discover witches. Mhm.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting take on it. And and he was
Speaker 1: the one who started from sevent hundred to the present,
Speaker 1: every generation comes up with their new books of theories
Speaker 1: and why it happened, and and it always has you know,
Speaker 1: it has, it has what historians drew over one. It
Speaker 1: has great primary sources that you can use a number
Speaker 1: of different ways to it's ay, uh, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of intriguing aspect of history in which you've got the
Speaker 1: devil and all that kind of thing. Uh. And it's
Speaker 1: still a who done it right? And who done it's
Speaker 1: in history? Always bring the books for it. Um. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it gets a little boring and nobody talks about it.
Speaker 1: But we're in a period that's lasted now for thirty
Speaker 1: years and which a major book comes out every year.
Speaker 1: You mentioned Stacy Schiff, who did what I think is
Speaker 1: one of the best books on Salem witchcraft because she
Speaker 1: takes not just the usual victims that everybody writes about,
Speaker 1: but she tries to incorporate the entire history of the witchcraft,
Speaker 1: what happened in and over which was a major aspect
Speaker 1: of the witchcraft delusion. And um. Other books from about
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies on come out, and they're always trying
Speaker 1: to give the definitive theory. And if you look at
Speaker 1: the books and if you take a look at historiography,
Speaker 1: of the witchcraft books often to reflect as much of
Speaker 1: the culture in which they are written as they do
Speaker 1: about the historic facts. You come up with theories that
Speaker 1: are now pregnant within our own society, and I have
Speaker 1: an explanation for it based on what we see and
Speaker 1: and as observable in uh in eighteen nine century America,
Speaker 1: being in the area. I live in the Danverus Salem area,
Speaker 1: so this is all sort of my backyard like it
Speaker 1: is for you. Um, there's a place in Salem today
Speaker 1: called Gallows Hill. It's a big, open grassy hill with
Speaker 1: a park and there's a playground and things like that.
Speaker 1: But that's not Gallows Hill, is it? Or is this
Speaker 1: a controversy. Um, it's not so much a controversy. When
Speaker 1: I was growing up from the from the nineteenth century on,
Speaker 1: Gallows Hill is a drumlin. It's one of the New
Speaker 1: England Drumlinds that were created when the ice flows went back.
Speaker 1: And Uh. You go to the top of Gallows Hill,
Speaker 1: which I did as a kid. Uh, there's a little
Speaker 1: um playground there. And when I was very young, they
Speaker 1: used to show a stump that had been burned and
Speaker 1: that was supposedly the tree that they used to hang
Speaker 1: the victims on and that was the popular tradition that
Speaker 1: they went in a cot with the people can demmed
Speaker 1: and when all the way up to the top, uh,
Speaker 1: and then hang them on a tree. Well, that doesn't
Speaker 1: make a lot of sense. Why would you go that
Speaker 1: far up? It would be very hard to get to
Speaker 1: and so forth. Um. Although a lot of primary source
Speaker 1: materials come down to us, things that have to do
Speaker 1: with the executions, the gory pot of it generally don't
Speaker 1: tend to We do have the record that UM Robert
Speaker 1: Califf did talking about the executions, and he mentioned that
Speaker 1: after they were executed, a number of the bodies were
Speaker 1: taken to crevices near the place of execution, thrown in
Speaker 1: there and very frivolously uh uh covered over, although you
Speaker 1: could see a hand sticking up of that type of thing.
Speaker 1: And in the seventeen nineties there's a record of UM
Speaker 1: finding some bodies up there, but they were in shrouds.
Speaker 1: And it's always been kind of a nebulous thing of
Speaker 1: what was going on. A very good researcher back in
Speaker 1: the late nineteenth century uh and then UH did a
Speaker 1: couple of articles in the early twentieth century. His name
Speaker 1: was Sydney Pearly, and he was a great historian. UH.
Speaker 1: And he came up with the belief that the execution
Speaker 1: place was actually at the bottom of the hill uh
Speaker 1: near Proctor Street in Salem, right on the Salem Peabody
Speaker 1: border today. UH. And he took pictures of the crevices
Speaker 1: that he thought they would have been thrown into and
Speaker 1: came up with a very good, uh believable story. UH
Speaker 1: used one piece of evidence that showed UH someone was
Speaker 1: in a house at the time of execution and from
Speaker 1: their house they could see the gallows of bodies hanging. UM.
Speaker 1: Then a few years ago, UM, there was some interest
Speaker 1: in seeing if they could find where this was located.
Speaker 1: And a group UH including a cinematographer, UM, professor from
Speaker 1: Salem State and a few others UM got together and
Speaker 1: came up with an area that was still public land.
Speaker 1: UM behind I think it's a CVS Walgreens. Okay, And
Speaker 1: they pretty much confirmed. And a woman by the name
Speaker 1: of Maryland Roach and nice researcher does exquisite work. She
Speaker 1: found another couple of little pieces of evidence that seemed
Speaker 1: to relate to their They did um UM underground scanning
Speaker 1: and some other stuff didn't really come up with any
Speaker 1: evidence there, but they basically confer uh, using modern day
Speaker 1: mapping and so forth, that this was the area that
Speaker 1: Pearley had talked about, and to them it was probably
Speaker 1: the most logical place. UM. Like some things that happened
Speaker 1: in life. UM, it just exploded. Uh and everybody around
Speaker 1: the world UMU who was interested saw this story about
Speaker 1: discovering where the victims were executed. And then the city
Speaker 1: of Salem decided to put a little memorial there. It's
Speaker 1: a very tasteful one. UM. I'm out of the memorial business. Now.
Speaker 1: I think we have memorialized the Salem, which is more
Speaker 1: than ever in. We made a major memorial in Danvers,
Speaker 1: right across the street from where the original meeting house
Speaker 1: was located. UM. Salem did a wonderful memorial uh next
Speaker 1: to the Chatti Street burial ground. UH. Middleton tops Field, UM.
Speaker 1: Rowley also did memorials uh, and now we have a
Speaker 1: second one in Salem. So I've said, you know, that's
Speaker 1: enough memorials uh, But they did it, and UM last summer,
Speaker 1: I think it was I went to the to the
Speaker 1: dedication there and I believe that's probably a logical place
Speaker 1: for it to be. I still have a problem with
Speaker 1: some of the researches in the mode of execution. UH.
Speaker 1: This is kind of a real minor thing, but what
Speaker 1: historians always like to talk about. Um uh. For years,
Speaker 1: I've been involved in witchcraft studies and I UH was
Speaker 1: historical consultant to a PBS American Playhouse movie back in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties called Three Sovereignts for Sarah. It's stodd
Speaker 1: Vanessa Redgrave, and it had to do with my ancestors sister,
Speaker 1: Sarah Klois who survived, and Mary Esty and Rebecca Durasaw,
Speaker 1: three of them being sisters. And UM, I really loved
Speaker 1: the program. I had a lot to do with how
Speaker 1: it looks. They gave me that UM. It wasn't a
Speaker 1: commercial thing, so we used public money, so the historian
Speaker 1: Steve nisson Baum and I with a consultants. UM. The
Speaker 1: one thing I think I did a major mistake was
Speaker 1: having it as the hanging tree. We found a tree.
Speaker 1: We had to look all over Essex County to find one,
Speaker 1: and we finally found one fairly big in um in
Speaker 1: uh Hamilton's UH, and we did the thing there and
Speaker 1: I was saying, this is very awkward to do. And
Speaker 1: then I did research on the method of hanging in
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century England and New England. All of the
Speaker 1: prince to come out show a gallows and it's very
Speaker 1: simple gallows. I believe that the one used in Salem
Speaker 1: was two up posts and a horizontal beam uh nicely Chamford,
Speaker 1: so that it was smooth. It didn't look natural. Puritans
Speaker 1: didn't Puritans always had to manipulate nature. They didn't believe
Speaker 1: that that humans should use natural things in their own state,
Speaker 1: because what good to humans if they can't manipulate nature? Um,
Speaker 1: And what you do is you put a ladder against
Speaker 1: the tree. And you know you've seen the old West
Speaker 1: uh hanging nooses, the thirteen coils and the drop front
Speaker 1: which is supposed to break your neck. That's not how
Speaker 1: they died, unfortunately. In sixte two, the executioner and the
Speaker 1: executed one went up the ladder. Ah she was or
Speaker 1: he was bound, and the four the term is they
Speaker 1: were turned off, which meant the executioner would take their
Speaker 1: legs and turn them off the ladder and then they
Speaker 1: would swing and after a period of time they would
Speaker 1: strangle to death. And the next one they would just
Speaker 1: move the ladder and do it much more efficient, uh,
Speaker 1: much more in keeping with the historic record. UM. They
Speaker 1: refer to the gallows on a few different uh um documents. UH.
Speaker 1: And I think that's how it was done. That's the
Speaker 1: way Puritans, I believe, would have done it. Clearly, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of hobbyist historians who they find a
Speaker 1: historical moment in time that they are passionate about, and
Speaker 1: a lot of people it's salem for them. But you
Speaker 1: you've shown that this is this is your career. You know,
Speaker 1: you talk about memories of childhood being in your grandmother's
Speaker 1: library reading old books, but then grad school and here
Speaker 1: you are today. You know, this has been your life.
Speaker 1: And so at the end of the day, if there's
Speaker 1: if there's one thing you hope people can take away
Speaker 1: from the moment in time, what is it? Uh? To me?
Speaker 1: The witchcraft really boils down to UM two lessons. And
Speaker 1: back in we had the three anniversary and for over
Speaker 1: a year, all of the communities around us, UH, we're
Speaker 1: doing major programs and projects and so forth. And UM,
Speaker 1: I thought that this should be a real commemoration and
Speaker 1: weird word a celebration. Um. To me, there are two
Speaker 1: major things that came out of the witchcraft. One is
Speaker 1: the thing we have here at Bantaid every day now.
Speaker 1: The President of the United States is always talking about
Speaker 1: being involved in a witch hunt. That term has been
Speaker 1: used for a hundred more years about when uh, you
Speaker 1: take a little scanned evidence and a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: people who are frightened by some things and create a
Speaker 1: witch hunt. Um. And it stems back to six six
Speaker 1: two was a witch hunt And what it was was
Speaker 1: a period in which normal, sensible, reasonable people, because of
Speaker 1: certain fears, frustrations, and a culture that was undergoing certain crises,
Speaker 1: start acting irrationally. And I thought that the Salem witchcraft
Speaker 1: is a good example of being picked up and used.
Speaker 1: And we we did this without a memorial. We actually
Speaker 1: uh say it on a couple of signages there. Um.
Speaker 1: You have to confront your own period of witch hunts
Speaker 1: with clear vision and bravery, because this is not something
Speaker 1: that happened back in sixto. It's almost always with us,
Speaker 1: from the interment of the h Japanese American h in
Speaker 1: concentration camps UH to the Army McCarthy hearings, the Red
Speaker 1: scare to time and time again. These kinds of things
Speaker 1: happen even in our own times. Most of us experienced
Speaker 1: back in the nineteen eighties the horrendous UH legal prostigures
Speaker 1: against um uh nursery school teachers who were accused of
Speaker 1: doing sexually deviant things, including killing children and killing animals
Speaker 1: uh in nursery UH schools um, which turned out really
Speaker 1: not to be the case, and there are still people
Speaker 1: in this country who are in prison because of it.
Speaker 1: And the evidence that has come out afterwards shows that
Speaker 1: it was a period in which people were because of
Speaker 1: fears and so forth, they were seeing boogeyman and they
Speaker 1: were seeing things that not a shred of real evidence existed. Uh.
Speaker 1: And by our mistake, things that we should understand go bad.
Speaker 1: And if you bring it back to the period itself
Speaker 1: six Uh. In Danvers, we used to not like to
Speaker 1: talk about witchcraft. It was a scourge on our town
Speaker 1: and was something that if people want to go and
Speaker 1: see the witchcraft, send them to Salem. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: let him, let them see the tourism in Salem, but
Speaker 1: we don't want to talk about it. When I was
Speaker 1: growing up, that was the case. You didn't talk about
Speaker 1: witchcraft in polite society. As a matter of fact, when
Speaker 1: I started doing the excavation of the Paris House site seventy,
Speaker 1: I can remember early on we would try to bring
Speaker 1: school groups up and give them a little talk about
Speaker 1: the excavation we were doing and stuff. And there was
Speaker 1: a two sisters across, straight elderly women who I can
Speaker 1: remember on one occasion when I was bringing a group up,
Speaker 1: they came out in the which and they actually shook
Speaker 1: their fist at me and said, why are you bringing
Speaker 1: this up? This is not something we should be talking about. UM.
Speaker 1: It changed a bit after we did the excavation and
Speaker 1: so forth, and my take on it is that, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a terrible time. The civil authorities failed, the population,
Speaker 1: the religious uh people failed the situation. UM families even
Speaker 1: urged people in their own family to confess because they
Speaker 1: must be witches. Every institution failed. But what you do
Speaker 1: have is really a shining example of average people, some
Speaker 1: of them really kind of bastards, and some of them
Speaker 1: nice religious people who, when confronted with the worst crisis
Speaker 1: in their life, uh, you know that you're a witch,
Speaker 1: that you're gonna go to hell, that uh you're you're
Speaker 1: trying to destroy us instead of confessed sing like fifty
Speaker 1: people did to at least stay execution. And luckily for them,
Speaker 1: things worked out because the witchcraft was over and people
Speaker 1: started realizing their mistakes, so that none of those confesses
Speaker 1: ever were executed. But the nineteen who were executed by
Speaker 1: hanging UH don't share much in common except that they
Speaker 1: believed in truth being much more important than life itself.
Speaker 1: They would not belie themselves UH for survival. And I
Speaker 1: think that's remarkable, especially with you know, fairly uneducated, hard
Speaker 1: working people who always tried to do what they were
Speaker 1: supposed to do, and then when told by authority you
Speaker 1: must confess, said no. Uh. As as I mentioned before,
Speaker 1: George Jacobs, when confronted with us, said, um, uh, I'll
Speaker 1: stand in the true of Christ. I know nothing of witchcraft.
Speaker 1: And you do get these heroic words from these average people,
Speaker 1: And to me, that's so important. We in history talk
Speaker 1: about the famous and the infamous, and the battles and whatever,
Speaker 1: But here the personal crisis occurred and these people would
Speaker 1: not bend to anything and UH. Because of it, we
Speaker 1: probably know more about the pilgrims who went on the Mayflower.
Speaker 1: Average people and the witches in Swo than anybody else
Speaker 1: who was just a common person who lived four years ago.
Speaker 1: And the monument we have in danvers Um tries to
Speaker 1: kind of show that in that uh, we have the
Speaker 1: shackles of the past, the chains that once we're around
Speaker 1: their feet and arms being broken by the book of
Speaker 1: life history, which eventually will tell the truth of what happens.
Speaker 1: And here people who are universally condemned in now become
Speaker 1: more heroic than they actually were, but still people whose
Speaker 1: um beliefs really should be emulated. Richard, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for talking with me. You greatly appreciate it. My pleasure.
Speaker 1: This episode of Unobscured was executive produced by Me, Matt Frederick,
Speaker 1: and Alex Williams, with music by Chad Lawson and audio
Speaker 1: engineering by Alex Williams. The Unobscured website has everything you
Speaker 1: need to get the most out of the podcast. There's
Speaker 1: a resource library of maps, charts, and links to Salem
Speaker 1: document archives online, as well as a suggested reading list
Speaker 1: and a page with all of our historian biographies. And
Speaker 1: as always, thanks for supporting this show. If you love it,
Speaker 1: head over to Apple podcasts dot com. Slash Unobscured and
Speaker 1: leave a written review and a star rating. It makes
Speaker 1: a huge difference for the show's growth, and as always,
Speaker 1: thanks for listening. H