S1 – INTERVIEW 4: Marilynne K. Roach

Our interview with Marilynne K. Roach, author of "Six Women of Salem" and "The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-by-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Today's interview is with historian Maryland k. Roach. She works
as a freelance writer, illustrator, researcher and presenter of talks
on historical subjects, and she's written for The Boston Globe,
the New York Historical Genealogical Register, and the Lizzie Board
and Quarterly. She was a member of the Gallows Hill
project that verified the correct site of the hangings, a

(00:24):
discovery that was listed by Archaeology Magazine as one of
the world's ten most Important discoveries of two thousand seventeen.
My producers Matt Frederick and Alex Williams had a chance
to sit down with Maryland this past summer and I
want to share that conversation with you today. So without
further delay, let's get on with the show. This is

(00:46):
the Unobscured Interview series for season one. I'm Aaron Manky.

(01:22):
My name is Marilyn Roach, and I've been studying the
Salem Witch Trials and related material for what he is
now and there's still more things turning up that I
didn't know before, and more to write about the very
top Nowadays, when the word which is bandied about, there
are many different ideas and images that are conjured. And

(01:47):
when you were let's say sixteen, and you're in the colonies,
the image of a witch is a specific thing. Can
you tell us about that? In six was a legal
definition of someone who had a familiar spirit, and it
was assumed you knew with them men, but they were
in cahoots with an evil spirit, a little demon or

(02:11):
imp and in order to do that, you're in at
some point been in contact with the devil, knowingly or unknowingly. Uh.
Because it was understood by the ministers that humans did
not have the ability to perform magic. Therefore, if there
is magic being done, it's not being done by the person,

(02:34):
but by some spirit that they're in contact with. The
folklore would say that the good spirits will do that too,
but the ministers would tell you the angels have better
things to do than that, So it has to be
an evil spirit and satans behind that. Some people did
practice a lot of folk magic, maybe more in England

(02:56):
because they weren't all Puritans. Well, they weren't all Purans hereies, uh,
they were white witch is a blessing. Witches so called
meaning they only did they did only the good magic.
But if you have the idea that the source of
it is really only pretending to do good for a
while until you're really thoroughly caught in the clutches. It's

(03:18):
not something you should be fooling around with. So where
does counter magic come into this, Well, that's part of folklore.
It's something to repel the evil magic that comes at you.
Theoretically allegedly. Uh, it's supposed to dispel it counteracted. Uh,

(03:39):
bounce it back to the person who is casting it
in the first place, which is what the witch cake
John was supposed to do. Can you tell me about
the witch cake? Yeah, it was English folklore and it
was suggested to Tichiba and John Indian by a neighbor,
Mary Sibley, who's an englishwoman her parents were anyway, and

(04:00):
she's a member of the Church, I believe, so she's
considered herself considers herself a good Christian. But this this
current of folklore that's just common and this is you know,
this is repelling evil magic, so it can't be harmful.
It was the idea, but it got the girls more worried,
so the outcome was not good. But the idea of

(04:22):
magical spell some part of the witches being is projected
out to hurt the victim. So if you take part
of the victim, and in this case it could be
a lack of him maybe, or in this case some
of the girls urine easily taken from them. You don't
have to cut off an ear like they might do

(04:43):
with livestock, but that is tortured, you might say, by
being baked into a little rough cake of the cheapest
flower you've got, and you feed it to the dog
once it's cooked, and the dog crunches it up and
digests it, and that would should hurt the witch, because
the part of the perpetrator that's in the urine, that's

(05:07):
in the charm is being acted on, and the pain,
I guess is supposed to bounce back to whoever sent it.
But that would make them come around and say what's
going on, or begging for relief. Well, that doesn't happen,
but the girls get more upset because now, as far

(05:28):
as I can see it, now the adults are really
assuming they could be magic here, which the doctors already said.
The physician go to the medical professional and one of
them thought it might be bewitchment. So the adults are
taking that seriously Interestingly, the Paris Is didn't immediately go
to that as a solution to the girls symptoms, whatever

(05:52):
they were. It is very interesting that the physicians are
the ones who end up diagnosing some form of witchcraft
taking place. Well, the fact that the assumed fact that
magic was a possibility was just there on the culture
and in the other cultures. It wasn't just a pure thing.
It was England, Europe and Africa, the Native Americans everywhere really,

(06:18):
But because of the trials and intentions of the times, economy,
war and all that, people were on edge to begin with,
along with the local corals. So it seemed like the
last straw. They are under siege by real, actual in
this world problems, and this seems like one more thing

(06:43):
that could happen. So two of your works that we're
really looking into, the Day by Day Chronicle and Six
Women of Salem. Um, we really want to focus first
on these six women. So maybe you can give me
kind of like a pair of graph or two in
your mind, just how you would describe each of these
women as a way to baby set them up in

(07:05):
the show later. So is it okay if I go
down the list and you just okay, So let's start
with Bridget Bishop. Bridget Bishop was married, so she's not
alone in the world. This is her third husband. She's
been suspected before, however, of witchcraft, but she has survived that.
That's not as much paperwork on it as you'd like surviving.

(07:27):
She was confrontational. Some of the neighbors thought, I'd say
she stuck up for herself. She's this is her third husband.
The second husband would hit her now and then, but
she hit him back. How about Marry English. Marry English
was the richest woman in Salem. Her father had been
a merchant who was lost at sea, and she married
his business partner, of Philip English, who was from the

(07:49):
Isle of Jersey and had more of a French culture.
His name was Philippe Languis something like that and mispronouncing.
So they're very rich. Some people, at least according to descendants,
thought she put on airs. But you know, class and
status and the responsibilities of class were bigger in the

(08:10):
big in those days, not like now. But she was
accused even though she was a full member of the
Salem church in town. Let's continue with Rebecca Nurse. Rebecca
Nurse was older than middle age. She had a large
family of grown children with grandchildren, so it's an extant

(08:31):
family that's not a lot of death in infancy in
her family. Her husband is still alive, so she's not
a widow. Pretty much on her own. She has a
good support network, and she's a full member of the
Salem Town Church. She seems to be well respected, but
she's accused and some people just didn't get along with her.

(08:52):
I guess I think a lot of personality conflicts in this.
But even though she had a family who rallied around
her all through it, even though it might have been
dangerous to speak up at times, she doesn't survive. And
and Putnam uh and Putnam is an accuser. She's married
to Thomas Putnam, who also helps to choose people, and

(09:17):
their eldest child is and Jr. Who is one of
the afflicted girls. Near the beginning, she seems to have
not liked Rebecca Nurse. She's quite I think she's self
convinced that there are witches after her. Rebecca Nurse and
Martha Corey seemed to be particular problems with her, and

(09:39):
she actually has convulsions too in the courtroom in the
early stages. But she's also expecting like her sixth or
eight child, so they could have been some physical symptoms
that within misinterpreted, but she seems to be quite convinced
of the neighbors guilt. How about Titchuba called Titchuba Indian,

(10:00):
she's always referred to by her contemporaries as an Indian
rather than an African. She belongs with her husband to
Reverend Samuel Paris. She's from somewhere else presumable, presumably Barbados,
where Paris had been a merchant before becoming a minister
and moving to New England. So she's accused early on

(10:23):
she makes the witch cake at the direction of a
neighbor with an English bit of folk laurel. There's probably
worldwide equivalence of this, but that's the only magic she
can really be connected to. But because she's enslaved, she
has even less of a support group than anybody else,

(10:43):
and she's more or less bullied into agreeing with what
the magistrates are saying. Even though she's trying to say
she's a victim of witches. They convinced she's one of them,
and at that point she'll say anything I think to survive.
It's all she has really to protect her and she
will outlive the panic because they're reserving her as a

(11:04):
witness against the others. Although I don't think she does
have to speak in cook because plenty of other people
were doing that. And finally, Mary Warren. Mary Warren is
about seventeen and nineteen, a hired girl. She's working for
the John and Elizabeth Proctor family. Uh apparently her mother
and her mother died fairly recently. It might have been smallpox.

(11:30):
They mentioned a fever and they had been smallpox, and
her little sister went deaf from it but survived. It's
not certain which Warren her father was, because there's like
three or four families in the area and they're all
paily obscue. But she has a lot to say during
the trials, and she thinks at first she's afflicted or

(11:54):
acts that way. When her her employer, Master Proctors out
of town, she she's having fits and accuses people and
acts in court as a witness. And when he comes home,
he he, he whips her a bit, which one could
do within reason to a servant. It's called correcting them,

(12:14):
and she changes her mind. But when she changes her mind,
she's accused of selling out by the other still afflicted witnesses,
and after that she'll say anything to survive. So we
really want to talk about how the different social strata
of the women where they existed in those places, how
it affected the way they were treated once once the

(12:35):
trials started to come around, and they're all involved in
the trials in different ways. Um, but how did the
social strata really affect them all? Well, your place in
society was a lot more rigid then than now. Some
people did go up in the world, and of course
there'd be some resentment from people who hadn't. Uh, there's

(12:56):
a quote somewhere about you. You you're excuse me. You
may be Mrs so and so now, but you only
good wife somebody before this the only one obviously not
taking it. Well. Ah, let's see, some of the upper
crust people who were named were the those accusations tended

(13:19):
to be dismissed by some of the magistrates who knew
the people and do that they would never do that,
which of course they hadn't, but it did help. On
the other hand, just being well off wasn't enough, because
Merry English was certainly arrested. Also, some of the really
poor ones like Sarah Good she was had come down

(13:41):
in the world actually, and she was cranky because of it,
and crankiness didn't help. But then I got the impression
from what's recorded that Rebecca Nurse was polite enough all
through and didn't help her. Let's talk about the Putnam's
relationship to the Proctors and anything about the towns like

(14:01):
those three groups that the extended Town family had wood
lots in Topsfield where they lived, and the extended Putnam
family had wood lots in the same area, but there
were different surveys involved and boundary lines that were not accurate,
which wasn't exactly their fault, but each one was going

(14:22):
to keep the one that was more beneficial to them.
So there were some court cases where they'd been fights
on near fights in the woods when guys went out
to collect firewood or timber. I think the whole town
of tops Fields border was contended by Salem Village because
of those boundary disputes, So there was some bad feeling there.

(14:47):
A lot of it probably just didn't get written down.
People who just rubbed each other the wrong way. There's
a lot of documentation surviving, but not enough, not when
you're a fanatic about it. How did the Putnam's like
really figure into that, because the Putnams are the ones

(15:08):
who are having the dispute a lot of the times. Yes,
well as it's a big family um and Thomas Putnam,
his and his wife and his daughter are some of
the major accuses they're willing to suspect. I guess at
least any put a lot of people in the neighborhood.

(15:28):
And also he wrote a very good hand, clear hand,
so that he took a lot of the notes and depositions,
so he was quite busy with it is a civic duty,
and he did not want to just blend into the background.
He wanted to be a civic leader, I believe, and
this was unfortunately his big chance. So it seemed to

(15:52):
be very important to prove whether or not the girls
were actually possessed in some way, or if they were
under the spell or or under the influence of a witch.
Why was that so important? I suppose if you were
possessed by demons, it could be involuntary, but you could
be collaborating with them too, and then that would make

(16:14):
you an effect at which but if you're just a
poor victim of somebody else, some of the humans malice,
although their pet demons is supposedly causing the pains the
Iowa victim, or are you collaborating? Was the question, what
was it about the convulsions themselves that made everyone just
so feel so uneasy? Well, a convulsion is a scary

(16:37):
thing to say. Um, Let's see Reverend Hale at one
point and in the book he wrote later, he said,
it was beyond the power of epilepsy what they were
going through, and they must have seen epileptic seizures, and
certainly there seemed to be a lot of fevers when
they got too high. People with convults, and they knew

(16:58):
what that meant. But there was something really different about this,
or more extreme. Prior to this and prior to the
Goodwin case somewhat earlier convulsions. I don't think we're common
as a symptom. It would be the cow died, of
the cow went dry, and the livestock died, all sorts

(17:19):
of misfortunes. But it wasn't so much that people seemed
to be repelling an attack of an invisible entity. So
this was not what which trials were not an everyday
occurrence even then, but it was the convulsions were particularly
distressing part of this although why they were believed and

(17:44):
not again Hales to paraphrase and me said, you had
to be there. It was just really they had well
it kind of least a wife, perhaps these younger women
at least early on, why their stories were believed over adults. Yeah,
because sure, and young women and older women, depending who's
asking the questions, that their testimony didn't carry as much

(18:09):
weight in the judges minds necessarily, although women did speak
in court as witnesses, but you know, a child's testimony,
do they know what they're talking about? But there must
have been just something about it that does not translate
in the notes, even when they're pretty seemed to be
pretty slorough And I mean you read the questions and

(18:33):
answers for the hearings. They're not the trial questions. It's
the hearing that leads up to it. And it's like
something with the sound turned off. You're not really hearing
somebody screaming in agony or protesting or the audience reacting.
It sounds not conducive to clear thinking. We mentioned Sarah

(18:55):
Good I think earlier, and Sarah Osborne, women of that standing, Well,
how do you think they were treated by they're they're
the people who lived around them. Well, as I said,
Sarah Goodhead come down in the world, that she came
from a better off family, but stepfather kind of got
things that should have come to the children. And she's

(19:18):
married to an impecunious person who then dies and leaves
her in debt, and she marries second husband who is
no great provider at all, and she's begging from time
to time for her children. So this she could be
kind of annoying that Sarah gould come around again wanting something,
and the fact that she's she feels this keenly and

(19:42):
is cranky, not really not a humble person, so she
can get on people's nerves. Perhaps coming down in the
world might seem like you're you're just not trying hot enough.
Although how hot can a woman try and actually gets
the thing in those days? Economically, how many opportunities are there?

(20:04):
Or if I don't know, it's some punishment from God,
which is rather unfit to put on God. But you
know then it's not orthodox necessarily what the neighbors might wonder.
Sarah Osborne was well, she had she and her husband
had a farm. But the first husband dies and she

(20:27):
marries the bond servant, and the farm should have gone
to the sons when they came of age, and she
still has rights to live there at least while she's
a widow. But now she's married and there's a second
husband and he's kind of taking over the running of things,
and the sons cannot get the farm now that they're

(20:47):
of age away from him, so there's a lot of
hard feelings with that, And the Putnams were related to
the first husband. So that kind of explains a few things.
You know, for the offit of our listeners, it might
be good to just go over the basics of like
what the rights of women were in seventeenth century New England. Well,
they did say about class the better so at the

(21:10):
team around and said the better sort at middling saw
it and the lower sort. And how people were addressed
is reflected in this Mr and Mrs His master and mistress.
They obviously employed people people like Rebecca nurse. In the
middle it would be good wife nurse, hence good eat nurse.
It's not a nickname. It's like mrs only abbreviated good

(21:31):
man and good wife, and then people below that are
just addressed by their first name, the way people address
each other. Now. Uh yeah. Someone was asked how she
had addressed Sarah good oh her spect. She said, well,
I guess I just called her Sarah. She didn't have
to be good wife Sarah because they didn't own anything.

(21:53):
And below that, she's at least free. She's married. Uh.
This servants who contracted for a length of time, and
then there's people who are owned in slavery and can
be bought and sold. Unfortunately, slaveries legal in Massachusetts, although
there's not a lot of them. They are around Indians

(22:13):
and Africans. But women they did have rights. Uh. Some
of them brought court chases, some sued for divorce, which
was very difficult in England. I don't I think the
only way you could get a real divorce was to
go through parliament. So that's just the upper Escalon. And
I don't think they could remarry legally. I'm not certain

(22:36):
at this time. But in Massachusetts the Puritans, you could
get a divorce and remarry and it would all be legal.
Children would be legal, inheritances would be legal. And there
were women who sued their husbands and got divorces didn't
happen every day, but they did. But Uh a married woman,

(22:56):
not just among Puritans but in England too, were uh
covered by their husband. He was the head of the household,
He was the spokesman. He was supposed to be running things,
so that she technically did not own anything unless she

(23:16):
was a widow who had had a good prenuptial contract.
And some of the hostel exist. But if you don't
own anything, not a lot to contract, which is why
when they were confiscations for like jail dads and stuff.
Uh Dorcas Hare who was a widow at the time,
they took some of her furniture and the cow and
so on, because she owed money. But when bridget Bishop

(23:43):
was arrested and she hangs no, they didn't confiscate anything
because she didn't own anything. Her husband did, even though
she had owned a few things before she was married.
Now was absorbed into his. But they they could speak
up and and they could most m perhaps most importantly

(24:06):
to them women like men, was supposed to search your
soul to see if you was saved where you were
They of joining the church and having communion and access
to baptism and so on, and that was a personal journey.
So that they would be members of the church equal

(24:30):
before God. Couldn't vote but in church matters, but they
sometimes made their feelings, made their feelings known. But yeah,
but at least before God you were equal. So let's
jump to power power within the society, because I feel
like all this is very much connected. Um. The power

(24:54):
seemed to find its roots in faith, even though you
mentioned these these are not all Puritans who are that
we're talking about. However, that Puritan faith, in that Puritan
power structure kind of had its hold over everything. When
people emigrated early on, like the sixteen thirties, a lot

(25:16):
of people coming in. Most of them are coming over
for faith reasons. But they soon became evident that they
didn't all believe the same thing exactly. So in order
to vote, which is men it uh you was supposed
to they was supposed to be members fully communing members

(25:36):
of one of the churches, which they're all separate entities.
There isn't like bishops or anything to should that. You know,
these are upstanding citizens and they're not going to rob
you or something like that. But of eventually all the
people moved in uh Quakers and locals who converted to

(25:59):
Quaker him. Also the Church of England families, um, the
men who are merchants, who a lot of them who
came in later were Church of England. And of course
there is back in England as the Civil Wars going on,
and the Puritans predominate during the Commonwealth period when there's

(26:22):
no king. Oh there are other groups when the king
returns with Charles the Second comes back and the monarchy
is re established. The Church of England is definitely a
Biscopalian at this point and in England not nonconformists. Is
all of the different sects of Puritanism are called, are

(26:45):
excluded from the university degrees, couldn't run for parliament and
so forth, and so Massachusetts tried to pretend that they
just couldn't find the paperwork to get rid of the
chatter and all that. But I actually they had to allow,
they had to not allow the requirement that you be

(27:08):
a church member in order to vote. But England changes
it so you have to own a certain amount of property.
So theoretically some for a church members maybe don't vote
anymore on the local level. If you're going to choose
the hall grief and the cow catcher in town and

(27:28):
the guide amend the roads. They may not care about that,
and selectmen, but the upper ranks of the government. You
had to have a certain amount of property. So are
you going to is it a religious requirement or a
financial requirement? Yeah? How connected are those two things? You know? Well,

(27:48):
I mean there were biscopanions who had money too. So
let's let's pull back and talk about just citizens of
Essex County, people living in Essex County at the time,
right up into and then as the trials are occurring.
How are these trials that are happening. Let's just say

(28:10):
wherever the epicenter is, like around Salem. How is the
rest of Essex County being affected just in their daily
going about their lives. Well, when the panic started and
the law got into it, got involved in this, this
hearings and arrests. But it's Salem. Salem includes Salem Village,

(28:33):
which is the rural end of town. But the panic
is spreading and in the summer, and Over, which then
bordered it, uh began to have cases and there were
actually more people accused in and Over than in Salem.
So the panic spread. No people in Ipswich, in Gloucester

(28:56):
and in some of the Middlesex County towns, so that
they were jails in three counties involved in this, but
each of them on neighborhood quarrels, family quarrels. That's one
of the most fascinating things about this entire crisis is
that these are essentially neighborhood quarrels between neighbors, but there's

(29:20):
this spiritual aspect to them that that brings in this
the weight in the power of something other worldly. Um
the effects seem to be magic and that involves spirits
of one kind or another allegedly. Yeah, but simultaneously you
have nature bearing down on all of these humans because

(29:43):
as you're getting in closer and closer to winter at
the time, there's a real physical danger that's approaching as well.
The people in jail jails were not conducive to your health.
They apparently had fireplaces because bills for why it would,
but they're not meant to hold people for a long

(30:04):
length of time, and they're not supposed to hold a
lot of people. Once winter started to come down on
the temperatures getting colder, which happened earlier than it does now. Uh,
there were petitions, some of them from and over anyway,
asking if the suspects could be let out until spring,

(30:25):
we promise we'll bring them back when the trials resumed
next I a few people were let out on bail.
Some of the youngest ones even thought they'd been accusing people.
They went home, but I don't think many of the
older ones did. And some of the children that got arrested,
they did go home, but not all of them. And

(30:47):
that's one reason the trials resumed the following January. They're
waiting to hear from the crown. Should be are we
proceeding right? Should we do this? But it was just
he was too dangerous for the people in jail, and
just even if the temperature was good, it's not clean
with all those people in one place. How linked are

(31:13):
the concepts of sin and crime? Not every sin as
a crime, but all crimes involves some kind of sin. Uh,
drunkenness would be sinful, but if you're not. If a
guy is drunk but he doesn't waste the family substance,
beat the wife and the children, then it's not a crime,

(31:37):
but it's sinful. Why was confession such an important part
of the trials themselves? Well, any any capital conviction required
either two competent witnesses to the same act. That's what
spectral evidence gets tangled, or a credible confession from the accused,

(32:01):
and they were aware and they say, length, it's not
somebody whose mind is affected or there tortured into it
or anything like that. But the people who did confess,
and there were a lot of people who did confess, uh,
some of them said afterwards that they really didn't know
what they had said, they were so terrified by what

(32:23):
was going on. One woman said she remembers a document
being read in the name of the king and the queen,
and after that she didn't know what happened. She just
couldn't remember. She blanked out, and others would probably they was.
It sounded like they was just agreeing to anything in
order to get on the good side of the magistrate

(32:45):
or or in the hopes that it would lengthen their life.
Because the people who were who had confessed and UH
were held as witnesses against the supposed collaborate atis, and
that delayed things so that not all of them, but
most of them survived because the panic died down until

(33:09):
spectral evidence, which is the report of what the demons
are doing, was no longer allowed in court. Describe some
of those I guess the evolution of criticisms against spectral evidence. Well,
at the very beginning, one of the judges who lived
in Boston consulted with his pastor's caught and Mather about

(33:32):
any information on how we should proceed, and matthe said,
to be very careful of spectral evidence. It really can't
be trusted. It's axiomatic. The devil is the prince of lies.
He's a lie. You can't believe anything that comes from
that direction, so you can't really believe it. And they
said they'd be careful, but they weren't careful. And I
think Matthew wasn't there at most of the trials. Just

(33:55):
assumed that they're older than I am. They they're wise
enough people. They probably know what they're doing, which they
didn't really because they were carried away by it all too.
It seems so real at the time, unfortunately, because the
convulsions in the courtroom seemed to be the crime being
committed right in front of everybody, and we can all

(34:17):
see the effects of it, but the cause of it
they could not see, and they had to depend on
the reports of the proposed afflicted, and even if the
afflicted people were quite convinced themselves, they can be deluded
by the devil, and that's their own philosophical outlook on it,

(34:38):
and they didn't pay enough attention to it. It's pointed
out on the very first day by Sarah Osborne that
the devil can take the shape of anybody, so why
not me? For some reason, it was said afterwards anyway,
it's for some reason Stoughton thought that you did have
to give the devil permission. Is if the Prince of

(34:58):
Lies is going to ask a permission. It really didn't
make sense. So he seemed to think he knew what
he was doing, and he was a very strong personality.
And I think that if some of the other judges
had second thoughts, they may be figet he knew what
he was talking about. Oh bo. After the first execution

(35:20):
of Bridget Bishop, one of the judges, Nathaniel Saltonstall, stepped out.
He just left speaking of um. Bridget Bishop wasn't the
first person to get arrested for these crds, but she
was the first person to be put on trial. Was
that Bridget Bishop had been suspected before of witchcraft sold
it was that against her. They maybe seemed more evidence

(35:45):
against her, or at least her reputation wasn't good in
that respect, although that's really other people's reactions than anything
she had actually done. She was sort of the usual suspect.
You might say, why was Titchuba's testimony in particular? Why
was it powerful? When she started describing things and to

(36:11):
fulfill the expectation of the questions, it was pretty vivid
story about this spirit and that spirit, and these otherwise
invisible entities, and some in the shape of birds, and
this hairy thing that was standing by the fire, warming
its hands or pinching the girls, and a bird with

(36:33):
a woman's head. It was pretty colorful. It's probably more
thorer than that than the notes indicated, because there's a
lot going on and they are using shorthand, but it's
still not an absolute transcription. So that was pretty vivid.
And she describes other which specters osborne and good, but

(36:56):
then others also, but she doesn't know who they were,
so people are left with wondering who are the others
and who do I not trust? Who might be a suspect,
And then it really blew out out of control, so
almost that known unknown that there are others out there,

(37:17):
we just don't know who they are. That's that's fascinating. Yeah,
But because they could be under attack from them next
the way, they could be under attack from the French
and Indian forces in the on the frontier and coming
closer to which was a very real threat later on
they get as close as and over. But yeah, it

(37:41):
seemed like it was all too likely to happen, even
something like just the wilderness, the wildlife that surrounded them,
because there were wolves around still, and there's a spectral
wolf presumably spectral wolf reported that chases the doctor's hired
girl and she has connected and fits soon after. But

(38:02):
there were bounties on wolves, which I'm on the side
of the wolves now, but ah, but there were bounties
paid at least the year before, so I think they're
in the vicinity and it's winter, so yeah, that would
make people nervous too. Fear really is just one of
the most pervasive things. Fear is very powerful, and it

(38:24):
still is. And if you get to the point where
you're panicking, then you're not you're thinking even less clearly
than otherwise. What are the main separations between the role
of someone who's a servant and someone who is a slave, Well,
you don't sell the servant, it's uh. They're contracted for
a certain period of time, but a slave is enslaved

(38:46):
for life. There were cases of enterprising sea captains kidnapping
people on the coast of England and Ireland and bringing
them over his bond servants against their will. They had
a certain period of time to work out, and there
was a lawsuit by a couple and they might have

(39:07):
been brothers who had been kidnapped like that and thought
that they time should be up by now, so we
should be free. And they're saying that they masked, it
was a bit too hot and it wasn't gonna let
them go. I think they got out. So but even
even though this was totally involuntary, there was a time
limit on it. The new Colonial Charter, what did they

(39:29):
promise to the colonists. The new Charter, which took years
to negotiate, made the the government legal. But one thing
that England says in it is that it cannot be
repugnant to any of the laws of England. The repugnancy clause.
It can't contradict English common law, which isn't written down,

(39:53):
but apparently there's ways of finding out what it is. Um.
Some parts of Massachusetts law did differ. I mm hmm,
like the divorce thing, but I'm not sure if they
even looked at that. What There were various agents of
the government prowling around making surely if there were violations

(40:17):
or not, but they seemed to be mostly interested in
import export taxes that were not being paid. They didn't
seem to mention the witchcraft problem at all until one
of them got beaten up in foot and jail and
even talk side dispute. And he didn't like being in
jail with a lot of commonist burglars, negroes and witches.

(40:38):
He said, so he did not really care what they
were doing with the witch trials. But um witchcraft was
illegal in both countries. And when Phipps suspended the trials
in the fall in October and asked for England's advice

(41:00):
when it came back, it said, just do what the
law allows and do your best. They didn't seem to
quibble over how it had gone. Speaking of Phipps and
ending Charles, what do we know about lady Mary Phipps.
She was well educated, She's from Maine to I guess
her family was in Maine and in Massachusetts. It was

(41:23):
said that she taught her husband how to read on
a honeymoon or soon after. He but even though he
couldn't read, he was able to oversee building a ship
and keep all that in his head, so he had
a good memory anyway. But um, she was apparently, you know,

(41:47):
a force a forceful woman, and he was devoted to her,
listened to her. It said that she was accused, and
apparently the source is a good one that she was
at least named, that she had helped somebody get out
of jail, signed there a warrant to get them out.

(42:10):
I thought for a while that, you know, William Phipps
and Mary Phipps, William and Mary, the monarchs, that there
was some confusion there, or maybe they pretended there was
a confusion. But she may have done that because the
source is Thomas Hutchinson, the mid eighteenth century governor of
Massachusetts Road of History, and he said he was shown

(42:33):
a paper by somebody who had been a jailer and
got fired when they let them out unauthorized. But yeah,
she could have been named, but nothing was done about
it because at that point, Phipps decides this is not
going the right way and realizes what Sarah Osborne pointed

(42:54):
out the first day of the hearings. If somebody sees
a specter that looks like you, it doesn't mean it's you.
So that that tactic did seem to work. Paying if
you had the means paying to be released. Well, well,
not everybody thought that the trials proceeding the right way,

(43:15):
but we don't know exactly could have been. Just they
were bribable. It did help to have money, and if
you were wealthy enough, like Philip and Merry English, they
were put in the Boston jail. But then he had
enough money and put up a bond four thousand pounds,
which is huge. That they could then rent a room

(43:36):
in the jailer's house, which had better amenities. It was
a room rather than a common room with everybody in it,
so it was easy to escape from that too. I
think he could go. The story with them is that
they could go out get some exercise as long as

(43:57):
they paid for God to come with them. Let That
led to all sorts of possibilities, And there were people
who didn't like the way the trials are going, such
as Reverend Samuel Willard and Reverend I think Joshua Moody
who was in town, also from New Hampshire. Apparently the
family story with the English is is that they helped

(44:19):
arrange things for them and persuade them to escape. But
they did escape. They went to New York. I know
there are several people who had to remain in jail
even after their charges. Now, yes, how did it being
a debtor function within the trials when you had to
pay the phase, It's like two shillings sixpence a week,

(44:42):
I think, and that I've seen is what a woman,
if she was working full time is spinning and weaving,
could earn in a week. So that's that's sizeable amount
of money. Their families were supposed to come up with it,
and one woman who died of natural causes in jail,
the jailer wouldn't release the body to the Suns until

(45:05):
they paid her fees the rent, and then I guess
they did, but they complained about it later when there
were reparations. The family had to come up with it,
and I think that Jacob's family had to borrow money
in order to get the daughter out. And then the

(45:27):
person who loaned. It suit them the debt and she
was back. She didn't want to come back to jail again.
It was it was financial difficulty. Seventeen twelve, there was
some restitution and people applied to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
saying this is what I spent and why, and some

(45:47):
of them were reimbursed. Philip English asked for a great deal,
but he was on good financial standing, so he didn't
get that much. But yeah, Massachusetts tried to make commends.
It didn't bring you didn't bring back your dead grandmother,
but it was something. But anyway, it gives us some
paperwork to know what people had to spend. They put

(46:09):
in the expense of hiring a horse and going down
to Boston from Salem, which is a whole day's trip
to tend to their mother, or there aren't or somebody
bring them some fresh clothes and some decent food. I mean,
I guess you got bread and water, but it wasn't great.
And then they do that so many times in a week,

(46:31):
and that's that's a lot of time away from work.
The crops are growing, are not growing. And yes, it
was financially bad for Massachusetts as well as for the
individuals who was the final accused which to actually leave
the jail. It's hard to say. I really don't know
was Okay, was Chichiba at least within the sand which

(46:55):
Charles was, it was the last person because of some
of these she made. She was among the last, I
would say, because her she didn't come before the Jewies
Child Jewlies until the following May, and then they were
her fees. She'd been in jail a long time and

(47:15):
Samuel Paris did not want her back because that whole
episode is at this point very embarrassing and what if
she really is a which do I want her in
my house? So he wasn't going to pay it, and
they have sold her to somebody we don't know to
cover the fees. So she's back to being a slave
somewhere else and we don't know where, but apparently locally,

(47:41):
because it's mentioned that she was. She was not sold
out of the colony at that point. She just disappeared
from the records. What are the kinds of like primary source, like,
what's the kind of written stuff that you actually have
from from from this time? And one of the kinds

(48:02):
of things they write about. There's a lot we don't
know but there's a lot of documentation that has survived. Um,
there's warrants, the original compliance uh A minimus where someone's
being transferred from one jail to another, and they're not
for everybody. It's not a complete set for everyone who's accused,

(48:26):
but especially at the beginning, there's a lot of questions
and answers taken down during the initial hearing, not at
the trials, but at the hearings to see if there's
enough he had to whold someone for trial, and surprise,
knewly all of them were. But different people took notes
at different times, and some are more complete than others.

(48:47):
But you've got questions and answers, and you can see,
for example, was titue but where a couple of people
were taking notes on that first day, you can see
whether the question was Presumably John Hawthorne is already made
up his mind this has to be a guilty person,
so he's he's going to keep asking the question until

(49:08):
he gets an answer. And then she describes things. And
if you put the two together, and you get this
picture of all the devils in the passonage and what
they look like and who else is and the suspicions
and how somebody flew through the air and so on,
and those are extremely helpful. And then there are statements

(49:30):
by witnesses and accusers who say, on such and such
a date, I was afflicted and so on. That's painful,
and it's on a date, and maybe somebody else makes
a statement saying, yes, they saw them convulsing on such
and such a date. But then there's other depositions where
we had an argument with someone and then the cow

(49:52):
got sick. And then there's the confessions that some people did.
And they confes us that they sold themselves to the devil,
and how did he appear? And he always was came
as a black dog, or he looked like a man,
or he looked like a cold I think in one case,

(50:13):
and how and we and they described being re baptized
into the Devil's communion, and they're thrown into someone got
thrown into a stream. They're coming up with whatever whatever
comes through. They had someone's face was pushed in a
bucket of water, they said. Or they wrote out a
contract on a piece of birch back, or they were

(50:34):
illiterate and they put their thumb mark on something. That's
something they can get quite detailed, but you know, even
though it didn't happen, it's extremely interesting. Uh. And then
there are lists back in ninety three you do get
the names of some of the jurors. Unfortunately, most of

(50:55):
the jurors in sixteen ninety two we don't know who
they were because that paper were didn't survive. And later
on there are petitions saying this is what I went
through and I want my name cleared, and the petitions
for reimbursement later on, like seventeen twelve, after the reversal

(51:15):
of attainder, and the names have been cleared if they
got in the petitions, there were five. I think they
didn't get cleared until two thousand one on Halloween. They
weren't taking this seriously, but you know they're listing what
they lost, what was confiscated, the money they had to
spend to go visit a relative in jail, and so on.

(51:36):
So there's a lot of detail and a lot of
those are online, which is very helpful. In the University
of Virginia's website. There was a commentary at the time.
Let's see that when the Panics started to wind down
in October, there were a couple of letters circulated not

(51:58):
in print at the time. There in print now uh
one was by one of the Brittles, criticizing the way
the trials had proceeded that too much spectral evidence. It
boils down to. There's some anecdotes in that, but mostly
it's an argument as to why this does not work
and increase Mata, who had negotiated the charter rights up

(52:20):
his views that he had had been discussed at a
meeting of area ministers. Cases of Conscience. It's a longer
title than that, as to why you cannot trust spectral evidences.
And there are some letters such as from Phips to
the Privy Council of the Crown, of various government officials

(52:42):
in England saying it's not I'm stopping it. It wasn't
my fault. I wasn't there. I was following your orders
to keep Mane safe. But we've stopped it now and
it wasn't my fault. But let's see. So when the
trials start up again in January and so on, there's

(53:06):
some paperwork from that, a cup and in October the court,
I guess the government asked Corton rather to write a
summary of what had been going on, and he at
this point still assumes that they had been proceeding correctly
and maybe he's making two thinks he needs to make

(53:28):
more excuses for how things had gone. So it kind
of supports the view that they had proceeded as best
they could, and it did nothing for his reputation thereafter,
and it kind of ties him with that, even though
he did say at the beginning, you shouldn't really use
spectral evidence, and he had a lot of other good

(53:50):
things that he did, but that was a very unfortunate one.
All over, the book is a good source of what
people were saying and of the end views of the trials,
and there's some anecdotes in it that aren't in the
existing papers they did send the court. M m. Clerk
of the Court sent him some of the paperwork which

(54:10):
he got to see, and some of that might not
exist now, but that's what he was writing from and
making excuses for how the government had proceeded. Because another
thing is that the government is trying to establish itself
according to the new Charter, and they don't need so

(54:31):
much public unrest that they lose it again, or you know,
the populace does something to react against it. In England's
is or well, forget about self roll after this, so
he was trying to protect the reputation of the government
too much. As strange as it is, you can view

(54:54):
the Salem crisis as a pr nightmare for a group
of people. It was the Pio yes right. And and
because of that book, which was published in England and
in New England. Uh Robert calf who was a merchant,

(55:15):
and he had been a constable in Boston in that year,
so he might have been helping to arrest people. We
don't really know that. He was highly critical of the
trials at this point. He hadn't really said anything while
I was going on, but he wrote a book criticizing this,
criticizing the Mathers and the government, and that has a

(55:35):
lot a lot of really good source material because he
spoke to some of the families involved and and Prince.
Some of the paperwork that didn't get saved or it
was a receipt from the sheriffice to what God confiscated.
We know about it because it was in his book.
And then there was back and forth between the Maths

(55:56):
and ca and so debating how things had gone on.
But that is a source book. And later Reverend John Hale,
who had believed that it was witchcraft at first and
then did change his mind. He wrote a book later
as to how it seemed and how it is obviously

(56:17):
not a good idea to accept spectral evidence, although at
the time it seemed like such and such, and it
is anecdotes in there that that were very helpful, but
it wasn't published until after his death in but that's
a good source too. At the very top, we talked
about Rebecca Nurse. She had, like you said, a support

(56:38):
structure around her her family. Talk to me about what
made her family ready for this fight, because it wouldn't
have been it's not an easy thing to fight for
her name and for her innocence. Well, they just I'm
going to protect mother. The Nurse family got statements from neighbors.
They circulated a petition neighbors and lots of people signed it.

(57:02):
It wasn't just them, so they people put their names
on it. And there was never any retaliation against any
of the people who did that, or the petitions for
the practice or for Mary Bradbury unhappy to say, and
they took that to the governor and other statements and
even a statement from I believe this was at this
point a statement from the jurors who misunderstood something she

(57:27):
said because she was originally got a not guilty verdict,
which scared the afflicted girls, either either because they expected
the devils to do something or because they did not
want to be not believed. But they screech and it

(57:47):
seems like they're being heard, and Stowton's sends the jury
out to reconsider, and they come back and ask her
about a certain statement she had made when she was
brought into the room. She why of the confessors had
come in, and she said, why is she here? She's
one of us? Did she mean one of us witches
or one of us accused, which is what she meant.

(58:11):
But she doesn't answer, and they figure, okay, she has
nothing to say in her defense, and they bring back
the guilty verdict and her the family tells her afterwards
what had happened, and she writes, so she signs a
statement that they wrote for her right or she wrote
it herself, saying that she thought they meant a fellow prisoner,

(58:32):
not a fellow which and all of this has presented
to the governor and they get a reprieve, and whereupon
there are even worse afflictions, and the reprieve is taken
away and she hangs. But they do try, and they
keep trying, and they they they never really I don't

(58:57):
know if they never forgive the accusers, but Paris and
the Putnam certainly thought that Rebecca was a witch at
the height of the panic there, and they are at
obvious odds for a long time thereafter, and they're part
of the faction that would like to get rid of
Paris and break that contract for all these reasons. You know,

(59:21):
you look at everything that's kind of swirling around the
village of Salem that's causing this to occur. In your books,
specifically in the Six Women, you're really focusing on these
women in their lives and getting a view from inside,
trying to know you you are and and why is
it important to focus on these specific women. Well, the

(59:44):
something biographical, trying to tell what it was like to
go through it, what it was like to live through
it as an accused or an accuser. It's I mean,
there are concepts and of what goes on in the
world and these great movements of history, but how does

(01:00:05):
it hit an individual depending and there are different parts
of society or different parts of the disaster that's going on.
I was trying to get into into their minds and
see it through their eyes. But you know, that's spent
three fifty years now, so I can only guess if

(01:00:28):
I've done it, But I tried. Do you see any
parallels in the lives of women in some people believed
easier than others, and some people aren't believed even when
they're telling the truth. There's there's a feeling that it

(01:00:55):
is very silly in some strange way, very silly that
anyone could believe that the belief in whiches was so
pervasive that human beings could get hurt and actually go
to court for these things there are nowadays. It's this
almost like why are they believed in which is? But

(01:01:15):
are are there things nowadays in contemporary times that could
be considered similar to a belief in something that is
just either not true or fantastic? Well, the idea of
which is or evil magic was not just the Puritans,

(01:01:37):
not just New England. It was general in the colonies
in Europe and in other cultures in North America, Africa, Asia,
all over. The fact that it could happen was just
obvious to them. Uh. And if people are afraid enough,

(01:01:58):
they will have physical reaction, and people can be overreacting
to things nowadays that could happen, such as the it
was a Satanist scare where day care as centers was
supposedly being targeted. Will there are crimes against children that

(01:02:20):
are horrible and they can happen, but that doesn't mean
that they were happening in those cases, or even that
there were organizations of Satanists doing it, but they were,
but people reacted really strongly to it. Obviously, there are
toxic waste problems. They can poison people and big companies,

(01:02:46):
and industrial waste is a very real problem. But sometimes
there are physical reactions now that could logically be explained
that way, but there's no evidence there is any which
doesn't which means presumably that there isn't a problem with
toxic poisoning with those sufferers, But that doesn't mean that

(01:03:10):
there's no such thing as toxic waste. So even if
you continue to believe that evil magic is possible, and
people do and other cultures in and this one, uh,
the point then and now is is that's what happening
here and now? Can you be certain don't panic yet,

(01:03:31):
try to figure out exactly what's going on. And if
they've done that, then without changing their views or world
or anything, it wouldn't have gotten so far. But the
panic really exploded, and nowadays it would explode over something
else and it wouldn't be just like the Salem problem.

(01:03:52):
So it doesn't have the Halloween spookiness to it and
it's not recognized. I love to have a sense of
what the life for Puritans living in Salem and in
Essex County was like aside from the witch trial. Well,
let's see most well, most of New England was a
grarian and it depended on how on the weather as

(01:04:15):
to how good the crops were from year to year.
Ninety two was a drought year, so that was another worry.
In the center of Salem, down by the harbor pat
most of the people in the maritime trades and the
merchants who had far flung business associations up and down
to England and abroad depending I think Philip English had

(01:04:39):
connections as far as Russia. It's something about the fir Trate.
I think the maritime economy was threatened by the war
that was going on with Canada, which is border wars,
guerrilla raids, retaliations and so on. So there's pirates. There's pirates,
pirates who had robbed from anybody, private privateers licensed by

(01:05:02):
the French Canadian governments to prey on English shipping because
neither country has a navy. Navy New England licensed privateers
such as John Alden who would prey on French shipping.
If you go far enough out to see you could
be taken by barbary pirates and sold as a slave.

(01:05:22):
In northern Africa, there's, as I say, the war at
home frontier raids, and a lot of the people had
evacuated from some of the more remote main settlements and
come south safety's sake. A lot of the people in
the Salem area had some connection or other with Maine
and attacks there. Others people who were around were veterans

(01:05:47):
of the King Phillips War and had had fought with
the native peoples in southern New England. And some of
the people were on militia duty up in may Down
may excuse me, uh, protecting with the garrisons had experienced there.
Some had gone in the fleet to Canada in sixty nine,

(01:06:08):
I believe when New York and New England. We're going
to gang up on Canada. Make sure that wasn't a
military threat anymore. And it was small parks and storms
ruined that idea, and some prisons were exchanged, but it
made for a terrible debt in the treasury, so that's

(01:06:29):
a big problem. But farming, crops, trade, fishing, they were
all kind of at risk because of the weather and
the economy and the war. So there were a lot
of strains that way. But it's not a mechanical society.
It takes time to get from one place to another.

(01:06:49):
I don't know if it was quicker to sail to
Boston from Salem, but it took the better part of
a day to get there by horseback, and you'd have
to cross a couple of ferry with fairies to get across.
Rivers will go way around the marshes. I mean, the
railroad goes right across it now, and the roads, but
you had to go around things and getting worried. They

(01:07:11):
seemed to communicate rather quicker than I would have thought.
With Maine, make me a couple of days to get
an answer, as too, have they burned down the garrison yet? Uh?
And sending a question to England, as Phipps did. Took months,
but besides the trip over by ship, it had to
go through channels with the Privy Council and then it

(01:07:34):
didn't come back until May, which was what you think
is best. So yeah, and something mechanical would be a mill,
which would be quite high tech, I guess christ mill.
But they also had sawmills, especially in the Maine New
Hampshire area, where they'd be vertical saws going up and

(01:07:57):
down because the buzz saw hadn't been advantage it, and
that was high tech. But stuff is done by hand
and traveling is by foota by horseback of by boat.
How important was firewood? Oh? Very important? Yes, firewood would
be the main fuel, if not the only one. It

(01:08:18):
was important in this in the Witch trials because one
of the problems with the Minister Samuel Parris is that
the contract included firewood he's supply for heat cooking, and
there was question as to whether it had been included.
Did we really include the firewood or would did we

(01:08:39):
give you something extra to cover the firewood? He doesn't
have enough trees of his own. He used to buy it,
and it's not deep docked impenetrable forests, is wood lots
and fields more. I don't know if there's more trees
now or then or then. But you don't just go
cutting down a tree because it either belongs to the

(01:09:00):
town or belongs to somebody else. So at one point
he's really low on it and complaining about it. But
that was just a bone of contention between the people
who didn't support him and the people who did. But
you did need it because the houses were not insulated.
They might be had what they put bricks between the

(01:09:20):
timber and the plaster, but that's not terribly warm. I
think some houses were found to have eel grass or
something in between the walls, and I don't not sure
if that was later. But you had to be close
to the fire. I mean, Cotton Meather lived in the
city of Boston and had a good house. But he's
riding in the winter and in the ink freezes in

(01:09:41):
the inkwell, so it was a necessity. What was the
function of the meeting house, Well, a meeting house is
a pure and concept. It's and also the fact that
they're out in the new Land where they have to
build things from scratch in the first step, first generation,
A meeting house was an all purpose building. They would

(01:10:05):
meet there for civil meeting, selectman, town meetings, but they
would meet there for religious meetings also, because that was
the main reason a lot most of them had come
over in the first place. So it depends what time
of the week it is as to what you're using
it for. It's town owned because they're pretty much all

(01:10:27):
the same belief system. As the population expanded in various
places where they were maybe Baptists Quakers, they didn't want
to have to support that, and in Salem there was
a Quaker meeting house they had their own. At this
point in Boston that the meeting houses were owned by

(01:10:52):
their congregations, not by the town. There was three congregational
congregations in town plus at this point an Anglican church,
Quaker meeting house, and a Baptist church too, and I
think a Huguenot one, and they're all owned by their
own people. So when the Royal Governor, Sir Edmond Andrews

(01:11:12):
came and wanted a place for the Church of England
people to worship, uh, they used the town house, which
was a non meeting house, non religious meeting house, all
civic meeting place and that kind of went against the
grain for a lot of people who were Church of England,

(01:11:34):
so he can commandeered one of the churches used it
in the All South meeting House, used it in the
morning and if they ran over, you just stood out
in the rain and waited. That really got people's packs up.
And then they built King's Chapel. But my point is
the town did not. The town did not own the

(01:11:55):
meet the religious structures in Boston because it was a
bigger population. The individual towns generally had one because why
pay for two different buildings if the same people are
going to be using them for the different purposes. Salem Village,
because of its geographic location, had their own meeting house finally,

(01:12:16):
which took time to get permission for. And then there
was the meeting house in the middle of Salem, and
presumably geographically it was supported differently. But Salem was also
big enough that they at this time had a town
house that was up the street opposite where city Hall
is now, where they had the selectment meetings and the

(01:12:39):
town meetings, and the school Latin school was on the
ground floor, the courtrooms upstairs. I sometimes wonder if anyone
counting lessons done that summer, and they kept the firefighting
equipment in the attic, which would make it rather hard
to get to in case of ablaze. But it was real.
But they also did occasionally to have ab civil meetings

(01:13:02):
in the meeting house because it was bigger. In sixte to,
one of the hearings is held there because some of
the uh uh legislature is coming up to observe the
crisis and they need a big space. But for the
most part it was under repair. In ninety two, I
guess they had religious services there, but they they had

(01:13:26):
legal stuff going on in the town house up the street.
What does school look like for an average kid growing
up around that time, Well, it was a law after
a while that he was supposed to teach your kids
to read. More people. The literacy rate was good here
in New England because it was seemed essential that you

(01:13:49):
needed to read the Bible for yourself and see what
it was and laws and stuff. More people could read
than could write, because reading was taught separately, unlike together
with right as now it seems logical to teach them together.
But people could read who could not write, and they
would sign their name with an exit. Didn't mean they

(01:14:09):
were totally illiterate because they also want to read those
deeds and wills too. Uh that the reading could be
done at home. Sometimes someone's mother would do it. One
more women who could read. In some places, that would
be a dame school. Dame being the equivalent of sir,

(01:14:31):
which was what school masters would called because they had
a bachelor's degree and that was comparable to a night
which would be called sir. It gets complicated, not that
women had any degrees at all or could get into
a higher university, but that's why they called dame schools.
It was a more polite way to address people than

(01:14:52):
like damied as Evans the actors. Who has the rank anyway? Ah,
if a town had so many families in it, they
were supposed to have a grammar school, which meant Latin grammar,
which would be the boys learning Latin, maybe Greek. They

(01:15:14):
might have already gone to a writing school. That's to
prefer you for college. The Latin and the Greek sold that. Yeah,
I think it Deadham in the town records. I happened
to be looking at Deadham. Uh. There was a question

(01:15:34):
do we teach the girls too? But apparently they didn't
think they were going to invest in that m so
they might learn reading and writing. If they're lucky, they
learned some arithmetic too, to keep accounts. They were private
schools with a schoolmaster or somebody who would take on students.

(01:15:57):
If they got the Latin and Greek the boys, then
they could apply if they so inclined, to the college,
which is Harvard. They tended to generally call it the college.
It's actually the only one in North America at the time,
so they might as well, uh, and that would be
They didn't want an ignorant ministry in the future because

(01:16:18):
they were so far away from Oxford and Cambridge, and
that's what it was mainly for, so that the light
of learning would not go out. But not everybody was
going to be a minister who went there. Some of
the merchants were well educated too, But some of the merchants,
like Hawthorne, did not go to the college. But he

(01:16:39):
he'd read things, I guess tried to know what some
but his educational background was. It may be hard for
some younger listeners hearing this to understand why women and girls,
any females were not taught the same way that the
males were. They may have a hard time understand that

(01:17:02):
you just talked to us about why, what the roles were,
and what the perception was. Well, women's work was mostly
in the household, and it took up without mechanism. It
took a long time to accomplish and keep a house
running and clean. And they probably got a kitchen, garden,
and the cow and stuff, which is full time work.

(01:17:24):
So they didn't need, supposedly to to know these other things.
The boys are probably most of them are farmers, and
they're doing field work and taking care of other livestock
and so on, so and not. Most people didn't need
but they needed to be able to deal with deeds
and wills or find someone reputable and write it down

(01:17:47):
the way you wanted, so they may be needed more
of it being more out in the world. But literacy
was important to them because they wanted to be able
to read the Bible another other good books. So there
was literacy, and certainly, uh there were some well educated
girls and women, but it would have been from home

(01:18:10):
and learning outside of a regular school room, which was
aimed at boys and boys going to higher education to colleges.
It was a long time before women could get into colleges.
In the United States, and when I was in college
habit was still a boys school. Briefly, if you could
describe what Puritan writing is like stylistically, because it is

(01:18:34):
a very distinct style to me. Well, the books and
the and the titles they did tended to have long
titles or more a description of what the book was
going to be about, and depending on the addition, the
printer would highlight parts of it more than others, so
it looks like it has a different title almost, But yeah, yeah,
there would be long, sometimes flowery sentences. There were a

(01:18:55):
lot of biblical allusions which did give the references to
what chapter and verse they would talking about. People were
expected that they everybody knew what that meant or could
look it up. There were also classical allusions because the
university education, they had read the classical writers from ancient
Greece and Rome, pre Christian stuff, which some critics said

(01:19:18):
was dangerous pagan ideas being given these ministers, these like
coakers and people who certainly weren't going to send their
kids to college Virgil, Cicero, Caesar, I mean, what do
we need that for? But they were well versed in
classical literature, so there's a lot of allusions to that too,
and they might give the references to it. But yeah, uh.

(01:19:43):
But one of the one of the presidents of Habbit
and maybe Chauncey, was advice to young ministers, if you're
trying to get an idea across, don't be too high flown.
He's saying, don't shoot over their heads. They're not gonna
understand it, And then there's no point in saying in
the first place, don't be so don't show off your learning,

(01:20:06):
but be direct. What do people miss when they think
about the Salem which Trials? What's the one thing that
maybe people miss still I think people generally see the
Salem which Trials is something so bizarre they can't really
identify with it that it's something foolish people did because
they didn't know any better. They didn't have computers, they

(01:20:28):
didn't have this, they didn't know that, and we're smarter
than there. But they were educated people and well intentioned
people who, even by the lights of their own philosophy
in their own time, could have figured out that things
were not proceeding as they should without converting to twenty

(01:20:49):
one century skepticism, for example, and people who mean well
and are well educated and are generally genuinely concerned for, say,
their children's welfare. Nowadays can go off in the wrong
direction also, even though their motives, assuming they're not lying

(01:21:10):
about it, their motives are good. I need to protect
my children, I need to protect my family. But you
can still go off the rails with it. And that's
what happened then, I think for the most part. For
the most part, people we're convinced that something awful was happening,
and then they just went the down the wrong road

(01:21:33):
for too long. People tend to think of it as
spooky Halloween stuff, especially in October, but it was serious
and deadly, and even if you didn't die, it really
messed things up, and people who were just on the periphery.

(01:21:55):
It messed up the economy and in society. So bad
things can happen, and they happen in different costumes each time,
so you don't see it coming until you're in the
middle of it. Were there any lasting effects, I guess
in a more general sense um of the same witch

(01:22:16):
trials that specifically affected women, although certainly we're no more
witch trials. People didn't want to get near that embroider again.
Some people thought that it was stopped too soon. It
really was something going on that it was a cover up,
but generally it was one huge embarrassment to the government.

(01:22:37):
There were slander suits brought by people who had had
been accused, as had been done about before that, because
prior to six two, I think about a third of
the witchcraft which cases were slander suits where you're trying
to clear your name and they generally want but I

(01:22:57):
don't know. It's certainly left a lot of neighborhood and
inter family resentments that lasted a couple of generations. But
then you find people a couple of generations on marrying
someone from the opposite camp, so it's I don't think
they're angry now. It just makes a very interesting genealogy.

(01:23:21):
One of the fascinating things driving through dan Verse versus
driving through Salem proper is just how this period in
the trials are treated just in the public street. Yeah. Well,
because dan Versus a separate town now, it sort of
was not remembered that that was with things started, and

(01:23:44):
Salem it's got this history that everybody knew about one
way or another. I think the tourists came before the
tourist industry. They responded to people's interests from what I've
been able to figure out. And when the railroad came
in and it was a lot more traveling, there was
more of it, even though locals didn't want to talk

(01:24:06):
about it necessarily all this were more interested in discussing it.
But you know, it was not it was not a
shining example of community spirit. But there was a newspaper
article in eighteen ninety two when it was the two anniversary,
and the reporter was going through Salem and he's talking

(01:24:29):
to the cab driver, which is a horse drawn cab,
and the cabby says that there's two things that people
who have a little time in Salem want to go see.
They want to see the house where Hawthorne was born
then Nathaniel, and they want to see where the witches
were burned or hanged or something like that. Hey, I
guess he knew they were hanged, and he probably took
him to the wrong place, but that's what people asked for.

(01:24:52):
And in nine eight ninety two was the year of
the first souvenir silver witch logo spoon in Alum from
the Daniel Lowe Company, which was quite a jeweler in
town in the building that's now across from the Cement
the stevensby Which statue. So things were starting up and

(01:25:13):
there was there was an opportunity that people took advantage of.
But when the mills and the leather industry and the
textile mills went elsewhere, tourism filled a void too, But
there was also more notice of Salem through TV and

(01:25:34):
books and things. It kind of it was an unstoppable force.
And also it's good and some of it is very
inaccurate Arthur Miller's play, which is creative fiction, but definitely
on the on the part about not being believed when

(01:25:55):
you're telling the truth, so you lie and then they
believe you. That's that hits the nail on the head
that made it internationally known. So if it hadn't been before,
people know about it all over the world, So that
becomes Salem to them. And it's not just Salem, it's
the whole area had problems. Salem was the shire town,

(01:26:17):
so that's where the courts set. But well, because it's
so well known, I the most I hope for is
that get the facts out and hope that people listen
and just satisfied with having a Halloween joke out of it.
I like Halloween, but this is not that. Hey, folks,

(01:26:47):
it's Aaron here. I hope that today's interview helped deepen
your understanding of everything involved in the Salem Which trials.
But we're not done yet. We've got more interviews to
share with you, so stick around after this briefs answer
break to hear a preview of next week's interview. Hi.

(01:27:07):
I'm Jane Kamensky. I teach history at Harvard University and
I'm also the director of the Lessinger Library on the
History of Women in the United States. I'm gonna start
us off with a really well, deceptively simple question, but
it's pretty complex. I'm sure, what was a witch in Um?
Which was somebody who made unexpected things happen. Puritans lived

(01:27:31):
in a world of portents and wonders and almonds. They're
always watching the sky, they're watching the earth. Um there
you know, Uh, God speaks to them. And I think
a which was somebody who made almonds and portents and
signs happen in ways that Um seemed to reside inappropriately

(01:27:56):
in a human form, which is in pure in New
England were not thought to wear black pointy hats, although
they sometimes did ride around on brooms UM. And they
acted in a whole manner of inappropriate ways or were
present at times when inexplicable things happened. UM. Small harms

(01:28:18):
you know, milk curdling, sour side or going sour. UM.
Big harms. Uh you know, somebody saying, oh, what a
pretty child that is, and the child soon sickens and dies. UM.
Women who spoke out of turn, uh you know who
whose tongues went on like fishwives in ways that UM

(01:28:40):
really seemed to sort of stick out of the fabric
of conversation at the time. UM. People who said things
that later seemed to be ominous. UM. It's a world
in which, you know, science is quite primitive, and a
great deal of what unfolds in any given season is inexplicable. Right,

(01:29:04):
Crops fail, animals die, UM. And sometimes in the search
for supernatural explanations UM, which included God and the Devil UM,
which is as the handmaidens of the devil um were
were faulted. It's hard to see, looking backwards whether there

(01:29:26):
were individuals who cultivated that reputation UM who had sort
of family businesses in curative arts that flirted with the
edge of of the supernatural. You know, there there are
some instances in Salem where um uh women are found

(01:29:48):
with poppets that seemed to be a little little cloth
dolls that seemed to be used in UM in some
kind of ritual. One thing that's quite different in UH
in the early New England and witchcraft cases than in
a lot of more ancient witchcraft cases is that Puritans
are very concerned with the idea that some which is

(01:30:10):
consort with the devil. Um. You know, there's a there's
a black mass that surfaces in accounts of Salem that's
not typical in run of the mill witchcraft cases UM,
where it's where it's really more about livestock or about
what we would now think of as a nightmare. I

(01:30:31):
woke up with a sensation of somebody pressing on my chest,
and I thought of my neighbor, and it must have
been her um bewitching me. UM. So a whole range
of unexpected happenings that didn't have an easy narrative cause
that could fasten on somebody who, for whatever reason um

(01:30:53):
stuck out in a fabric of society that was supposed
to be smooth. Very This episode of Unobscured was executive
produced by Me, Matt Frederick, and Alex Williams, with music

(01:31:15):
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 and a page with all of
our historian biographies. And as always, thanks for supporting this show.

(01:31:38):
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