Speaker 1: The sun was warm and bright in the sky as
Speaker 1: the wagons slowly rolled down the road to and Over.
Speaker 1: It was a community about fifteen miles northwest of Salem Town,
Speaker 1: then one of the earliest settlements to get its own
Speaker 1: church and autonomy from Salem. But on this particular July morning,
Speaker 1: someone in and Over needed Salem's help, not that Salem
Speaker 1: didn't need help as well. The official Oyer and Terminer
Speaker 1: trials had been rolling along, but it was far from smooth.
Speaker 1: After the first session, one of the nine magistrates resigned
Speaker 1: his position on the trial. After the second trial, one
Speaker 1: that convicted five more witches and scheduled them for execution
Speaker 1: on July, the Attorney General himself, Sir Thomas Newton, also
Speaker 1: resigned his post. But despite those setbacks, things weren't slowing down.
Speaker 1: So when Joseph Ballard sent a message to Salem asking
Speaker 1: for help, they were happy to assist. Joseph's wife, Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: had been sick for a while and no one seemed
Speaker 1: to be able to help her, and as the weeks
Speaker 1: went by, she was looking worse and worse off. Most
Speaker 1: of the people around her, her husband included, expected her
Speaker 1: to pass away sometime very soon, but they also began
Speaker 1: to wonder if there might be darker reasons for her
Speaker 1: illness witchcraft. Knowing what the people of Salem had been
Speaker 1: dealing with and the sorts of experts that had come
Speaker 1: out of the woodwork, Joseph Ballard decided to take a chance.
Speaker 1: He sent word to the neighboring town that he suspected
Speaker 1: his wife had been bewitched and asked if they might
Speaker 1: be able to send someone to help find the person
Speaker 1: or people responsible. So the wagon heading to end Over
Speaker 1: on that bright July morning held someone special, two people actually,
Speaker 1: two young women who had become known and trusted as
Speaker 1: witch finders, and their task was simple, go to and
Speaker 1: Over and find the witches who were killing Elizabeth Ballard.
Speaker 1: Now I need to pause and make something clear. We
Speaker 1: don't know who these two young women were. We have guesses,
Speaker 1: but those guesses vary from historian to historian. All of
Speaker 1: them pull from the same pool of accusers that sat
Speaker 1: at the center of the Salem trials, but the two
Speaker 1: names will differ depending on who you read. The best
Speaker 1: hints we have are the records of other witch finding events,
Speaker 1: and most of those were carried out by Mercy Lewis
Speaker 1: and Elizabeth Hubbard, so that's who we're going to go with.
Speaker 1: But I think it also illuminates just how easy it
Speaker 1: is to forget now. Their activity in and Over certainly
Speaker 1: wouldn't be the first. Martha Carrier, an abrasive and stubborn
Speaker 1: mother of five in her mid thirties, had been arrested
Speaker 1: nearly two months before, back at the end of May,
Speaker 1: and she still sat in a Salem jail, and her
Speaker 1: family connections had already landed her brother in law, Roger Toothaker,
Speaker 1: in jail, where he died at the end of June.
Speaker 1: But this witch finding expedition was something new and different,
Speaker 1: something deadly, because it wasn't going to be a one
Speaker 1: off that would happen and then be forgotten. Now, if
Speaker 1: the Salem events were like a giant cistern holding millions
Speaker 1: of gallons of water, this little trip to and Over
Speaker 1: was a breach. The hole was being punctured in the
Speaker 1: side of the cistern and a leakue had sprung, and
Speaker 1: and Over was about to be swept away in the flood.
Speaker 1: This is unobscured. I'm Aaron Manky. The Ballards were an
Speaker 1: old family. The city of Andover is listed as first
Speaker 1: settled in six fifty years before the events in Salem,
Speaker 1: but the Ballards arrived a year before that. They were
Speaker 1: part of that first wave of risk takers who packed
Speaker 1: up and planted their lives farther inland from the safety
Speaker 1: of the Atlantic. As far as I can tell, the
Speaker 1: original Ballard family had three sons, John, William, and Joseph. Remember,
Speaker 1: in those days, there weren't a lot of people living
Speaker 1: in the area, so apparently the ratio of men to
Speaker 1: women was slightly off and over constable. Joseph Ballard managed
Speaker 1: to find a wife, a Elizabeth, the woman who was
Speaker 1: sick and dying, but his brothers weren't so lucky. It
Speaker 1: wasn't until around six eight that all of that changed.
Speaker 1: That's when Samuel Wardwell moved to town. He was roughly
Speaker 1: the same age as the Ballard boys, and his household
Speaker 1: included not only his wife and children, but his wife's sister, Rebecca.
Speaker 1: Soon enough, Rebecca married John Ballard and the family had
Speaker 1: grown a little larger. But in the summer of six
Speaker 1: Joseph's wife, Elizabeth took sick, and no one knew what
Speaker 1: was causing it. Medical science was barely more than folklore
Speaker 1: and herbs at the time, especially miles from a trained physician,
Speaker 1: so it was common for minds to wander towards unusual suspicions,
Speaker 1: and one of those ideas apparently popped into Samuel Wardwell's head.
Speaker 1: He claimed to have heard through the grape vine that
Speaker 1: Joseph suspected Samuel of bewitching his wife. He was a
Speaker 1: bit embarrassed by the idea, though, so rather than confront
Speaker 1: Joseph directly, he approached John Ballard instead. Had Joseph, ever
Speaker 1: voiced a suspicion that Samuel was a witch, he asked him.
Speaker 1: John Ballard shook his head, answering with an honest denial.
Speaker 1: But John told Joseph about the conversation, and that put
Speaker 1: a bug in Joseph's head. Why would Samuel ask such
Speaker 1: a question? Why would he believe in such nonsense? Why?
Speaker 1: But then the obvious answer struck him right between the eyes.
Speaker 1: Samuel was asking because he was trying to see if
Speaker 1: anyone suspected him of something he knew he was doing.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Samuel's own initiation, Joseph now believed the man
Speaker 1: was a witch, so he sent one of his employees
Speaker 1: to Salem to bring back a witch finder. It's ironic,
Speaker 1: I know. The man with crazy ideas decided to be
Speaker 1: as logical as possible, and that logic included employing the
Speaker 1: services of young women who claimed to be able to
Speaker 1: track down witches. It was almost comical in its addy,
Speaker 1: but to Joseph Ballard it made perfect sense. Days before
Speaker 1: Rebecca Nurse and the other four women convicted in the
Speaker 1: second trial would hang. Mercy Lewis and Elizabeth Hubbard arrived
Speaker 1: in and Over and got to work. But when they did,
Speaker 1: they discovered that Samuel Wardwell wasn't the only suspicious person.
Speaker 1: There was also Timothy Swan. Swan moved to the area
Speaker 1: from the neighboring town of haverl years before. In five though,
Speaker 1: Swan was accused of attacking and raping his neighbor's daughter, Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: the proof, as presented in court, was that Elizabeth was pregnant.
Speaker 1: The court decided to force Swan to pay child support,
Speaker 1: but leveled no other punishment against him, which obviously upset
Speaker 1: the community around him thanks to his reputation as a
Speaker 1: rapist and abuser. Timothy Swan never married, He never even
Speaker 1: made friends. He just lived alone with his brother seething
Speaker 1: with bitterness about the way he had been treated and
Speaker 1: feeling welcome everywhere he went, and rightly so, because the
Speaker 1: people of andover hated him. So when the girls from
Speaker 1: Salem got to work, Timothy Swan and Samuel Wardwell were
Speaker 1: both likely suspects. They were both outsiders, and both had
Speaker 1: reputations that placed them outside the norms of the Puritan society.
Speaker 1: But there was one problem. Swan was definitely ill when
Speaker 1: they arrived, and he was pointing the finger at someone else,
Speaker 1: someone he believed who had bewitched him with crippling sickness.
Speaker 1: And Foster, with a lead to follow up on, the
Speaker 1: witch finders got to work digging into the stories and accusations,
Speaker 1: but as they did, they encountered a problem. The pit
Speaker 1: was much deeper and far more dark than they ever
Speaker 1: could have imagined. I realized that I've thrown a lot
Speaker 1: of names at you, and it's easy to get confused me.
Speaker 1: I'm right there with you. Although I thankfully have hundreds
Speaker 1: of pages of research outlines and notes to lean on.
Speaker 1: Still I want to take a moment to point out
Speaker 1: that the Unobscured website has a resources page that will
Speaker 1: continue to grow over the next couple of months. You
Speaker 1: can find that over and history unobscured dot com slash resources.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of fantastic books listed there that
Speaker 1: you can use to look up names and keep all
Speaker 1: of the families straight. The Salem witch Trials is a
Speaker 1: complex network of families and neighbors, and there's nothing I
Speaker 1: can do through audio to completely simplify that mess, but
Speaker 1: I'll do my best. The Fosters were another of those
Speaker 1: old and over families. Ann's husband had been one of
Speaker 1: the earliest to arrive in the area, right alongside the
Speaker 1: Ballard's patriarch, but after he passed away in trouble started
Speaker 1: calling at the Foster family door and for a widow
Speaker 1: in her seventies who was too frail to even walk
Speaker 1: around town anymore. It was a bit overwhelming. First, there
Speaker 1: was the murder. Four years earlier. One of Ann's daughters, Hannah,
Speaker 1: was murdered by her husband, Hugh Stone, and on the
Speaker 1: scale of bad to worse, this crime was horrid. Ann's
Speaker 1: daughter had been pregnant at the time with what would
Speaker 1: have been their eighth child, and Hugh didn't commit the
Speaker 1: crime in private. Now he killed her in cold blood
Speaker 1: right in the middle of town. It was a horrifyingly
Speaker 1: tragic moment in and over his young history, and went
Speaker 1: on the record books as the first murder in their community.
Speaker 1: Ann's son in law hanged for the crime, but from
Speaker 1: the gallows he had shouted out that it was all
Speaker 1: the fault of the Foster family. His wife had been
Speaker 1: contentious and because of that it was her fault that
Speaker 1: he had murdered her. Exactly a century before William Murdoch
Speaker 1: became the first person to use flammable gas as a
Speaker 1: lighting source, and two d and fifty years before the
Speaker 1: film that established the concept, Hugh Stone was gassing his
Speaker 1: victims from the gallows. Some thing's never change. I guess
Speaker 1: The murder wasn't the end for Anne Foster's problems, though.
Speaker 1: Her teenage granddaughter Mary Lacey Jr. Ran away from home
Speaker 1: for a time, and that seemed to echo Hugh Stone's
Speaker 1: claims from his execution day that the family was wild
Speaker 1: and unruly through and through. So when Timothy swan known
Speaker 1: rapist and unwelcome outsider, pointed his finger at her and
Speaker 1: claimed she was a witch, those rumors had enough weight
Speaker 1: to make him believable, and Foster was carried before the
Speaker 1: magistrates in Salem. Literally, she wasn't strong enough to walk,
Speaker 1: so they carted her to town and carried her inside
Speaker 1: the meeting house. It was only an examination, not an
Speaker 1: official trial, but there was very little to separate them
Speaker 1: in the minds of the community as of late. It
Speaker 1: was the beginning of a journey that could not end
Speaker 1: well for the seventy five year old and over widow.
Speaker 1: The Ray of Hope. Was the newcomer to the team
Speaker 1: of magistrates, taking the place of Nathaniel Saltonstall, was John
Speaker 1: Higginson Jr. The respected son of the Salem Town minister.
Speaker 1: In fact, John's father, John Sr. Had been one of
Speaker 1: the biggest advocates for the more liberal Halfway Covenants years before,
Speaker 1: and almost gave up his job for it. Reverend Higginson
Speaker 1: in Salem Town nearly left. He was willing to leave
Speaker 1: Salem if they didn't loosen up those rules and adopt
Speaker 1: the Halfway Covenant by the way, as had people like
Speaker 1: Bartholemew Gedney and John Haythorn were two of the first
Speaker 1: members to command under Higginson's loosened rules in Salem Town.
Speaker 1: He had the potential to be the voice of common
Speaker 1: sense over piety. Added to that, just the month before,
Speaker 1: John's own sister had been arrested on suspicion of witchcraft
Speaker 1: and was sitting inside a filthy jail awaiting a trial
Speaker 1: of her own. He had more than enough reason to
Speaker 1: approach this new examination with caution and logic, and Foster
Speaker 1: ruined of that though when she did the unthinkable she
Speaker 1: confessed to being a witch. She told the magistrates that
Speaker 1: the devil had appeared to her in the shape of
Speaker 1: a colorful bird, something that echoed the imagery used by
Speaker 1: the Paris slave Tichiba. The devil had offered her prosperity
Speaker 1: and instructed her to harm people as part of the deal.
Speaker 1: One of the witches who came with the devil to
Speaker 1: recruit her was none other than Martha Carrier. As I've
Speaker 1: mentioned before, she was the first andover resident to be
Speaker 1: accused and thrown in jail, but for six long years
Speaker 1: Martha Carrier had been training her, teaching her to make
Speaker 1: poppets and how to squeeze them and stick them with
Speaker 1: pins to inflict pain on others. Over the course of
Speaker 1: three days of examination, and Foster unloaded a treasure trove
Speaker 1: of confessions. They held witch meetings with hundreds of their
Speaker 1: kind and flew from all over on wooden sticks. Martha
Speaker 1: Carrier was there, as was the minister George Burrows, leading
Speaker 1: the evil Congregation, which earned them the nicknames the King
Speaker 1: and Queen of Hell. Here's Stacy Schiff, historian and author
Speaker 1: of the Witches. That's an expression of Cotton Mathers. I
Speaker 1: think he kind of makes that up. To be honest
Speaker 1: with you, I don't think there's a King and Queen
Speaker 1: of Hell. I don't know. I think that was just,
Speaker 1: you know, Mother trying to make the whole thing a
Speaker 1: little bit more dramatic. He really goes to great lengths
Speaker 1: to paint Martha Carrier in the most wretched terms and
Speaker 1: con mother would have been at the trials, and he
Speaker 1: bases his portraits there loosely on the testimony. If you
Speaker 1: look at it, you see he's taken some liberties with
Speaker 1: the testimony. He's left out a great number of things.
Speaker 1: He's left out things that were to people's credit. He's
Speaker 1: injected things that weren't actually in the testimony, and my
Speaker 1: senses that would for whatever reason, Martha Carrier rubbed him
Speaker 1: the wrong way. And that's why she gets promoted to
Speaker 1: Queen of Hell. I also want to point out something intriguing,
Speaker 1: and Foster, through her stories, actually painted herself in the
Speaker 1: stereotypical image of a witch that most modern people have
Speaker 1: in their heads today, an old, decrepit woman riding through
Speaker 1: the night sky on a wooden broom handle. In the
Speaker 1: midst of all of this, Mercy Lewis and Elizabeth Hubbard
Speaker 1: reached the conclusion of their own witch finding investigation back
Speaker 1: in and Over. Despite the clear suspects that Samuel Wardwell
Speaker 1: and Timothy Swan presented, the two women seemed to follow
Speaker 1: the excitement out of and Over and back home. In
Speaker 1: their minds, the witch is responsible for Elizabeth Ballard's illness
Speaker 1: were obvious, and Foster her daughter Mary Lacey Sr. And
Speaker 1: her granddaughter Mary Jr. With actual names from official witch finders.
Speaker 1: Joseph Ballard had a case and a chance to save
Speaker 1: his dying wife. He traveled to Salem on July and
Speaker 1: filed his complaint the same day. By the way that
Speaker 1: Rebecca Nurse and the others were carded out to the
Speaker 1: execution site and hanged. It's interesting to note that Joseph
Speaker 1: Ballard's legal complaint represents the first time in the entire
Speaker 1: months long event that anyone actually paid the bond that
Speaker 1: was supposed to accompany such serious charges. Maybe it was
Speaker 1: because he was from out of town, or perhaps having
Speaker 1: John Higginson on the court brought a refreshed view of
Speaker 1: proper procedures. All we know is that he paid the
Speaker 1: one pound fee. On July and and over, Constable, although
Speaker 1: not Joseph Ballard, arrested Mary Lacey Senior and Mary Lacey Jr.
Speaker 1: And brought them to Salem. Another person searched their home
Speaker 1: for proof of witchcraft, but all they managed to find
Speaker 1: was a bundle of sticks and some yarn, nothing that
Speaker 1: would scream diabolical plots and devil worship. Much like a
Speaker 1: number of the previous cases, Mary Lacey Senior was questioned
Speaker 1: thoroughly before she ever stepped foot into her formal examination
Speaker 1: later that day. Records of the conversation no longer exist,
Speaker 1: if they were ever written down at all, but we
Speaker 1: do know that she confessed and the details she revealed
Speaker 1: were swallowed whole by the magistrates. I want to point
Speaker 1: out that we also have a new type of person here.
Speaker 1: In the beginning, we just had the afflicted Those were
Speaker 1: the people who appeared to be victims of attacks by
Speaker 1: the witch, and the afflicted had driven much of the
Speaker 1: proceedings for months. Then there's the accused. I think that
Speaker 1: one makes more sense, right. These are the people who
Speaker 1: the afflicted pointed at and declared to be a witch.
Speaker 1: The accused had been rounded up through scores of warrants,
Speaker 1: examined in front of the magistrates prior to a trial,
Speaker 1: and then housed in one of a handful of jails
Speaker 1: around the area until their day in court would arrive.
Speaker 1: But the confessors, these were new. Sure, there were a
Speaker 1: few random cases earlier, accused women who spoke freely about
Speaker 1: their interactions with the Devil and his book and the
Speaker 1: Red Communion and witches gatherings, but it always came in
Speaker 1: small pieces, requiring the magistrates to put it all together
Speaker 1: over time. The confessions, though, we're different. Looking back, it's
Speaker 1: easy to wonder why anyone would do something like that.
Speaker 1: Here's Mary Beth Norton, professor of American History at Cornell University,
Speaker 1: an author of In the Devil Snare. The question of
Speaker 1: why people confessed has always been something that people have
Speaker 1: been wondering about. But when it became clear as it
Speaker 1: became clear later in the trials that if you confessed,
Speaker 1: you would be kept alive so you could testify against
Speaker 1: other people. Is when more and more people started to confess.
Speaker 1: And one of the things I noticed was that when
Speaker 1: adults confessed late in the sequence of the trials, they
Speaker 1: accused only people who were already dead, who had already
Speaker 1: been hanged, or they accused people who had been accused
Speaker 1: by other people. They did not name new people. It
Speaker 1: seemed clear to me that it was very strategic when
Speaker 1: they confessed. They did not want to hurt anyone who
Speaker 1: wasn't already hanged or already had been accused of others.
Speaker 1: These were people who stood before the authorities and when
Speaker 1: they were asked if they were a witch, they answered yes,
Speaker 1: and then they detailed every single moment of their diabolical lifestyle.
Speaker 1: Step by step, they exposed themselves as the enemy, and
Speaker 1: oftentimes pulled their own family into the fire with them.
Speaker 1: Mary Lazy Sr. Was one of those people. She freely
Speaker 1: confessed on julye giving the magistrates powerful tools to use
Speaker 1: on her mother and her daughter. When they brought Anne
Speaker 1: Foster back into the examination room and told her that
Speaker 1: her daughter had confessed and didn't freak out and deny it.
Speaker 1: She seems to have accepted it as fact and then
Speaker 1: added her own details to the story. Then they brought
Speaker 1: Mary Lacey Sr. Back in to see Anne, right in
Speaker 1: front of the magistrates. When Mary saw her, she cried out, Oh, Mother,
Speaker 1: we have left Christ and the devil hath got hold
Speaker 1: of us. How shall I get rid of this evil one?
Speaker 1: When their moment was over, both of the women were
Speaker 1: escorted back out of the room, and young Mary Lacey Jr.
Speaker 1: Was brought in alone. At first, she denied everything, even
Speaker 1: when one of the afflicted girls started convulsing and fits
Speaker 1: on the floor, But when the judges told her that
Speaker 1: her mother and grandmother had already confessed, she crumbled. She
Speaker 1: told them that she had seen a horse just a
Speaker 1: week before and now wondered if that horse had been
Speaker 1: the devil in disguise. The magistrates told her that her
Speaker 1: only chance to obtain mercy and be saved by Christ
Speaker 1: was to freely and openly confess, and with that ultimatum
Speaker 1: hanging over her head, she gave in, adding even more
Speaker 1: details to the stories told by her mother and grandmother.
Speaker 1: All three of the women did something unusual too. You
Speaker 1: would expect them to name the less savory people in
Speaker 1: their community as witches, but instead they pointed their fingers
Speaker 1: at family. Here's Mary Beth Norton. Once again, it's very interesting.
Speaker 1: It's a completely different pattern in and over. Then you
Speaker 1: get in Salem Village. Salem Village, people accuse their enemies,
Speaker 1: and and over people accuse their friends and their relatives.
Speaker 1: There's this one family where five sisters and the mother
Speaker 1: all confess and basically accuse each other and say they're
Speaker 1: all working together. So it's a very different pattern. It
Speaker 1: was easy to believe them though. When questioned individually, they
Speaker 1: each told stories about the same event, and many of
Speaker 1: the details seemed to line up. It was as if
Speaker 1: the things they described were real. I asked Stacy Scheff,
Speaker 1: author of The Witches, why is she thought that was
Speaker 1: the case. The answer to your question really is when
Speaker 1: you when you get toward and over the sale and
Speaker 1: witchcraft of ultimately will will migrate to and over, and
Speaker 1: by that time all the imagery has really changed. It's
Speaker 1: less about the enchanted hey and the Satanna cat, and
Speaker 1: it's more about this diabolical meeting to which people have
Speaker 1: flown from all over New England, and there most of
Speaker 1: the testimony is utterly on point. It's extremely as as
Speaker 1: if everyone compared no swall in prison. Everyone has. Everyone
Speaker 1: talks about precisely the same sound to call the people
Speaker 1: to the field. They talk about the same person presiding
Speaker 1: over this dark sabbath. They mentioned the same guest list
Speaker 1: of who was there. Every detail corroborates each detail, and
Speaker 1: that's obviously because they're being told either by their friends
Speaker 1: in prison, or their family who think they're guilty, or
Speaker 1: the ministers in charge what to say. Looking back, it's
Speaker 1: easy to see countless examples of the authorities leading the witness.
Speaker 1: They suggest answers with their questions and give the accused
Speaker 1: just enough detail to reply with answers that fit their expectations.
Speaker 1: Maybe these men were just really bad at interviewing the accused,
Speaker 1: or perhaps they allow their bias to steer the ship.
Speaker 1: We might never know. But something else came out of
Speaker 1: the examination of Anne Foster and her family New names
Speaker 1: from andover. Mary Lacey Sr. Mentioned two of Martha Carrier's
Speaker 1: own children as one of their own, sending the court
Speaker 1: into a frenzy. The following day, eighteen year old Richard
Speaker 1: and sixteen year old Andrew were arrested and brought to town.
Speaker 1: What awaited them, however, was not the usual examination we
Speaker 1: have come to expect. Their fate would be much more
Speaker 1: painful than anyone thus far torture. The Carrier boys were
Speaker 1: brought to a tavern in Salem Town owned by Thomas Beadle.
Speaker 1: The end Over constable who delivered the warrant and brought
Speaker 1: them there was none other than Joseph Ballard. There were
Speaker 1: magistrates waiting for the boys when they arrived. The authorities
Speaker 1: asked Richard and Andrew a whole slew of questions, but
Speaker 1: they refused to answer. Maybe it was because they weren't
Speaker 1: alone in the tavern. Seated around them were some of
Speaker 1: the afflicted girls, along with Mary Lacey Senior and junior.
Speaker 1: Those two women would eventually cry out that the spirit
Speaker 1: of Martha Carrier and the devil himself were standing among them,
Speaker 1: preventing the boys from answering. It can't have been a
Speaker 1: pleasant experience, so they refused to talk. In response, the
Speaker 1: magistrates had the boys removed from the main room and
Speaker 1: taken elsewhere in the tavern, where the questions picked up
Speaker 1: speed and urgency. Still they remained silent, and that's when
Speaker 1: the authorities moved on to a new method of extracting information.
Speaker 1: The English called it neck and heels, and it was
Speaker 1: an old military punishment. A person would have one bore
Speaker 1: strapped across the backs of their knees and another across
Speaker 1: the back of the neck. Then rope was looped around
Speaker 1: both boards, one on each side, and slowly tightened. The
Speaker 1: result was that as the boards were pulled closer and
Speaker 1: closer together, the person would be bent forward, essentially folding
Speaker 1: in half. It was cruel and painful too. There are
Speaker 1: stories of victims bleeding from their mouth, ears, and nose
Speaker 1: as the pressure inside their body built up. Some people
Speaker 1: actually died from the technique. And here we have military
Speaker 1: level torture being used on two teenage boys simply because
Speaker 1: they refused to answer questions. It worked, too, Both young
Speaker 1: men agreed to tell the magistrates everything they wanted to hear.
Speaker 1: They began to reveal details that would have sounded very
Speaker 1: familiar to anyone familiar with the accusation so far. The
Speaker 1: dark man in a black hat, the Devil's book of Names,
Speaker 1: even the gathering of local witches outside Reverend Paris's House,
Speaker 1: Richard actually named names. He named his mother Martha, who
Speaker 1: had been in jail for months, as well as his
Speaker 1: uncle Roger Toothaker, although he had passed away in jail
Speaker 1: weeks before. He listed Rebecca Nurse, Elizabeth Howe, and Bridget Bishop,
Speaker 1: all of whom had been executed already. He also named
Speaker 1: others who were still alive and awaiting their trial from
Speaker 1: within a hot, dirty jail cell escaped Constable John Willard,
Speaker 1: John and Elizabeth Proctor, Giles, and Martha Corey and Mary Bradberry.
Speaker 1: When word about his confession reached their ears, they were enraged.
Speaker 1: They had been doing all they could to deny the accusations,
Speaker 1: and now Richard had spoiled everything by contradicting them. John
Speaker 1: Proctor wrote a note to the local ministers, including Cotton,
Speaker 1: Mother and Samuel Willard, begging for more objective trials, and
Speaker 1: he asked the ministers to take his quest to Governor
Speaker 1: Phipps himself. The trouble was Phipps was no longer in
Speaker 1: Massachusetts now. He had gone on a sort of victory
Speaker 1: tour to the places where he had seen the most success.
Speaker 1: Despite the fact that the very foundation of their government
Speaker 1: was under assault. Phipps had chosen to abandon his worn
Speaker 1: duties and head north to Maine to watch his troops
Speaker 1: defend the land from invaders by building new fortifications, walls,
Speaker 1: and structures designed to keep the devil out. William Stoughton
Speaker 1: was next in command, but he already sat on the
Speaker 1: court of Oyer and Terminer, making it a lost cause.
Speaker 1: Richard Carrier's confession was accepted as evidence, and when it
Speaker 1: was it was as if gasoline had been thrown on
Speaker 1: the fire. A week later, Joseph ballard sick wife Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: passed away. Three days later, on j Martha Carrier's sister,
Speaker 1: Mary Toothaker, from the town of bell Rica, was arrested
Speaker 1: and questioned. Her husband, rod Your had already died in
Speaker 1: jail awaiting his trial. And I can't help but wonder
Speaker 1: if she worried about the same fate for herself. And then,
Speaker 1: on August one, with the entire community of Salem petrified
Speaker 1: that the devil was winning, that he was driving deeper
Speaker 1: into their safe territory, a Native American raid struck a
Speaker 1: bit too close to home. Here's Marybeth Norton once again.
Speaker 1: Bill Rick is only twenty miles away. Now, that was
Speaker 1: the closest attack that I know of to Salem. But
Speaker 1: remember all these people had relatives in Maine and New Hampshire,
Speaker 1: and the people in Maine and New Hampshire were constantly
Speaker 1: under threat. Even in the most southern parts of Maine
Speaker 1: and New Hampshire in um West now Portsmouth, which was
Speaker 1: then called Strawberry Bank, what was Wells Main, there were
Speaker 1: attacks nearby all the time. The people felt under constant threat,
Speaker 1: shall we say so? The attack in bill Rico was
Speaker 1: the closest, but eventually later in the war, actually after,
Speaker 1: there was a big attack on and over, so it's
Speaker 1: not as though the war wasn't right there. Ironically, Mary
Speaker 1: tooth Picker's arrest saved her life. When the Wabanaki raided Belrica,
Speaker 1: they killed every single resident of the homes on either
Speaker 1: side of Mary's. Had she not been in jail, she
Speaker 1: would have died in the attack. But of course that
Speaker 1: didn't mean her life was any safer just because she
Speaker 1: dodged that bullet. There were plenty more rounds in the chamber,
Speaker 1: and they were all aimed at her. The man who
Speaker 1: would do the metaphorical shooting was the newly appointed attorney
Speaker 1: general for the trial, Sir Thomas Newton, if you remember,
Speaker 1: had resigned after convicting Rebecca Nurse and the others. Taking
Speaker 1: his place was a newcomer, Anthony Checkley, and he was
Speaker 1: ready to get to work. The third Oiler and Terminer
Speaker 1: session would begin two days later on August three, and
Speaker 1: it was the event everyone had been waiting for because
Speaker 1: they were about to witness something completely unheard of, the
Speaker 1: witchcraft trial of an actual minister of God. Like a
Speaker 1: lot of the pieces of the Salem witch trials, we're
Speaker 1: not exactly sure when some of the trials happened. What
Speaker 1: we know is that the third official session of the
Speaker 1: Oyer and Terminer was called to order on August two
Speaker 1: and ran through the end of August five. We even
Speaker 1: know what days certain cases were heard, but we're not
Speaker 1: sure about others. The Proctors are one of those mysteries.
Speaker 1: They remind me a lot of Rebecca Nurse. While most
Speaker 1: of the accused were outsiders or people with very few
Speaker 1: friends and family to lean on, the Proctors were a
Speaker 1: well connected family. They ran that busy tavern on the
Speaker 1: northern edge of the village, and that had a way
Speaker 1: of putting them into a lot of people's lives. So
Speaker 1: when their trial date arrived, they brought two separate petitions
Speaker 1: with them. One of them included the names and signatures
Speaker 1: of nineteen neighbors and friends, including George Locker, the constable
Speaker 1: who had been responsible for arresting Sarah Good all the
Speaker 1: way back on March first. I can't help but wonder
Speaker 1: if Lockers work with the trial had begun to soften
Speaker 1: his heart. The second was most likely started by Ipswich
Speaker 1: minister John Wisse and included thirty one other names on
Speaker 1: that list, and Wise, being a trained minister, used the
Speaker 1: petition to also make an important theological point. He referenced
Speaker 1: the Old Testament story of the Witch of Endor and
Speaker 1: how Satan had once counterfeited a specter of the Holy
Speaker 1: Prophet Samuel. In other words, just because people have claimed
Speaker 1: to see John Procter's specter doesn't mean it actually was
Speaker 1: John Procter. But it didn't work. As we've been discussing
Speaker 1: for a number of episodes, Salem wasn't inside a safe
Speaker 1: little bubble. It was a community on the edge of
Speaker 1: a great dark wilderness where the agents of the devil
Speaker 1: were prowling through the shadows looking for a way to
Speaker 1: tear them down. One minister speaking out with common sense,
Speaker 1: was not about to alter their perception of the world.
Speaker 1: As sad as that sounds, sometimes the crowd lets their
Speaker 1: fears propel them down terrifying roads. Sometimes their leaders encourage it.
Speaker 1: After the Proctor's case was heard, it was time for
Speaker 1: the Queen of Hell herself, Martha Carrier. We don't have
Speaker 1: the official court records for her trial, but Cotton Mather
Speaker 1: was there and he wrote down all his observations of
Speaker 1: the day. His simple words, it followed the standard pattern,
Speaker 1: are all we really need to know. Thomas Putnam was
Speaker 1: said to have sworn an oath that had the judges
Speaker 1: not required Martha to be bound by rope, she might
Speaker 1: have broken loose and killed them all. And he had
Speaker 1: good reason to be afraid, because the rumors were powerful.
Speaker 1: Curses and illness and death were on every whisper. Some
Speaker 1: of her neighbors in andover had gone on record to
Speaker 1: claim that Martha had often cursed them after disagreements. Once
Speaker 1: several of Benjamin Abbott's cows mysteriously died, and later his
Speaker 1: foot became infected and needed treatment from a doctor. Two
Speaker 1: other neighbors, John Rogers, and Samuel Preston both claimed that
Speaker 1: Martha had killed some of their livestock after an argument.
Speaker 1: Even family got involved in her trial. Alan Toothaker was
Speaker 1: her nephew and also the son of Mary and Roger.
Speaker 1: With his father dead and his mother awaiting her turn
Speaker 1: in court, maybe Allan saw darkness closing in around him
Speaker 1: and wanted away out, so he joined the accusers and
Speaker 1: blamed the death of his own cattle on his aunt.
Speaker 1: Other victims were brought to trial that week as well.
Speaker 1: George Jacobs and John Willard both stood before the magistrates
Speaker 1: to make their case and have evidence against them be presented.
Speaker 1: If you don't remember, John Willard was the thirty year
Speaker 1: old outsider who had married into the Wilkins family, but
Speaker 1: had fled the area when accusations had been hurled against him.
Speaker 1: To make matters worse, young Daniel Wilkins had mysteriously died,
Speaker 1: and everyone seemed to suspect Willard had bewitched him to death.
Speaker 1: John had been an abusive husband too, giving his reputation
Speaker 1: just enough of a tarnish that it was easy for
Speaker 1: most people to consider him a witch. His trial was
Speaker 1: over in just a few hours, and he was taken
Speaker 1: back to jail to await the verdict. George Jacobs was
Speaker 1: a rough spoken, illiterate farmer with a wild sense of humor,
Speaker 1: but none of that was going to help him. Before
Speaker 1: the magistrates. Some of the original afflicted girls, including Annie
Speaker 1: Putnam and Elizabeth Hubbard, came forward to swear that Jacob's
Speaker 1: spirit was tormenting them. Even there during the trial, they
Speaker 1: could see it flying about, trying to attack them and
Speaker 1: disrupt the proceedings. Jacob's own granddaughter, Margaret, had previously been
Speaker 1: accused by others and saved herself by confessing and pledging
Speaker 1: to help name other witches. Here at her grandfather's trial.
Speaker 1: She made good on that promise, pointing a finger at
Speaker 1: him and adding her voice to the accusations. Poor George Jacobs,
Speaker 1: they didn't stand a chance. These were all difficult cases
Speaker 1: to watch, I'm sure prominent respected people who were being
Speaker 1: dragged before the court and accused of witchcraft. And despite
Speaker 1: the ridiculousness of it all to us today, the evidence
Speaker 1: presented was damning for each and every one of them.
Speaker 1: But that's not why. Most of the people in the
Speaker 1: courtroom had traveled from so far and wide. They weren't
Speaker 1: there to see widowed farmers and tavern owners raked over
Speaker 1: the coals of justice. No, they had come to see
Speaker 1: a bigger trial, one with more weight and importance, the
Speaker 1: trial of the rumored leader of those lesser witches, the
Speaker 1: King of Hell himself, George Burrows. There was something undeniably
Speaker 1: extra ordinary about George Burrows. Here's Stacy Schiff. Once again,
Speaker 1: it's conjectural, but I think it's something a little bit different.
Speaker 1: I think with Burrows. Burrows goes to Maine and protects
Speaker 1: his parishioners in a very small community against a hideous
Speaker 1: and very savage Indian assault. And he's forced to do
Speaker 1: that because the Massachusetts authorities have essentially stopped protecting those
Speaker 1: communities because they don't have the funds to do it,
Speaker 1: and they're trying to cut back. And I feel as
Speaker 1: if it might have been a piece of residual guilt
Speaker 1: there for having left those communities unprotected. Burrows would have
Speaker 1: had every reason to chastise them for kind of cutting
Speaker 1: off those settlers who are really at the very forefront
Speaker 1: of the really at the edge of the frontier there
Speaker 1: and are getting no protection. And he'll write the one
Speaker 1: document we have of his which is really extraordinary is
Speaker 1: an account of an Indian raid on the community where
Speaker 1: he's protecting his parishioners inside a barricade, And you know,
Speaker 1: he writes a bit in biblical terms. It's an astonishing
Speaker 1: document in which he proves to be a very courageous
Speaker 1: and ingenious man. But if Burrows was painting himself in
Speaker 1: a biblical light and perhaps adding in embellishments about his
Speaker 1: prowess and cunning, those traits might have backfired. And the
Speaker 1: other interesting thing about Burrows is that he's very strong,
Speaker 1: and he's very canny, And a lot of the testimony
Speaker 1: against him will be testimony about his somehow magical strength.
Speaker 1: How did he lift that barrel? How did he fire
Speaker 1: that very long musket? How is it possible that he
Speaker 1: heard that conversation from that distance? How did he get
Speaker 1: to be two places at once? Not everything about Burrows
Speaker 1: was a rumor about his strength or brilliance. There were
Speaker 1: some who viewed parts of his life, or at least
Speaker 1: the rumors about them, as less than savory. To them,
Speaker 1: that nickname of King of Hell made a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: Here's Mary Beth Norton. Burrows is the right person to
Speaker 1: be the leader of the witches, because he's a minister,
Speaker 1: and because he's a kind of a weird minister. That is,
Speaker 1: he's never been ordained, he's been educated at Harvard, and
Speaker 1: because there's all kinds of gossip about him, which I
Speaker 1: explore in my book. He has a very peculiar relationship
Speaker 1: with his wives. It's hard to know a lot about
Speaker 1: the details, but he seems to have been quite brutal
Speaker 1: and quite an aggressive husband. He at least is accused
Speaker 1: of beating them or at least being very controlling of them.
Speaker 1: He wants them to quote keep his secrets, and so
Speaker 1: the question becomes, what are those secrets he wants them
Speaker 1: to keep. So when Burrows began his trial on August five,
Speaker 1: the courtroom was packed. Even ministers from up and down
Speaker 1: the coast had made the journey to see one of
Speaker 1: their peers stand trial. Maybe they were there to silently
Speaker 1: root for one of their own, or perhaps they were
Speaker 1: nervous about their own safety and saw Burroughs trial as
Speaker 1: a canary in the mind for their own future. Burrows
Speaker 1: supernatural strength was a topic of discussion, as it was
Speaker 1: his unnatural cunning. Never mind the fact that both of
Speaker 1: those characteristics had been exaggerated in descriptions of the Native
Speaker 1: American raid on his community in Maine, and he used
Speaker 1: that cunning in the courtroom too. His life was on
Speaker 1: the line, after all, I'm not sure any of us
Speaker 1: would have done it any other way. He knew the
Speaker 1: court system better than almost all of the accused. He
Speaker 1: knew the rules and procedure. He knew what his rights
Speaker 1: were and what the magistrates had to accommodate. For example,
Speaker 1: he began his defense by exercising his right to challenge
Speaker 1: the perspective jurors. After discussing each of them, he requested
Speaker 1: that a few of them be replaced. It was smart
Speaker 1: and logical. He was trying to bring order to the
Speaker 1: chaotic trial that was sweeping innocent people along in the flood.
Speaker 1: But from the outside looking in, it also looked like trickery.
Speaker 1: No one else played the system so well, so naturally
Speaker 1: people assumed that this was the sort of thing you
Speaker 1: might expect from the reputed wizard known as the King
Speaker 1: of Hell. There were witnesses with stories about him tormenting them,
Speaker 1: stories about him leading the coven of witches in their
Speaker 1: plot to destroy the Puritan experiment. Even courtroom, theatrics, as
Speaker 1: some of the afflicted bell into trances and seizures at
Speaker 1: the sight of him. It was all what you might
Speaker 1: expect at this point, and yet all somehow worse. Burrows
Speaker 1: put up a mighty fight, but in the end even
Speaker 1: he failed to beat the magistrates at their game. Even
Speaker 1: the ministers who had gathered there for the trial walked
Speaker 1: away believing in his guilt. The great and respected Increase
Speaker 1: Mather later wrote that had I been one of the judges,
Speaker 1: I could not have acquitted him. Burrows, along with Martha Carrier,
Speaker 1: George Jacobs, John Willard, and John and Elizabeth Proctor, we're
Speaker 1: all convicted on charges of witchcraft. Each of them was
Speaker 1: sentenced to death by hanging, and the date of their
Speaker 1: execution was set and announced. Despite their best efforts to
Speaker 1: save themselves, their time had run out. On August four,
Speaker 1: the people of Salem received terrifying news an earthquake had
Speaker 1: rumbled off the coast of Jamaica and sent a tsunami
Speaker 1: crashing over the island. It had happened on the seventh
Speaker 1: of June, two months earlier, but of course news traveled
Speaker 1: very slowly in the pre internet era. The city of
Speaker 1: Kingston had been destroyed and over one thousand, seven hundred
Speaker 1: people had been killed. And in the Puritan world view,
Speaker 1: where nothing happened by chance, the people of Salem were
Speaker 1: quick to assign meaning to the tragedy. Dark meaning. They
Speaker 1: had just mounted an attack on the King and Queen
Speaker 1: of Hell. They had fired a shot straight into the
Speaker 1: heart of the witchcraft problem in their community, and that
Speaker 1: was a direct attack on the devil himself. What if
Speaker 1: the tragedy in Kingston was a retaliation for their own
Speaker 1: advancement forward. It didn't help that just days before news
Speaker 1: of the tsunami, Cotton Mother had preached from the Book
Speaker 1: of Revelation, Woe to the inhabitants of the Earth and
Speaker 1: of the sea. He had read from chapter twelve, verse twelve,
Speaker 1: for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath,
Speaker 1: because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.
Speaker 1: I can't help but wonder if the upcoming executions were
Speaker 1: viewed with equal parts on easiness and relief. It was
Speaker 1: their chance to strike back again. For those who had
Speaker 1: been convicted, though it must have been torture to wait
Speaker 1: for it. But not everyone had the same fears and
Speaker 1: dread While all of them had been convicted and sentenced
Speaker 1: to death, Elizabeth Proctor had a different path ahead of her.
Speaker 1: You see, she was pregnant. Here's Mary Beth Norton. Once again.
Speaker 1: Pregnancy was an excuse in England. It was in English law.
Speaker 1: It was called pleading your belly. When a woman was
Speaker 1: convicted of a capital offense, she could, as they said,
Speaker 1: plead her belly. And if she was pregnant, if the
Speaker 1: midwives confirmed that she was pregnant, then she wasn't hanged
Speaker 1: until after she gave birth. So Elizabeth Proctor had to wait.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine the darkness they must have felt. John
Speaker 1: and Elizabeth knowing that he was about to die, and
Speaker 1: she was only kept alive by the child inside her,
Speaker 1: a child she would never get to hold and love
Speaker 1: and see grow up. Her own life was simply borrowing
Speaker 1: time until a new life arrived to take its place.
Speaker 1: On August nineteen, the crowds returned to see the job completed.
Speaker 1: All of those ministers and all of those curious onlookers
Speaker 1: gathered to watch as John Proctor, George Jacobs, Martha Carrier,
Speaker 1: John Willard, and George Burrows arrived at the site of
Speaker 1: their execution in the back of a cart. Eyewitnesses claim
Speaker 1: that some of them spoke up for themselves. John Willard
Speaker 1: and John Proctor are both said to have forgiven their
Speaker 1: accusers and prayed for forgiveness for whatever wrongs they themselves
Speaker 1: might have committed. But when it was George Burrow's turn,
Speaker 1: he broke that peaceful mood. He used his final moments
Speaker 1: to declare his innocence one last time, and then with
Speaker 1: the crowd gathered around to listen, he began to recite
Speaker 1: the Lord's Prayer. Here's Stacy Schiff. Once again, it was
Speaker 1: understood that a which could not recite the Lord's Prayer.
Speaker 1: Burrows on the gallows is apparently a tremendously moving and
Speaker 1: and troubling site, because he is, in fact a man
Speaker 1: of great presence, and he clearly knows how to speak,
Speaker 1: and he's delivered sermons that many of these people have heard.
Speaker 1: And here he is, in that same it sounds deep voice,
Speaker 1: reciting the Lord's Prayer. So here he is doing something
Speaker 1: that which was understood, which would be proof in fact
Speaker 1: that you were not a witch. And the crowd apparently
Speaker 1: at that moment, has a moment of doubt and begins
Speaker 1: to surge toward him as if to somehow bring the
Speaker 1: proceeding to an end, bringing the hanging to an end,
Speaker 1: and they're pushed back by the authorities, which does indicate
Speaker 1: that it's the upper echelon really that has that's holding
Speaker 1: the the anomous for for Burrows. In some way, Burrows
Speaker 1: had declared his innocence. He had worked within the court system,
Speaker 1: using their own rules and procedures against them. He had
Speaker 1: explained his actions clearly and defended himself against his accusers
Speaker 1: with cunning. He even stood before the crowd on his
Speaker 1: execution day and recited the Lord's Prayer perfectly, and yet
Speaker 1: none of it helped Burrows, along with all the others
Speaker 1: standing around him that mid July morning, hanged for the
Speaker 1: crimes the court said they'd committed for the people of Salem.
Speaker 1: The message was clear. The chaos of the witchcraft trials
Speaker 1: that swirled around them was a tempest that had no
Speaker 1: care for the nuances between truth and lies. It was
Speaker 1: a storm fueled by fear and panic and religious conviction,
Speaker 1: and its indiscriminate path of destruction so far had only
Speaker 1: taught them one key truth. Any one of them could
Speaker 1: be next that's it for this week's episode of Unobscured.
Speaker 1: Stick around after this short sponsor break for a preview
Speaker 1: of what's in store for next week. Next time on Unobscured,
Speaker 1: Historians today have no idea where Daniel Andrew and George
Speaker 1: Jacobs Jr. Found shelter, but their stories tell us something
Speaker 1: important about the culture they lived in and how similar
Speaker 1: it is to our own world today. That when it
Speaker 1: comes to the mocking nations of power, who you know
Speaker 1: is often more important than what you know. That money
Speaker 1: and status, those elusive tools of the elite, are useful
Speaker 1: in avoiding the power of the law, And that ultimately,
Speaker 1: while some people's connections might save them, vast majority faced
Speaker 1: a less hopeful truth, who you know could get you killed.
Speaker 1: Unobscured was created and written by me Aaron May and
Speaker 1: Key and produced by Matt Frederick and Alex Williams in
Speaker 1: partnership with How Stuff Works, with research by Carl Nellis
Speaker 1: and original music by Chad Lawson. Learn more about our
Speaker 1: contributing historians further reading material, resource archive and links to
Speaker 1: our other shows at History unobscured dot com. Until next time,
Speaker 1: thanks for listening.