S1 – INTERVIEW 3: Richard Trask

Our interview with Richard B. Trask who has served as Archivist for the Town of Danvers, Massachusetts (old Salem Village) since 1972.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Our historian interview today is with Richard Drask. Since nineteen
seventy two, he served as the archivist for the town
of Danverse, that's Old Salem Village, overseeing one of the
most extensive imprint collections on Salem witchcraft in the country.
His expertise in the Salem witchcraft era has allowed him
to direct the excavation of the Samuel Paris Parsonage archaeological site.

(00:24):
He's also served as curator of the sixteen seventy eight
Rebecca Nurse Homestead and is the author of the book
The Devil Hath Been Raised and co editor of the
two thousand nine Cambridge University Press volume Records of the
Salem witch Hunt. Not only that, but he's a descendant
of several witchcraft victims. He has taught American history and architecture,

(00:45):
was an eighteenth century re enactor for over two decades,
and has lectured extensively throughout New England. Trasca served as
a consultant for CBS News, the President John F. Kennedy
Assassination Records Review Board, and the National Archives. And I
had a chance to sit down with Trask this past
summer and we had a great chat that I can't
wait to share with you. So without further delay, let's

(01:09):
get on with the show. This is the Unobscured Interview
series for season one. I'm Aaron Mankey. My name is

(01:49):
Richard Trask. I'm a county in the town of Danvers
and most people haven't heard of the name Danvers before.
But our old name was Salem Village and this is
ground zero of the witchcraft of Salem Village in six
And as a kid, I used to go to my
grandparents very often, and my grandmother would tell me stories

(02:12):
about one of our ancestors who was hanged as a witch,
Mary Esty. She was a sister of Rebecca Nurris More,
well known of the witchcraft victims. And UH. I used
to look at a book in their small library, which
was early twentieth century books called Salem Witchcraft by H.

(02:32):
Fellow by the name of Nevins, and that just got
me very interested in the subject, and I've been with
it since almost an adolescent. Um, well, let's start with
a basic question, then, what was a witch in Salem
according to the English uh, which was and this was

(02:55):
the same with most of Europe at the time, which
was a person who had aid a covenant, a pact
with the devil, whereby they would gain uh knowledge power
uh and be able to do things or change things
that were typically unnatural. And for that, the devil gave

(03:17):
them this power and they were going to serve him. Uh.
They often were given imps or familiars which were unseeable uh,
things that would do evil to people. Uh. And they
would have to suckle energy from the witch. And that's
why and many of the witchcraft cases, they're always looking

(03:39):
for what are called witch marks, a witch tits that
the imps would be able to suck energy from the
witch itself and which was a diabolical thing according to
the uh people of the time. We're not talking about
Wiccan history and the witches who tend to be around

(04:00):
this country today. This was a diabolical thing in which
they worshiped and tried to do the devil's call and
usually took the form of afflicting the the large air
quote good Christians of the area. Yes, and in Salem
Village in siou when they discovered that which is were about,

(04:21):
the whole purpose of it was to bring down the
Puritan Commonwealth of Massachusetts. They looked at themselves as being
the elect of God, the the new Israelites of old
who were establishing a city upon the hill, and the
Devil obviously would want to combat that type of thing,

(04:43):
and that's why they believe that the Devil was coming
to Salem Village into all of mass Bay to bring
God's Kingdom on Earth down. Well, you know you mentioned
mass Bay and in this the start of this call
it a colony, but it was a lot of shots
fired of groups of people coming over. We talked before

(05:04):
we started recording about Ennicott and and Conan's and how
they brought people with them and it was more of
a business venture. But can you describe the way that
the Puritan faith shaped life in the New England colonies. Well,
the Puritans were a sect in Old England which believed
that the Church of England was still too Catholic, uh,

(05:28):
and what they wanted to do was purify, thus the
word Puritan uh the religion so that it didn't smack
of papestry or Catholicism. And Uh. They tried to live
in England. They were abused, not significantly but somewhat. A

(05:49):
number of them eventually decided to go to the New World. Um.
They latched onto an economic device of the mass Bay Colony,
and once they got here, they for a good generation
or two were pretty much independent to do what they wanted,
and they looked upon themselves as uh John Winthrop would

(06:12):
later say, establishing a new kingdom upon the Hill. And
the first Puritans in Old England and New England were
very staunch believers. As they came to the New World
and kind of um established themselves, and as they got

(06:32):
a little more comfortable, they backslid a bit. But the
first uh uh Puritans, John Endicott being one of them,
were very staunch in their beliefs and uh did not
countenance um outside agitated is coming in. They persecuted the
Quakers for a period of time until the Home government

(06:52):
said you can't do that. Uh. They didn't like Catholics,
they didn't like really any other people coming in here
because they believe that they knew the truth and they
didn't want to uh have it uh become watered down
by other people. So they weren't true democrats. They were

(07:14):
people who believe that they wanted to establish and continue
their believes. Well, it sounds like they they came in
early with an amount of power in autonomy, being thousands
of miles from England. UM, and held on at that power.
What did power look like in colonial New England? Um?
And who had access to that power? Well, the popular

(07:36):
belief is that, um, the Puritans were controlled by the clergy.
But that's really not the case, especially during the witchcraft.
We find that with a few exceptions, and the exceptions
of people who ministers within the communities that are being
affected by witchcraft, most of the others, including the very

(07:59):
fame Miss math or family and other theologians who lived
in the Boston area, tried to stem the tide of witchcraft, saying,
hold on, we've got to make sure we're not making
any mistakes. It was the civil authorities, and Massachusetts was
a civil established government. Uh and uh, generally the government

(08:28):
tended to be looking for which is much more so
than the clergy. Why do you think that was? Probably
because if you look at the original transcripts, and the
wonderful thing about Salem witchcraft is that, Um, it's a
relatively minor event in world history. UM. And if you

(08:49):
go to England or the continent, hundreds, if not thousands
of people were affected by it, year in and year out.
And the numbers are so much more dramatic than what
happened in Salem Village. But the thing about Salem Village
is Puritan's kept good records. And what we can do

(09:10):
is we can read what one of the um accused,
which is is saying uh during the civil process against them. Uh.
You can hear um. One of my favorite favorite, which
is is George Jacobs and George Jacobs when confronted at
his examination eventually after being badget and Badge had said,

(09:34):
well burn me and hang me, but I'll stand in
the truth of Christ. I know nothing of witchcraft. So
we can read what these people said, you know, four
years ago, and in some cases you can barely read
it because it's they didn't know good English, they didn't
know how to spell properly. And some of the petitions

(09:55):
or depositions done by common Yeoman farmers are very revealing
and also revealing and how they actually spoke. So we
have something in the way of about nine hundred documents
that survive that include every aspect of the legal procedures. UH.
And because of this, it's become very attractive to historians

(10:19):
because here you have real good, primary source material that
you can use, and you have so many wonderful quotes
in there. Uh. And those who recorded were not people
who were sympathetic to the accused witches. Reverend Samuel Paris
was asked to in court right down some of the testimony.

(10:40):
And although a lot of people say, oh, Paris is
so much involved in this, and how could you have
someone like him or Thomas Putnam, the father of the
chief Witchcraft accused of writing depositions, uh, they indicated often
that I'm trying to I'm paraphrasing, I'm trying to record

(11:01):
exactly as what was said, not being prejudicial to any side. Right,
So you do get these heroic uh quotes that people
back at that time gave, and you can kind of
see at least a little reveal of the psyche of
some of the people and what was going on and

(11:22):
in and in what's not said as well, in places
where the records seemed to go silent, there's something being
said there as well. Maybe it's become too overwhelming, there's
too much commotion in the room, or I don't feel
like writing this sentence down. You know that's a possibility
to and we do know that probably hundreds of other
documents have disappeared once in a while. UM. We find

(11:46):
some of the documents often there uh in we've just
not looked hot enough within the traditional sources that they
located there. Other times something pops up that became an
archival astroy centuries ago and it comes back in. So

(12:06):
UM did pop up locally, sometimes locally. Sometimes they're in
collections that people had when the witchcraft was over, many
of these documents scot scattered, uh and later historians. There
was a governor of Massachusetts during the pre Revolutionary period,

(12:27):
Thomas Hutchison, who wrote a history of Massachusetts, and he
actually was given a whole bunch of these very important documents.
And Hutchison was a Tory, and during the Stamp Act
crisis of seventeen sixty five, when the American Provincials were
mad at England, they attacked his house and they scattered

(12:50):
all of his papers outside on the ground and so forth.
So a lot of these papers went missing because of
the riots of seventeen sixty five. Wow, it's a puzzle
still finding pieces. I like that. UM. We talked sometimes
about the Salem Trials as an example of women's and

(13:11):
girls voices breaking into the historical record, UM, women and
girls played big roles in the crisis. As we dip
into the whole story, we see that over and over again,
both as accusers and as accused. You know, they're on
both sides of the arguments or the event. Even so,
all of the judges were men, and when the trials
are ended, men retake the center stage. Life goes on

(13:35):
and it's men at the center again. Can you maybe
describe some of the gender dynamics of this crisis? Sure, Um,
In the seventeenth century UM, the world was made up
of males who dominated, and then the women folk. It
is true, however, that when you can see once in
a while, in not only Witchcraft but other documents, that

(13:57):
women ruled the household, whether or not they were supposedly
in charge or not. And you can see that there
are some remarkable women, especially during the witchcraft. You see
some of these women aren't going to take anything from
the from the magistrates. UM. But it was a male
dominated uh society. And also it was a society in

(14:19):
which children were seen and not heard UH. And the
witchcraft changed a lot of this. The witchcraft, the dynamics
of Salem witchcraft was such that for one of the
first times in history you had not just the usual
suspects of witchcraft accused. These were usually women of a

(14:43):
lower social status who had some kind of problems with them. Well,
we started having accused full fledged church members Rebecca Nurse
Uh who belonged to the Salem Church and um Uh
Mary um Martha Corey, who belonged to the Sale of

(15:03):
Village Church. And in those days, what a covenant member
meant was not that you were just a little bit better,
but it meant that population of Salem Village was about
five hundred and fifty people. Of that five hundred and fifty,
about forty five to fifty of them were full church
members in sixte two. They were people who had been

(15:26):
given a sign by God which the other church members
acknowledged that they were one of the elect, that they
were going to make it yes, and they were the
only ones who could participate in communion uh. And it
was a high status. So as soon as the first
woman who was a full fledged church member was accused,

(15:48):
that got everyone very nervous because if you could have
this person who's supposed to be one of the elect
actually being a witch, that menu whole social order was
was disrupted. Also, you were having small children accused. Sarah Good,

(16:09):
who would have been one of the usual suspects. Her child,
who was we think somewhere between four and five, was
also accused. Then you get as time goes on, not
just the usual suspects and other women, but men begin
to be accused. And it's not unusual to have a

(16:29):
man accused, saying Old England or New England earlier, but
in this case you get a whole bunch of them.
You get a minister accused. You get probably the second
or third most um rich person in all of Massachusetts accused,
Philip English. Uh. They usually have something about them that

(16:50):
makes them a little bit different. Because Philip English's actual
name was Philippe Anglais and he was a descendant of
the Channel Islands, the frenchified Channel Island, so uh he
was an outsider. Yeah. Uh, you have uh John Alden,
the grandson of John and Priscilla accused. Um. So it

(17:14):
became a little more democratic and who could be accused? Uh?
And near the end of the witchcraft there was talk
never went to anything legal, but there was talk that
the governor's wife might be one. So in one sense,
It's kind of interesting in that Salem witchcraft was a
little more democratic, Uh, but still Uh, women were the

(17:37):
usual suspects, and it was typically a woman who was
lower class who maybe had a better uh status early
in life and just um had come down from it. Yeah,
we talked about examinations and trials and people in power. Um.
Obviously what they're looking for is some I guess some

(17:58):
justice in all of this, look for a legal and
a spiritual solution to a problem that's threatening them. How
how would you describe the Puritan sense of justice and injustice?
What would it mean for a New England Puritan to
seek justice from the law? Puritans believed very firmly in

(18:18):
the establishment of law, and early on they had statutes.
Every year the General Court, which was the colonial legislature,
would um promulgate all sorts of acts and so forth.
The Puritans were also very litigious. Uh, They're always suing
each other for land or something like that. Uh. They

(18:40):
were in the best traditions of Old England. And we
tend to think now looking at things with the twenty
one century outlook, that oh, these were kangaroo courts and
you know, they didn't have any justice well, they wanted
to have justice, but it was justice the way they thought.
In the seventeenth century, lawyers were basically unknown. Um. They

(19:04):
didn't trust lawyers and um. The judges was supposed to
be people who would be able to look at both
sides and be judicious and uh their uh use of
both sides as well. The Salem witchcraft trials went through
classic English um jurisprudence. UM. Unfortunately it was stacked a

(19:30):
bit and many other factors were involved that made it
um uh look very open and shut kind of cases.
But if if if I can, let me just go
through the procedures. It might be a little long, but
you can cut what you want. Um. Someone has looked
upon as being suspicious of practicing witchcraft. Some of the

(19:54):
young girls are saying, this person has come to me
his uh spirit as aflicting us uh, And an adult
will go to a local magistrate and file a complaint,
and the magistrates will have a preliminary hearing. Uh. One

(20:16):
of the problems with this whole Salem thing is right
now in s until May, we didn't have a sitting governor.
The whole colonial system uh of the legislature and so
forth was kind of on hold until the new governor
could come from England and the charter either correct right

(20:36):
that had been revoked and they were working on a
new sort of global charter for the larger colony as
a whole. Right. Uh. And because these are fact is
that um make a community not too sure of what's
going on. So there were a lot of you know,
in in plane accidents and so forth, there's always a

(20:56):
whole bunch of things that came together in exquisite format
that just made something bad happen. And if any of
those things were not quite the case, things could have changed.
And it was the same in sixte So what they
do is there's an accusation of witchcraft. So the local
magistrates take a listen, and depositions are made, and they

(21:23):
take a look at the accused, which and ask them questions. Uh.
These weren't legal eagles. They were just um uh men
who were in business and had some knowledge, maybe read
some law books and so forth. Uh. And they had
to determine whether or not the person accused had enough

(21:47):
going for them so that they should be held. And
in almost every case they decide yes they should be held.
So they're thrown in jail awaiting for the civil government
to formula. Late by May, the new Governor, William Phipps,
comes together with a lot of the learned people in

(22:08):
Massachusetts and established she is a court of oyer and
terminat to hear and determine these cases, because now the
jails are being clogged by a number of people who
have been accused and at the preliminary hearing they've just
been put in jail. So what they then do is
have just the same legal system that's done in Old England,

(22:32):
and that is um. You have a grand jury that
listens to the Attorney General of Massachusetts give the case.
And you know they always say you can indict a
ham sandwich. Well you could back at that time too.
Almost everyone always is indicted, and the indictments often from

(22:54):
two or three or four different people. Once in a
while the indictment doesn't go at least one of the accused,
one of the afflicted children. Um, they don't believe. So
there was a little bit of looking at this um
UH with with some modicum of legal ease, but generally

(23:17):
everyone who's held UH is indicted. Then you have the trial.
You have a pool of jurors from among the towns
in Massachusetts. Who will be the jury? You have this
um eight or nine person um special court Court of
Layer and termina. Who will be the judges? And they

(23:42):
supposed to have I think at least three or four
of these magistrates there. Uh, and they can ask questions
and can kind of mold what they want to have happened.
But it's basically the attorney general who gives the information.
If you're accused, you have the right of um saying
I don't like this juror ah. You also have the

(24:03):
right of bringing in testimony evidence people. But if you're
a farmer or if you're a farmer's wife who's never
been before a magistrate before, even though you might know
what you can and cannot do, they're relying on the
judges and they really don't know how to do things
quite as well. The same thing happens in Old England

(24:25):
as well. Uh. So then you have the trial, and
trials are very fast, usually within two days maybe three.
All of the evidences in the jury goes out, makes
us determination and in almost every case the people have
found guilty. Uh. You have a you have a period
between um when they found guilty and when the execution

(24:49):
will happen because thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
Witchcraft is a uh hanging offense UH and um. At
that time you have some period of being able to
contact the governor, trying to do a stay or whatever.
Hardly ever happens, and within a certain period of time

(25:11):
the people are hanged. Uh. They weren't burned. Uh. No
Englishman was ever burned for the crime of witchcraft, because
witchcraft in English law is a UH is a felony,
and felons are hanged. On the continent, witchcraft is a
heresy against the church, and heretics are burned. So burnings

(25:33):
took place on the continent, but not in England or
or America. There's an exception. Matthew Hopkins, the witch finder
general during the English Civil War, in his year and
a half of activity, tried and executed in those are
loose terms, about a hundred and fifty to two hundred,
which is one of them was a woman who had

(25:54):
been accused of killing her husband in addition to witchcraft.
Killing your husband at that time was an act of treason.
He was seen as the head of the household, and
so she was actually burned, but she was burned for
her treason, not her witchcrist But it is a common misconception. So, um,
you can't say that these were kangaroo courts. They happened

(26:18):
very quickly, and um, the judges didn't appear. We don't
have a lot of information from the trials themselves. Most
of what we read about the witchcraft quote trials are
actually from the parliamentary hearings in which there is given
take the magistrates asked questions and the accused answer them.

(26:41):
The trial material has disappeared, We don't have it. It's
not to say that there would be a huge amount
of new information because generally with regular trials, what they
do is they do a synopsis of what happens, so
you don't get um new evidence being introduced. So let's
go back to the beginning, before before all of the

(27:04):
witch conflict came into the community here in Salem Village.
Why in in sixteen sixty six was Salem Village requesting
independence from Salem Town and why was the town refusing
that to them? If you look at a map, Salem
Town is right on the coast, uh it's a fairly

(27:24):
large community. In sixteen ninety two, they have about fifteen
hundred residents. Uh. It looks more to the commercial ventures
um uh to fishing. Um. The people there tend not
to be Yeoman farmers, but people who have occupations um

(27:44):
besides farming. Salem Village, the center of Salem Village is
about seven miles from the center of Salem Town. And
in the whole history of Salem. Uh, Salem started out
as a very large expanse of population of area. And
what happened was many communities Beverly broke off in sixteen

(28:07):
sixty four, I think it was Uh, many communities broke off.
Salem Village was looked at kind of as the bread
basket for Salem Town. And UM they liked the rates
because rates are what you get for like taxes, to
be able to take care of the community. And there

(28:29):
was a reluctance that went for over a hundred years
in the part of Salem Town to allow Salem Village
to become independent. Uh. That brought up an awful lot
of um uh people not liking that from the village. UH.
If you had to participate in the militia, he would
go away from your own homestead. And there was always

(28:51):
the the fear of Indian attack or something like that.
You'd have to go five seven miles to Salem town
to be part of the UH God for the evening,
and your own homestead, which was completely isolated, was unprotected. Also,
there was a religious part of it. It's a long

(29:14):
ways to go five to seven miles every week, actually
twice a week if you want to go to religious services.
So there was a real frustration on the part of
the Salem villages. They made several petitions to be broken off,
as many other communities were, and Salem was always very
reluctant to do that. Finally, in sixteen seventy two they

(29:36):
did acquiesce to have a Salem village have its own
meeting house. It wasn't a covenant UH congregation. They still
if they wanted to have communion would have to go
to Salem, but they could hire lay ministers in Salem Village,
build a meetinghouse, which they did, and hear the Word

(29:58):
of God UM locally UH. And this continued until six
when finally Salem UH ecclesiastically acquiesced and allowed Salem Village
to form their own covenant church and that was the
Church of Christ at Salem Village and they introduced the

(30:19):
new minister. They had been several ministers previous, but this
minister was able to do the sacraments. And his name
was the Reverend Mr. Samuel Parris. He had not been
an ordained minister. H he had I guess the term
today would be had taken courses, but you know it wasn't.

(30:41):
And um, he was a man who had changed his occupation.
He was a merchant. Didn't do that while there had
a belief in uh wanting to do good in and
so uh took the call in Salem Village and the
village took him on as the minister. Uh uh and
uh he was ordained in a sixteen eighty nine. But

(31:04):
you find that in his coming to Salem Village, you
had some problems. And the problems were you always had
within your community. The Covenant members usually like ten percent
of the population, and then the others, the outsiders who
had to contribute to the meeting house for the church. Um,

(31:28):
but didn't really have too much of a say that way. Uh.
They believed the outsiders believed that the Covenant members had
given Paris too good a deal, especially since he hadn't
been minister any place else. He was kind of a nubie.
And the deal was they gave him the personage, which
had been built in sixteen eighty one, as a place

(31:51):
that he could live in, and also they gave him
the deed to it. And most of the people in
the village say, what are you doing that for? You know,
this is stuff that we throw taxes put together. He
doesn't deserve a pass and she deserves, you know, pay. Uh.
So that brought the two tow somewhat loggerheads and Paris,

(32:13):
I guess, by his nature awfully hard to know what
people were like from the prospect of four hundred years later. Uh.
And you know, you really can't psychoanalyze anybody. But Paris
apparently did believe that now that he was a minister,
he deserved what ministers typically got, which was a different

(32:34):
differential respect within the community. And a lot of the
village is just never wanted to give him that. Uh.
He started having problems with this congregation. They were supposed
to bring to him the cord would and you needed
about fifteen cord of would a year to be able
to survive in a homestead, and they weren't doing it.

(32:57):
And um, he had one of his requests was before
he would agree to be minister, they should bring it
to him, and many of them thought, we'll have it,
but he's got to get it. Ministers often were also
yeoman farmers themselves, UM, and it just went badly. Uh.

(33:18):
Paris did not get and he actually preached UM, always
talking about this confrontation, trying to show that there shouldn't
be any uh. And by the time of the witchcraft, UM,
he wasn't being paid his salary. UH, he hardly had
any would and there was although the Covenant members still

(33:41):
supported him very vigorously, and several of the afflicted children
came from the Paris house itself and from the house
of other Covenant members who lived close by. So there
are a lot of factors that made this kind of
a red flag kind of thing. Not to say that

(34:02):
there wasn't consternation in other UH settlements, because ministers, although
today we would think, oh they puritans, they had to
love their minister and they had to get together. It
was always a contention within many communities about the pay
of the salary of of the ministers, and there was
controversy very often that would last for several years or whatever.

(34:26):
I love that firewood becomes the centerpiece of this conversation
a lot. I mean, it was part of his contract
negotiations that that he had firewood delivered to him. And
it sounds petty, and I think in some ways it
represents the pettiness of how they were treating their minister,
not paying him and things like that. So one of
the early conflicts, again going back to pre Witchcraft trials,

(34:50):
is this Putnam versus Porter rivalry that seems to be
taking place, and there are religious issues within it. I think,
you know, the fact that you've got that halfway evidence
that's I guess a little more of a leaning, a
liberal leaning Puritan faith um. And the Porters are on
that side of the fence. And then you have the
Putnam's in Salem Village. Who are they were part of

(35:11):
those covenant members of the church if I'm correct, um,
and they seem to be fighting a lot about that.
They are also two of the wealthiest families in the area.
But but the part that baffles me when I read
about it is how when Thomas Putnam Senior passed away
and his will was executed, you know, and the wealth
is distributed, it wasn't it wasn't a Putnam or even

(35:32):
in an independent party who executes that will? But it's
Israel porter Um. What can you tell us about that
that situation. First of all, you should understand that the
Putnam's controlled approximately I'm going to remember I did a
study in this and graduate school. They there were about

(35:57):
twelve to of the population and of Salem Village were Putnam's,
and their associative community of others who married into the
Putnam family made it so that they were a the
largest minority within Salem Village. They tended to be a
bit conservative. They were almost all Yeoman farmers believed in

(36:22):
uh wealth being land, so they were not rich in
the fact of money, but in land. And they tended
to live in the western part of the village, the
western part of the village being farther away from Salem
Town than other parts of Salem Village, like as far
away as you could get, essentially right, and the port

(36:44):
is looked more towards the east, towards the coast, towards Salem.
You might say they were perhaps a little more sophisticated,
or at least they ran around with a population that
was more looking to the outward rather than to the
in wood and Uh. Thomas Putnam when he died, Um,

(37:06):
he had married a second time, and the offspring from
that was Joseph Putnam. And Joseph Putnam he was named
Joseph because of the biblical Joseph, who was the youngest
and uh and I would dare say probably the other
Putnams who were a bit jealous of Joseph because he

(37:27):
and his mother inherited the bulk of the property that
Thomas had. In those days with primer gent sure it
was supposed to be the oldest member of the family
got most everything and the others would get basically scraps. Uh.
So there was some resentment there. Um. I'm not sure

(37:51):
if you can actually say that the Putnams and the
Poeties were against each other. They did come up in
ecclesiastical um uh affairs as well as um political affairs. Um.
They were often on different sides. Uh. And the whole
idea about people trying to gain land, which was a

(38:15):
very popular theory in the nineteenth century that much of
the witchcraft stem from land grabs, that's really not probably
the case. They were always contentious about land and if
you own something and if your tree that was supposed
to be the northeast bound of it went down. Uh,

(38:36):
there would be real consternation about where the where the
location of the of the boundary was. Um. But land
was just something that every community had problems with and
it wasn't a matter of trying to get land from
other people. And also one of the popular myths in

(38:58):
Salem witchcraft is that, uh, if you were hanged as
a witch, uh, your land would be confiscated. And that
is absolutely not the case. In some cases, the government
could take you a movable estate, which meant the ring
on your finger, the furniture in your house, uh cow

(39:20):
that you might have. But the land went with blood.
The land went with uh probate And you can see
that by John Proctor accused, which ready to be executed
in jail, actually gives by legal need his property to
his sons. And that was proved in probate court and

(39:44):
went on. So that's one of the myths in the
history of witchcraft. Well, we had talked about this a
little bit before we started recording, and I want to
get back to it because it's it's so fascinating. One
of the reasons why um we're here with you in
the archives of the p BDSX library here and Andvers
is because you have a notebook that people think of

(40:05):
it as Samuel Paris's notebook, but you were explained to
me that it's actually a it's a bigger document than
Samuel Paris. Tell me a little bit about this notebook.
And we were established back in n seventy two as
the Danvers Archival Center, and what we wanted to do
is bring together all of the printed and written history
of the town of Danvers. We got the public records,

(40:27):
we got the books of the Pivody Institute Library, we
moved to the library and new UH quarters. We also
wanted to get records of other organizations and Danvers, and
the principal one we wanted to get was the records
of the First Church Congregational that was the original First

(40:50):
Church of Christ at Salem Village, the oldest, actually the
oldest organization in Danvers date sixteen seventy two, and they
had several record books and one of them was the
Minister's record book kept by each minister from sixteen eighty
nine when they became a covenant church to the present.

(41:12):
And this is very historic material, UH and it's really
some of the lost material that was still in not
public hands, not in the library or something. It's a
matter of fact. Back in the UH late nineteen sixties,
UH Boyer and Nissenbaum, two professes from U Mass in
their book Salem Possessed. I got them into the church

(41:35):
to see these records, and they thought they were absolutely
fantastic because the records include the witchcraft era, in which
Paris Um talks about the excommunication of one of the witches,
Mautha Corey. UH talks about the beginning of the witchcraft
when one of his congregants made a witch cake unbeknownst

(41:57):
to him and which he believes brought the devil into
Salem village, has a confession of forgiveness by the chief
which accuser who later on wanted to become a covenant
member UH, and all sorts of controversy Paris when the
witchcraft was over, he had the people who had been hanged.

(42:18):
Their families were not really happy with Samuel Paris. They
were trying to force him out and they made life
miserable for him. And it was brought to synids to
uh UH organizations to try to rectify what was going on,
and there would be petitions and counter petitions signed by

(42:38):
the various farmers, and he records every single one of them.
And if you believe in graphology, which is the study
of handwriting analysis, Paris has a very readable hand You
can read it in the twenty one century UM, whereas
most seventeenth century script is pretty bad. UH. As he

(42:59):
gets more pressured within Salem Village sixteen ninety four ninety six,
his handwriting gets smaller and smaller and more compact, and
you can almost feel him being squeezed. So this is
really good historic stuff. We were thinking, well, the first church,
they've been here since the sixteen seventies. There were very

(43:22):
conservative church in New England. We had in the early
eighteen hundreds the um Unitarian Revolution, in which most first
churches in Massachusetts and New England became Unitarian, a much
more liberal church. UH, and very few remained congregational. The
one in Salem Village remained congregational. Most of the people

(43:45):
living in Salem Village in what then was Danvers Plains.
Excuse me, let me do that over again. UM. In
the nineteen fifties and sixties, most of the people who
were the congregation and of the First Church, uh were
people who had lived there for generation upon generations, so

(44:08):
they could trace their lineage back to the Witchcraft times.
They were so somewhat conservative and very neighborly in that
they had a speech pattern that was only known to
around Center Street in Danvers, and that was called the
Center Street twang. It's almost gone now because Invelope is

(44:30):
like me, moved into the neighborhood over the years. But
you know, we figured this is going to be very
hard to get them. New England has tend to be
very possessive of their stuff, even if they can't take
care of them, and we thought the First Church was
going to be that way as well. UH. For a
number of months uh and years we tried to help

(44:52):
them with their collections and so forth. And once the
establishment of the Archival Center came in nineteen seventy too,
they agreed and we're willing to take all of their
records and put them on permanent deposit with us. It
was a real coup, and I have to give it
to them. They they they were very good about it.
We've done well with the materials. We've actually uh spent

(45:16):
a lot of money conserving the books and papers, and
when that happened, it was like the floodgates open. Other
churches said, well, that's the first church is wanting to
give it. I guess it's okay. So we now have,
with the exception of the Catholic Church, which has its
own UMM archives, we have every Protestant church that either

(45:38):
was and became defunct or still functions. Uh. And the
first Church collection is is very good and very important.
It's amazing, and that to be able to read Samuel
Parris is I guess professional complaints and documentation of what
he's going through where church is going through in his

(45:58):
own handwriting. Um. And you're right. I'm glad it's legible,
because a lot of that is very illegible. Yes, and
that's because one of the reasons why Paris was asked
by the magistrates to write down testimony during the witchcraft
And you would think he is a minister, his family
is afflicted by witchcraft. Uh, he's trying to root out

(46:21):
the witches and they're asking him to to do the documentation.
But I think he tried to do a good job,
and at least two of the examinations he at the
end rights um. Much was going on it was very
hard to uh hear everything, but I tried to put
things down as correct as possible so that I wouldn't

(46:42):
be uh guilty of prejudicing either side. That's paraphrasing it,
but that's what he said. Yeah, a mission could be
an accusation. You know, he's editing the history of the event. Yeah.
One of the important families in this the whole situation,
would be the Hawthorne family. And you know, we talked

(47:04):
about the removal of the charter from Massachusetts in the
the sixteen eighties, early sixteen eighties, and and and how
John Hawthorne, the magistrate, his father William, was actually one
of the key people in establishing some of the laws
that were on the books and the colonies and helping
to run and govern. But he's also known for persecuting Quakers.

(47:28):
I think we mentioned that a little a bit ago,
that there was this animosity towards the Quakers and early
on the Puritans didn't treat them so well. Do we
know how the family legacy of the Hawthorne's influenced, um
John the magistrates legal stature in the eyes of the Puritans.
I mean, you have the charter removed there's no governor.

(47:49):
It almost seems that we're in a little bit of
a legal chaos for for a small amount of time. Um.
But at the center of the the examinations and the
witch trials, we have a Hawthorne. We have we have
William's son John who comes in. Is this this affect
the way he's perceived by the community around and do
they feel some trust in him? That, thank goodness, at
least John's in charge of this. Uh. Two of the

(48:11):
most important magistrates in Salem with John hath On uh
and Jonathan Corwin. They were both merchants, UM, learned people, uh.
Not lawyers, not professional legal people, but they had a
lot of sense. They always were for years under whatever
the government was, magistrates who would hear cases, and they

(48:34):
were asked to take a look at what was happening
in Salem village. So they were the initial magistrates who
came over to little Old Salem Village March first, six two.
They went to the meeting house because um, they had
to have enough space, because everybody had heard about three

(48:56):
people being accused of witchcraft and it became a real
public thing. We're told that the meetinghouse was absolutely filled
to the gills and people were outside looking in trying
to find out what was happened. It was cold, they
had they'd had a snowstorm just a day or two before.
Well it was actually Salem village was a relatively mild

(49:20):
year for snow, but it was still a cold winter. Uh.
And yeah, it's it's mud season. And uh it would
have been quite a spectacle. You have probably more than
the population of Salem villages there watching what is you know,
the first real witchcraft examination that they've had in years

(49:41):
and here it is in little Sale village. Uh. Hath
On was um very specific in that he asked many questions. Um. Uh.
Jonathan Corwin uh generally took down the evidence that was
hearing and didn't ask a lot of questions. But Hathon did.

(50:03):
And you can see he asks leading questions, how long
have you been a witch? You know, it's the kind
of thing like when did you stop beating your wife?
Kind of thing. Um. They believed, especially after Tituba, who
is Reverend Paris's slave, probably a Caribe Indian who had

(50:25):
come with Paris when he became minister. Um, she's confessed.
She was the first of fifty people who confessed and
in those days, you know, we still have a hard
time all that we know about psychology today when someone
confesses and later retracts it and uh, we go, well,

(50:47):
you know, why would you confess if you're not if
you're if you're not guilty, why would you confess? Well,
people do confess, especially under certain real strains. Uh. And
Tituba gave a real confession. There's some possible evidence that
she might have been beaten by Paris to quote tell

(51:08):
the truth. Uh. And she came up with something that
instead of calming the witchcraft thing. And in most witchcraft cases,
both in England and New England, what you do is
you get one, maybe two people accused. Um, they would
either be found not guilty or quickly be found guilty

(51:29):
and hanged, and that would be the end of it.
He have three people accused in Salem village. One is
Paris's slave. And imagine how Paris must have thought that
the witchcraft begins in his household. Here he's a minister
of God. How excruciatingly embarrassing it had to be to him.

(51:49):
And I think that's one of the reasons you have
to understand that Paris was going to root out this
evil because it was happening within his family. Um and
Tichama said, well, a dark man came and told me
to afflict the children, which I did, and she kind
of accused the other two who said they weren't guilty,

(52:12):
but they weren't sure about each other, you know. Uh,
and Titterba indicates that not only the three of them involved,
but there's several others. So instead of tapping it down,
it expands it. And when just a few weeks later,
actually a few days later, a Covenant church member is accused,

(52:37):
and then a three year old girl is accused, and
then another Covenant member is accused, and then a man
is accused, you suddenly get this explosion of witchcraft accusations.
And when people stopped confessing, why would you confess? And
Reverend um Hail John Hale minister in Beverley, right next

(53:02):
to danvers h He wrote a book later on about
the witchcraft called a Modest in Korean too, the Nature
of Witchcraft. And anytime you see a book from the
seventeenth century that says a modest inquiry, what he's gonna
do is bulk the system. He's not going to be
one who uh becomes um copasetic with the with the

(53:26):
company thoughts, uh, he's going to break out a little bit.
And he asked that it not be published until after
he died. And you might think, boy, this is going
to be controversial. Was actually not very controversial, except that
he said two things brought the witchcraft forward. One was
the believability of the afflicted children. They were doing things

(53:50):
that normally wouldn't see being done. They were profoundly tortured.
Pure tans weren't stupid. They knew what um epilepsy was,
they knew what Saint almost Fire is. They knew that
kids could be manipulative at times, but this was different.
This was something that they had never experienced before. And

(54:12):
this brought a profound belief, so that sometimes even families
of accused witches would say to their accused uh family,
well you must be guilty, because maybe you don't know it,
but you have to be guilty because the children say
you are. And the other thing um uh Hale said

(54:37):
was that by having that many people confessing, why would
you belie yourself. Today we don't think of lies as
much of anything. Back in the seventeenth century, a lie
was a smack at God's face. And uh, if you
lined for something that had to do with life and death, um,

(54:58):
this would not bolde well as to where you were going. Uh.
And Paris said, by these two means, we walked in
the clouds and could not find our way. So um
in the beginning, before the hysteria, I'm not supposed to
use that word so much anymore. But before this irrational

(55:22):
nous happened, Um, other factors were being combined to allow
a normal settlement to go into historyonics and of course
the we have the examinations, these informal magistrates and the accused,

(55:43):
and as you said, a meeting house pactful of people
outside as well appearing in the windows. Um. But eventually
the governor of the new governor Phipps gets involved. And
you mentioned a term earlier, the oyer and terminter um.
How we are juries selected? And this is the part
that I mean. You think about a jury being an
impartial group that needs to hear on both sides and

(56:06):
make decisions. But this has been running a muck for
weeks before Phips gets involved and becomes an oyer and
terminal trial. So how how do they select the juries
for oyer and terminer? In general? And and in Salem
in particular, and and what was the process like for
handling this crisis in a new type of court and
more higher court in the seventeenth century. UM, Jury selection

(56:31):
is much like it's still practiced today. UM. When you
have a court that's going to do a number of cases,
what you do is you contact the various communities that
the court serves, and you ask the board of selectmen
to choose jurors so they'll have a pool of jurors.

(56:56):
You always ask for more jurors than you need because
this will will be brought in UH to the UH,
to the courts UH and they select them. And the
one difference, however, is the selection did not include women,
did not include slaves obviously, but also had to include

(57:20):
those people who are full fledged church members and who
owned property. So you're talking about basically the more conservative
within a community. But that's the way it was done throughout.
There's a Salem witchcraft is not the exception, it's it's
the rule. And he would have the pettit jury UH

(57:44):
and the grand jury, and very often, once the trials
took place, trials winning clusters UH, the Attorney General of
the province would decide looking at who was accused, what
the best case as well, you go for the ones
that you think you're gonna slam dunk real fast. Uh.

(58:05):
And the jurors would be taken from a pool, so
it could be a juror from Beverly, from Topsfield, from
Boxford or whatever. And they're often used throughout the process.
And although there wasn't that doesn't seem to have been
manipulation of jurors. We do know at least one case

(58:27):
in which, um, the trial of Rebecca Nurus, which was
one of the more interesting trials, took place. And at trials,
what happens is depositions that were filed at the time
of the preliminary hearings given and read as testimony sworn

(58:48):
two before court. Uh. These depositions were added to, however,
during the legal process. UH. And it's interesting to see
because witchcraft is what's known as an exceptionable excuse me
an exceptional crime, and it meant that you had to
have at least two people witness witchcraft in order to

(59:08):
convict because we're talking about a capital case. And how
do you do that, Well, you do that by using
the preliminary hearing as evidence. In which you have more
than two people, two of the afflicted girls giving testimony
that the specter invisible to everyone else, of Rebecca Nurris,

(59:30):
is torturing them and they're being choked, or they have
marks on their hand, which they'll show the people there,
and that is used as evidence, and it's added to
on the depositions. So depositions are filed. In many cases,
people who were friends or relatives of accused also filed depositions,

(59:56):
but they could not swear to it. Uh. The big
difference was because they didn't want them to be belying themselves,
so you couldn't swear to it, which means that their
evidence a juror would see was not quite as good
as a sworn deposition against someone. And you also had
very often people who had been confessing witches who was

(01:00:19):
set aside. We'll take care of them later, but they're
important because they can be brought before the trial and
by voice they can give testimony that so and so
is one of us. I saw her at a which
is Sabbath few and that's used as as prime evidence
as well. So in almost every case, if you brought

(01:00:42):
up for trial, you found guilty. Rebecca Nurse was the exception. Uh.
At first, the jurors came back with a not guilty,
and it was pandemonium in the courthouse. The afflicted children
who were there and also some older afflicted ones started

(01:01:02):
going into profound fits and so forth pandemonium. One of
the magistrates us and I think it was WILLIAMS. Stolton,
he was the chief justice of the of the panel. Uh.
He said, um, have you considered some testimony um of
someone who said this or that? And the jurors asked

(01:01:24):
Rebecca Nurse a question. Uh, I accused which I confessed,
which had given testimony that she was one of us?
And they said to Rebecca, I'm sorry. Rebecca said why
she is one of us? And she was asked what
did that mean? And she didn't say anything, and the

(01:01:46):
jurors took that as being a form of guilt. And
because she couldn't hear, she was almost deaf. Uh, And
so they came back a little bit later with with
a guilty. Rebecca is interesting too. She had an uncommon
situation where community around her attempted to intervene in the

(01:02:08):
legal proceedings. Um. Friends and neighbors stepping forward. Was that
a common thing, or was that uncommon? It was about
in the middle. About of the documents that survive, we
have maybe about twenty of them in which either one person,

(01:02:29):
a couple, or a bunch of people would send in
a deposition or a petition saying that we've known her
all of our life and she never looked like she
was a witch or never deported her any any more
than a good Christian. Forty people signed the one to
Rebecca Nurse, including a couple of putnams Auh, and that

(01:02:53):
did give some weight. As a matter of fact, the
Nurse family that tended to be a little more forthcoming,
rather than just allowing the court to do what they
wanted because they didn't know any better. They went to
the governor and he stayed execution for a few days.
UM so that her case is a bit more unusual

(01:03:19):
than the others, and she was the only one who
was found not guilty at first UM. Some of those
accused the minister, Reverend George Burrows, who had served Salem
Village prior to it becoming a full covenant church back
in the sixteen eighties. It was he who um took

(01:03:42):
best advantage of the new possonage he moved into what
was the new possonage as an incentive to get him
to come to the village. Uh. He was accused, and
they really went after him because, Uh he was a
minister who wasn't the typical minister, hadn't baptized some of
his children. He was the frontier. He seemed more like
a Baptist than a than a real Puritan. Uh and

(01:04:06):
um he Uh he challenged at least one of the
people serving on his jury and tried to introduce evidence
as well. But um, he didn't do it well and
he was found guilty. And uh a Cotton math Or
particularly disliked him because he thought that was such a

(01:04:28):
stain of a minister being in league with the devil.
You mentioned earlier how one of the reasons Governor Fifth
stepped in was because the jails were packed, right, and
multiple jails were filling up with people who were either
being like you said, held for later, we'll we'll we'll
talk to you again later, or being held for execution

(01:04:48):
or trial. And one of the things that I found
interested in reading about this is some of these jails
were not very well constructed, They were very secure, and
people were escaping and there were number people who actually
escaped and went off to build new lives for themselves. Um.
When some of the prisoners escaped, it seems to me

(01:05:09):
that they would leave to a paper trail of escaping
or was there a paper trail of that? How do
we know about the escapes? Uh? In some cases um,
because warrants was sworn out for them after they had escaped.
Not an awful lot of escapes. Very often when they
heard they were about to be arrested, they would skin

(01:05:31):
attle a few of them. If you were rich, you
were treated differently and you could take care of yourself
much better in jail because in jail you had to
pay for your own fees. If you wanted to eat, uh,
there might have been a common pot in which you
could partake. But if you wanted to eat, often your

(01:05:52):
family brought to the food. They'd bring you fresh straw
so that you would have a mattress that would have
fresh are in it. Uh. You wanted a stool so
you didn't go on the cold ground all the time
that could be brought in. Uh. People like Philip English,

(01:06:12):
one of the most richest people in the province, and
his wife were in jail in Boston, and they were
given UH freedom during the daytime so they could go
out and do what they wanted. UH. As we're a
couple others. He went to a Sunday service in which

(01:06:34):
UM Reverend Willard gave a sermon, and his sermon basically said,
if you are persecuted, you should flee, and it was
a unadulterated UH message, and both of them left. They
went to New York until the witchcraft crazies was over,

(01:06:57):
and then came back. A few others escaped. The majority
of them, howevious, were required to stay in jail. And
after a period of time when it looked like the
apparitions this specters of the witches, even in jail were
hurting people. For some reason, they thought if they were

(01:07:19):
put in shackles and chains, this would prevent the specter
from getting away, so many of them then were were
put in chains for the duration. H. So you've mentioned
the Mather family a couple of times. Ministers around Massachusetts
or the Colony of Massachusetts read Mother's book from the

(01:07:41):
pulpit as as if it was doctrine um and and
Brattle circulates a critical letter. How common was it for
the Massachusetts ministers to coordinate this kind of deeply political messaging.
Very often the civil magistrates would ask the opinion of

(01:08:04):
the learned ministers on something that had to do with
spiritualism or good contact of that sort of thing. And
after the execution of Bridget Bishop, who was the first
accused convicted which to hang, and that was I think
June tenth, there was a lot of um uh, people

(01:08:26):
not happy about what what what had happened and if
they had done everything properly. So they asked the ministers
if they would comment about it, and one of the
comments that came from that was that, um, better ten
guilty go free than one innocent be executed. They were
basically saying, take it easy. You've got to use restraint

(01:08:51):
on what you're doing because this is a capital case. Um.
The magistrates, the ones who were there every day and
saw all these things, really wanted to proceed, and the
Chief Magistrate, William Stoughton, was absolutely sure that witchcraft was
a brew and wanted to root it out as quickly

(01:09:13):
as possible, even after most of the others had kind
of thought, at least all we've made some mistakes. If not,
we've made terrible mistakes. Uh. Stoughton was still pretty sure
that he had got a bunch of the witches and
wanted to get more. But it did turn over a
period of time. It took it was about eight months

(01:09:34):
from the first examination to the last execution, and in
that time a lot of UH minds had been changed.
Thomas Brattle, who really tells us the workings of the
court from some of his um writings, UH, if not changes.

(01:09:56):
He he did see the light on the other side.
In smath Or, who was the father of Cotton, probably
the most learned of the residents of New England at
the time. UH. He had written a book Remarkable Remarkable Providences,
in which he had told back in the sixteen eighties

(01:10:17):
of all the witchcraft cases that had happened, and people
used his book as good evidence and a way of
proceeding on the cases. As he continued to see what
was happening, he eventually wrote a book called It was
a pamphlet called Cases of Conscience, and that was circulated

(01:10:41):
UH in manuscript two Ministers, two Magistrates, and was the
thing that really kind of moved things to being extremely cautious.
And it's usually looked upon as being one of the
things that uh kind of stopped the witchcraft. H he
had a problem with the idea of spectral evidence. How

(01:11:02):
can the person accusing someone else be the only person
who sees the evidence that would help haying that person.
It just doesn't make a lot of sense, right, Um,
So things changed slowly, but those always in the thick
of things, UM didn't have that distance to be able

(01:11:27):
to see things a little more clearly. Right. You talk
about the sentiment changing over those eight months and the
minds being changed little by little and eventually increase. Publishing
this pamphlet that really helps people see more. I feel
like it's a little bit more logically that they're seeing things. Um.
But what it's all said and done, Governor Phipps bans

(01:11:49):
the publication of writing and publishing about these trials. How
common was this sort of attempt at I don't know,
lencing current events, was it common at all? Or was
this very unique in you know, I'm not positive. My
inclination is that it happened on occasion when something was

(01:12:12):
very controversial and was was having a life of its own.
I think he did it because contrary publications were coming
out and it wasn't adding light to the events. It
was just helping to muddy everything. And um, so that
was kind of put as a caution although things still happen.

(01:12:33):
Many of the printers pretended they were printers in Philadelphia
or whatever and still published their stuff, but with a
Philadelphia rather than a Boston imprint. And in Old England
a number of things were being published. Cotton Matha wrote, um,
Wonders of the Invisible World. Uh, he's looked upon today
as being the bad guy in all of this, and

(01:12:55):
I think he's just had a real bad press since
the eventeenth century. He was more of a cautionary person,
but was sure that there were witches. And the governor
asked if he would write a narrative of what had happened,
and sure, he wanted to show that the government had
done the right thing. They always believe that the people

(01:13:17):
uh in power were not doing things capricously, that they
were trying to do the right thing. It's just that
the information they had was incorrect. Um. So what math
did was he took the best cases, the ones that
he thought, gotcha, you're a witch, and and recorded those
and didn't record the other ones. And then a guy

(01:13:37):
in Boston whose name he was a merchant. His name
was Robert caliph Uh. He wrote a book UM actually
at the end of the witchcraft controversy, and one of
the things that made uh phips say that's it for
publications more wonders of the Invisible World. And he tried
to show that the math Is were manipulating things. He

(01:13:59):
gave some evidence that we would not have known about
UM that was kind of contrary to what supposedly was happening,
and was much more sympathetic to the witchcraft victims. Uh
hail uh six comes out with this manuscript UM. It's published.

(01:14:24):
The chapter specifically on witchcraft trials is published in Cotton
math Is Magnelli Christie Americana, but the full book isn't
published until UM the late seventeenth century, and that now
is the rarest of the witchcraft volumes. And it's one

(01:14:45):
in which he's trying to say that we, you know,
we made mistakes, and primarily the mistakes where we used
English precedents rather than the Bible to discover witches. Mhm.
It's an interesting take on it. And and he was
the one who started from sevent hundred to the present,

(01:15:07):
every generation comes up with their new books of theories
and why it happened, and and it always has you know,
it has, it has what historians drew over one. It
has great primary sources that you can use a number
of different ways to it's ay, uh, you know, kind
of intriguing aspect of history in which you've got the

(01:15:31):
devil and all that kind of thing. Uh. And it's
still a who done it right? And who done it's
in history? Always bring the books for it. Um. Sometimes
it gets a little boring and nobody talks about it.
But we're in a period that's lasted now for thirty
years and which a major book comes out every year.

(01:15:53):
You mentioned Stacy Schiff, who did what I think is
one of the best books on Salem witchcraft because she
takes not just the usual victims that everybody writes about,
but she tries to incorporate the entire history of the witchcraft,
what happened in and over which was a major aspect
of the witchcraft delusion. And um. Other books from about

(01:16:19):
the nineteen seventies on come out, and they're always trying
to give the definitive theory. And if you look at
the books and if you take a look at historiography,
of the witchcraft books often to reflect as much of
the culture in which they are written as they do
about the historic facts. You come up with theories that

(01:16:43):
are now pregnant within our own society, and I have
an explanation for it based on what we see and
and as observable in uh in eighteen nine century America,
being in the area. I live in the Danverus Salem area,
so this is all sort of my backyard like it

(01:17:03):
is for you. Um, there's a place in Salem today
called Gallows Hill. It's a big, open grassy hill with
a park and there's a playground and things like that.
But that's not Gallows Hill, is it? Or is this
a controversy. Um, it's not so much a controversy. When
I was growing up from the from the nineteenth century on,

(01:17:27):
Gallows Hill is a drumlin. It's one of the New
England Drumlinds that were created when the ice flows went back.
And Uh. You go to the top of Gallows Hill,
which I did as a kid. Uh, there's a little
um playground there. And when I was very young, they
used to show a stump that had been burned and

(01:17:48):
that was supposedly the tree that they used to hang
the victims on and that was the popular tradition that
they went in a cot with the people can demmed
and when all the way up to the top, uh,
and then hang them on a tree. Well, that doesn't
make a lot of sense. Why would you go that
far up? It would be very hard to get to

(01:18:10):
and so forth. Um. Although a lot of primary source
materials come down to us, things that have to do
with the executions, the gory pot of it generally don't
tend to We do have the record that UM Robert
Califf did talking about the executions, and he mentioned that

(01:18:35):
after they were executed, a number of the bodies were
taken to crevices near the place of execution, thrown in
there and very frivolously uh uh covered over, although you
could see a hand sticking up of that type of thing.
And in the seventeen nineties there's a record of UM

(01:18:56):
finding some bodies up there, but they were in shrouds.
And it's always been kind of a nebulous thing of
what was going on. A very good researcher back in
the late nineteenth century uh and then UH did a
couple of articles in the early twentieth century. His name
was Sydney Pearly, and he was a great historian. UH.

(01:19:21):
And he came up with the belief that the execution
place was actually at the bottom of the hill uh
near Proctor Street in Salem, right on the Salem Peabody
border today. UH. And he took pictures of the crevices
that he thought they would have been thrown into and

(01:19:44):
came up with a very good, uh believable story. UH
used one piece of evidence that showed UH someone was
in a house at the time of execution and from
their house they could see the gallows of bodies hanging. UM.
Then a few years ago, UM, there was some interest

(01:20:05):
in seeing if they could find where this was located.
And a group UH including a cinematographer, UM, professor from
Salem State and a few others UM got together and
came up with an area that was still public land.
UM behind I think it's a CVS Walgreens. Okay, And

(01:20:33):
they pretty much confirmed. And a woman by the name
of Maryland Roach and nice researcher does exquisite work. She
found another couple of little pieces of evidence that seemed
to relate to their They did um UM underground scanning

(01:20:55):
and some other stuff didn't really come up with any
evidence there, but they basically confer uh, using modern day
mapping and so forth, that this was the area that
Pearley had talked about, and to them it was probably
the most logical place. UM. Like some things that happened
in life. UM, it just exploded. Uh and everybody around

(01:21:19):
the world UMU who was interested saw this story about
discovering where the victims were executed. And then the city
of Salem decided to put a little memorial there. It's
a very tasteful one. UM. I'm out of the memorial business. Now.

(01:21:40):
I think we have memorialized the Salem, which is more
than ever in. We made a major memorial in Danvers,
right across the street from where the original meeting house
was located. UM. Salem did a wonderful memorial uh next
to the Chatti Street burial ground. UH. Middleton tops Field, UM.

(01:22:04):
Rowley also did memorials uh, and now we have a
second one in Salem. So I've said, you know, that's
enough memorials uh, But they did it, and UM last summer,
I think it was I went to the to the
dedication there and I believe that's probably a logical place

(01:22:24):
for it to be. I still have a problem with
some of the researches in the mode of execution. UH.
This is kind of a real minor thing, but what
historians always like to talk about. Um uh. For years,
I've been involved in witchcraft studies and I UH was
historical consultant to a PBS American Playhouse movie back in

(01:22:48):
the nineteen eighties called Three Sovereignts for Sarah. It's stodd
Vanessa Redgrave, and it had to do with my ancestors sister,
Sarah Klois who survived, and Mary Esty and Rebecca Durasaw,
three of them being sisters. And UM, I really loved
the program. I had a lot to do with how

(01:23:09):
it looks. They gave me that UM. It wasn't a
commercial thing, so we used public money, so the historian
Steve nisson Baum and I with a consultants. UM. The
one thing I think I did a major mistake was
having it as the hanging tree. We found a tree.
We had to look all over Essex County to find one,

(01:23:31):
and we finally found one fairly big in um in
uh Hamilton's UH, and we did the thing there and
I was saying, this is very awkward to do. And
then I did research on the method of hanging in
the seventeenth century England and New England. All of the

(01:23:51):
prince to come out show a gallows and it's very
simple gallows. I believe that the one used in Salem
was two up posts and a horizontal beam uh nicely Chamford,
so that it was smooth. It didn't look natural. Puritans
didn't Puritans always had to manipulate nature. They didn't believe

(01:24:14):
that that humans should use natural things in their own state,
because what good to humans if they can't manipulate nature? Um,
And what you do is you put a ladder against
the tree. And you know you've seen the old West
uh hanging nooses, the thirteen coils and the drop front
which is supposed to break your neck. That's not how

(01:24:36):
they died, unfortunately. In sixte two, the executioner and the
executed one went up the ladder. Ah she was or
he was bound, and the four the term is they
were turned off, which meant the executioner would take their
legs and turn them off the ladder and then they

(01:24:58):
would swing and after a period of time they would
strangle to death. And the next one they would just
move the ladder and do it much more efficient, uh,
much more in keeping with the historic record. UM. They
refer to the gallows on a few different uh um documents. UH.

(01:25:20):
And I think that's how it was done. That's the
way Puritans, I believe, would have done it. Clearly, there
are a lot of hobbyist historians who they find a
historical moment in time that they are passionate about, and
a lot of people it's salem for them. But you
you've shown that this is this is your career. You know,

(01:25:42):
you talk about memories of childhood being in your grandmother's
library reading old books, but then grad school and here
you are today. You know, this has been your life.
And so at the end of the day, if there's
if there's one thing you hope people can take away
from the moment in time, what is it? Uh? To me?

(01:26:05):
The witchcraft really boils down to UM two lessons. And
back in we had the three anniversary and for over
a year, all of the communities around us, UH, we're
doing major programs and projects and so forth. And UM,

(01:26:27):
I thought that this should be a real commemoration and
weird word a celebration. Um. To me, there are two
major things that came out of the witchcraft. One is
the thing we have here at Bantaid every day now.
The President of the United States is always talking about

(01:26:47):
being involved in a witch hunt. That term has been
used for a hundred more years about when uh, you
take a little scanned evidence and a whole bunch of
people who are frightened by some things and create a
witch hunt. Um. And it stems back to six six

(01:27:08):
two was a witch hunt And what it was was
a period in which normal, sensible, reasonable people, because of
certain fears, frustrations, and a culture that was undergoing certain crises,
start acting irrationally. And I thought that the Salem witchcraft

(01:27:29):
is a good example of being picked up and used.
And we we did this without a memorial. We actually
uh say it on a couple of signages there. Um.
You have to confront your own period of witch hunts
with clear vision and bravery, because this is not something

(01:27:51):
that happened back in sixto. It's almost always with us,
from the interment of the h Japanese American h in
concentration camps UH to the Army McCarthy hearings, the Red
scare to time and time again. These kinds of things
happen even in our own times. Most of us experienced

(01:28:13):
back in the nineteen eighties the horrendous UH legal prostigures
against um uh nursery school teachers who were accused of
doing sexually deviant things, including killing children and killing animals
uh in nursery UH schools um, which turned out really

(01:28:34):
not to be the case, and there are still people
in this country who are in prison because of it.
And the evidence that has come out afterwards shows that
it was a period in which people were because of
fears and so forth, they were seeing boogeyman and they
were seeing things that not a shred of real evidence existed. Uh.

(01:28:57):
And by our mistake, things that we should understand go bad.
And if you bring it back to the period itself
six Uh. In Danvers, we used to not like to
talk about witchcraft. It was a scourge on our town

(01:29:17):
and was something that if people want to go and
see the witchcraft, send them to Salem. Uh. You know,
let him, let them see the tourism in Salem, but
we don't want to talk about it. When I was
growing up, that was the case. You didn't talk about
witchcraft in polite society. As a matter of fact, when
I started doing the excavation of the Paris House site seventy,

(01:29:40):
I can remember early on we would try to bring
school groups up and give them a little talk about
the excavation we were doing and stuff. And there was
a two sisters across, straight elderly women who I can
remember on one occasion when I was bringing a group up,
they came out in the which and they actually shook

(01:30:01):
their fist at me and said, why are you bringing
this up? This is not something we should be talking about. UM.
It changed a bit after we did the excavation and
so forth, and my take on it is that, yeah,
it was a terrible time. The civil authorities failed, the population,
the religious uh people failed the situation. UM families even

(01:30:29):
urged people in their own family to confess because they
must be witches. Every institution failed. But what you do
have is really a shining example of average people, some
of them really kind of bastards, and some of them
nice religious people who, when confronted with the worst crisis

(01:30:51):
in their life, uh, you know that you're a witch,
that you're gonna go to hell, that uh you're you're
trying to destroy us instead of confessed sing like fifty
people did to at least stay execution. And luckily for them,
things worked out because the witchcraft was over and people
started realizing their mistakes, so that none of those confesses

(01:31:13):
ever were executed. But the nineteen who were executed by
hanging UH don't share much in common except that they
believed in truth being much more important than life itself.
They would not belie themselves UH for survival. And I
think that's remarkable, especially with you know, fairly uneducated, hard

(01:31:39):
working people who always tried to do what they were
supposed to do, and then when told by authority you
must confess, said no. Uh. As as I mentioned before,
George Jacobs, when confronted with us, said, um, uh, I'll
stand in the true of Christ. I know nothing of witchcraft.

(01:32:02):
And you do get these heroic words from these average people,
And to me, that's so important. We in history talk
about the famous and the infamous, and the battles and whatever,
But here the personal crisis occurred and these people would
not bend to anything and UH. Because of it, we

(01:32:25):
probably know more about the pilgrims who went on the Mayflower.
Average people and the witches in Swo than anybody else
who was just a common person who lived four years ago.
And the monument we have in danvers Um tries to

(01:32:45):
kind of show that in that uh, we have the
shackles of the past, the chains that once we're around
their feet and arms being broken by the book of
life history, which eventually will tell the truth of what happens.
And here people who are universally condemned in now become

(01:33:10):
more heroic than they actually were, but still people whose
um beliefs really should be emulated. Richard, thank you so
much for talking with me. You greatly appreciate it. My pleasure.

(01:33:34):
This episode of Unobscured was executive produced by Me, Matt Frederick,
and Alex Williams, with music by Chad Lawson and audio
engineering by Alex Williams. The Unobscured website has everything you
need to get the most out of the podcast. There's
a resource library of maps, charts, and links to Salem
document archives online, as well as a suggested reading list

(01:33:56):
and a page with all of our historian biographies. And
as always, thanks for supporting this show. If you love it,
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a huge difference for the show's growth, and as always,
thanks for listening. H