May 14, 2025 • 27 mins
Dive into the first witch panic in America set in Hartford, setting the stage for dark accusations and executions.
Before Salem, there was Hartford. In 1662, the Hartford Witch Trials ignited fear, accusations, and executions—becoming America’s first witch panic.
This forgotten chapter in colonial history reveals eerie parallels to later events in Salem, and exposes the cultural fears driving 17th-century hysteria.
🎧 Listen as Robert Barber uncovers the chilling origins of America's earliest witch trials.
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SPEAKER_00 (00:02):
They said the devil could slip through walls.
That he wore the faces ofneighbors.
That he could whisper into yourdreams and steal your breath
before morning.
They said a woman could killwith a glance.
Spoil milk.
Sour a newborn.
Call down fever like rain.
(00:25):
They didn't need proof.
Only silence.
A shadow.
A name said too many times inthe wrong kind of voice.
In the spring of 1647, a womanwas led to the gallows in
Hartford, Connecticut.
Her name was Alce Young.
She had no defense, no jury, nosurviving trial record, just the
(00:50):
noose and a new precedent.
Because what happened inHartford didn't end there.
It spread.
across decades, across counties,across families.
Long before Salem, long beforethe world was watching, the
first witch was already dead.
(01:13):
This wasn't Salem.
This wasn't a cautionary talefrom Europe.
This was Hartford, Connecticut,a Puritan settlement still
carving itself out of thewilderness.
And in the mid-1600s, fear movedfaster.
than fact.
Witchcraft wasn't a rumor.
It was an explanation.
(01:35):
And for more than a decade, itwas law.
Long before the infamous trialsin Massachusetts, people were
being accused, tortured, andexecuted in Connecticut.
And when they died, historylooked away.
But their stories never reallydisappeared.
They just sank beneath thesurface, waiting.
(02:13):
I'm your host, Robert Barber,and today we're going back
further than Salem to a timewhen witches were real, the
devil lived next door, andsuspicion could get you hanged.
This is the story of America'sfirst witch panic, the one
history tried to forget.
(02:33):
This is State of the Unknown.
In the mid-1600s, Hartford,Connecticut was still more
wilderness than town.
(02:54):
It had only recently beensettled by a group of English
Puritans, strict Calvinists whohad fled Europe to create a
religious community in the NewWorld.
They came with bibles, plows,and fear.
Fear of the forest, fear of theunknown, and fear of the devil
himself.
(03:15):
Hartford was bordered by densewoods, where trees grew close
and light seldom reached theforest floor.
To the colonists, these woodsweren't just wild.
They were spiritually dangerous.
They believed Satan lived inuntamed places, just beyond the
reach of their cleared land andcleared consciences.
(03:38):
Their homes were timber-framed,simple and dark, huddled close
against the cold.
Chimneys smoked with green woodand the smell of damp stone.
Inside, light came from candlesand hearths.
But it didn't chase away theshadows.
Because the greatest danger,they believed, wasn't in what
(03:59):
they could see.
It was in what they couldn't.
In this world, superstitionwasn't a fringe belief.
It was woven into daily life.
If your child had died of asudden fever, if your cow
stopped producing milk, if breadspoiled too fast or your field
(04:21):
failed, there was a reason.
And if no earthly cause could befound, there had to be an
unearthly one, a hex, a curse,or even the devil's touch.
And behind all of it, theybelieved, was the witch.
(04:41):
Witches weren't just women whopracticed folk healing or
midwifery.
In Puritan theology, a witch wassomeone who had made a
deliberate pact with the devil,trading their soul for power.
They could fly, speak intongues, send spirits to torment
neighbors or kill livestock.
(05:03):
It wasn't just folklore.
It was a theological certaintybacked by scripture.
Exodus 22, 18, thou shalt notsuffer a witch to live.
It was more than a line in theBible.
It was policy.
So when things went wrong inearly Hartford, when children
(05:25):
got sick, when women miscarried,when dreams turned disturbing,
the question wasn't if the devilwas involved.
It was who he was workingthrough.
And once suspicion took root,the fire would spread.
Her name was Alce Young, spelledA-L-S-E in the colonial records,
(05:54):
possibly short for Alice.
She lived in Windsor,Connecticut, just north of
Hartford.
And on May 26, 1647, she becamethe first person known to be
executed for witchcraft incolonial America.
We don't know what she lookedlike.
There are no survivingportraits, no letters, no
(06:17):
confession.
Only this, written in the diaryof a Massachusetts clergyman.
Alce Young was hanged.
No reason given, no trialtranscript, No defense record.
We do know this.
She was likely in her 30s orearly 40s.
(06:37):
She was married to a man namedJohn Young, a man of modest
standing in the Windsorcommunity.
And she may have had onedaughter, Alice, who was later
also accused of witchcraft,years after her mother's death.
But beyond that, silence.
No surviving charges.
There were no witnesses listed.
(06:59):
and no court decision, just arope.
And the shadow had cast.
Historians believe that Alce mayhave been swept up in a larger
wave of fear because in themonths leading up to her
execution, Connecticut wasexperiencing a deadly outbreak.
A flu-like epidemic had killednumerous residents, including
(07:21):
the daughter of Governor JohnHaynes.
As was often the case in Puritancommunities, Unexplained illness
and death demanded a scapegoat.
And if the devil was to blame,then someone must have opened
the door.
That someone, they decided, wasAlice Young.
(07:41):
She was taken to Gallows Hill,just outside Hartford's town
center, likely on foot,surrounded by a crowd.
There were no formalexecutioners in the colonies
then.
Her death would have beenhandled by the town itself.
No coffin, no grave marker, onlya warning.
(08:01):
And after the rope tightened andthe crowd turned home, the panic
didn't fade.
It had only just begun.
We know the first name, AlceYoung.
She was a wife and mother fromWindsor, Connecticut, a quiet
farming town along the river.
(08:22):
In 1647, Alice became the firstperson executed for witchcraft
in what would become the UnitedStates.
She was hanged.
There's no surviving record ofher trial transcript, no
detailed list of evidence, justa chilling line in a journal
kept by John Winthrop Jr.,governor of the Massachusetts
(08:43):
Bay Colony.
Alice Young was hanged.
She left behind a youngdaughter, Alice Young Beeman,
who, remarkably, would later beaccused of witchcraft herself in
Springfield, Massachusettsduring the Salem Hysteria
decades later.
But Alice wasn't alone.
(09:05):
By 1663, the Hartford WitchPanic had reached its fever
pitch.
Between 1662 and 1663, at leastseven women were formally
accused of witchcraft in theregion.
Several were executed, Othersdied in jail.
Among the most well-known wasMary Johnson, a servant from
(09:28):
Wethersfield.
She was arrested in 1648 andinterrogated under duress for
years.
Eventually, she confessed,though how willing that
confession was remainsquestionable.
She said she'd made a pact withthe devil, practiced witchcraft,
and even unclean acts withSatan.
(09:50):
These were familiar tropes bythis point.
Cultural scripts people began tointernalize under intense
pressure.
Mary was executed in 1650,likely by hanging.
She had been pregnant whileimprisoned.
Her child was born just monthsbefore her death.
(10:10):
Then there were Nathaniel andRebecca Greensmith, a married
couple from Hartford.
Rebecca was known to be bold,outspoken.
and perhaps not particularlywell-liked.
But in 1662, she was accused bya young girl named Anne Cole,
who had fallen ill and claimedto be tormented by specters,
(10:32):
including Rebecca's.
Under questioning, Rebeccaconfessed to dancing with the
devil and consorting with otherwitches.
Her husband Nathaniel was lesscooperative, but he was found
guilty anyway.
Both were hanged together onJanuary 25th, 1663.
(10:54):
Other accused women during theHartford Panic include Elizabeth
Seeger, who was eventuallyacquitted, Goody Ayers, who
fled, and Mary Sanford, who wasalso likely hanged.
Unfortunately, the exact numberof those executed is debated.
Some records were lost.
Others were never written.
(11:15):
but scholars estimate thatbetween four and six people were
hanged in Hartford forwitchcraft during this period.
The most common method ofexecution in colonial New
England was hanging, notburning.
That's a European image, not anAmerican one.
Victims were often hanged fromtrees or makeshift gallows,
(11:35):
typically in public spaces.
Their deaths were meant to serveas warnings.
And unlike Salem, where records,trial documents, and even names
have been preserved, much ofHartford's witch panic was
swallowed by silence.
The accused were buried inunmarked graves.
Their names were left out ofchurch histories.
(11:58):
And over time, the memory oftheir deaths faded from the
town's conscience.
But if we listen carefully, wecan still hear what fear did to
them, and what it nearly erased.
To understand why theaccusations took hold, why
neighbors turned on each otherand people confessed to
(12:19):
impossible things, you have tounderstand what the Puritans
believed.
To them, witchcraft wasn'tmetaphor or myth.
It was as real as the plague, asreal as the forest outside their
doors.
They believed that the devilwalked among them, not as a
beast, but as a whisper, as atemptation.
(12:42):
as a presence behind your eyeswhen you spoke ill of your
neighbor or wished misfortune inyour heart.
And they believed that certainpeople could align themselves
with them.
Witches, they said, were notmerely evil.
They were chosen.
Chosen to carry out Satan's willon earth.
(13:03):
Chosen to poison children, spoilcrops, and make cows run dry.
to curse marriages, to bringdown entire households with
nothing more than a mutteredword.
They also believed in spectralevidence.
This meant that a person couldbe found guilty of witchcraft
based on, not physical proof,but on visions, dreams,
(13:27):
hallucinations, or the testimonyof someone who claimed to have
seen a spirit that looked likethe accused.
If a woman appeared in yourdream whispered in your ear or
sat on your chest while youslept, that was evidence.
If a sick child cried outsomeone's name in the middle of
a fever, that was evidence.
(13:49):
If a witness claimed they sawyour specter walking through the
woods when your body was athome, well, that was enough.
Witchcraft was often tied tosickness and death, especially
among infants and youngchildren.
A child born sickly could beseen as a sign that the mother
had sinned, or that a witch hadcursed the womb.
(14:11):
Stillbirths were explained notby disease or poor nutrition,
but by hexes.
A cow's sudden death wasn'tnatural.
It was the work of an invisiblehand.
Milk that turned sour overnightwas a sign.
In many towns, if two or threeunexplained deaths occurred in
(14:32):
close succession, a witch huntwas all but guaranteed.
They even looked for witchmarks, small moles, skin tags,
or birthmarks believed to beteats for feeding demons.
Midwives were often examined,stripped, and inspected for
these marks.
So were elderly women, evenchildren.
(14:56):
Pain, shame, Dignity?
None of that mattered when thesoul of a town was at stake.
And still, belief wasn't theonly fuel.
There was also power.
Accusations could be weaponized,used to settle land disputes, to
punish outspoken women, totarget those who didn't conform.
(15:20):
And once accused, there waslittle you could do to save
yourself, except confess.
and name someone else.
And so the fire spread, not justacross towns, but inside homes,
turning neighbor againstneighbor, family against family.
Because what they feared wasn'tjust the devil outside, it was
(15:44):
the possibility that he wasalready inside someone you
loved.
Not all fear lived in thecourtroom.
Some of it lived in the cornersof homes, under the
hearthstones, behind chimneys,or buried beneath the barn.
Because even as the Puritansclung to scripture, many still
(16:06):
held on to older beliefs.
Rituals passed down from Englandand whispered across
generations.
Folk magic, protective charms,ways to keep evil out when
prayers didn't feel like enough.
One of the most commonprotective practices was the use
of witch bottles.
(16:27):
These were small glass orceramic containers filled with a
mixture of pins or nails, hairor fingernail clippings, pieces
of fabric, and even urine.
The idea was that if a witchsent a curse your way, the
bottle would trap it.
The sharp objects inside wouldimpale the spirit, And if you
(16:49):
buried the bottle beneath yourthreshold or fireplace, the evil
couldn't enter your home.
Hundreds of these bottles havebeen found across New England
and the UK.
Still buried.
Still intact.
Some as recently as the 2000s.
Other homes used iron nails,horseshoes or daggers, hidden
(17:12):
inside walls or nailed abovedoor frames.
Iron was believed to repel darkspirits.
especially if it was old orforged by hand.
You might also find shoes,especially children's shoes,
concealed inside walls.
They were believed to absorb badluck or disease, decoys for
(17:33):
curses.
And in some homes, especiallythose near the woods, you'd find
marks carved into wood, symbolsmeant to confuse spirits or ward
off witches.
Circles, crosses, InterlockingVs thought to stand for Virgo
Virginum or the Virgin Mary.
(17:55):
Even those who would never callit magic still practiced these
rituals.
They were, after all, a form ofhome security.
They didn't challenge thechurch.
They didn't name the devil.
They just helped or seemed to.
Because if a child fell sick andyou had no protection buried
(18:17):
underneath your hearth, whatwould your neighbors think?
And if your barn caught fire andyou had no marks on your doors,
what would you think?
Sometimes the only differencebetween being accused of
witchcraft and protectingyourself from it was whether or
not someone was watching.
(18:42):
When most people hear Americanwitch trials, they think Salem.
They picture 1692, the gallows,the accusations, the hysteria.
But the truth is, Salem didn'tstart the fire.
It just made it impossible toignore.
By the time those trials began,Connecticut had already executed
(19:05):
at least 11 people forwitchcraft.
And unlike Salem, it wasn't asingle year of panic.
It spanned more than 15 yearsacross multiple towns.
So why don't we remember?
Part of it is the record.
Much of what happened inHartford was poorly documented
(19:27):
or never recorded at all.
Court notes were sparse.
Confessions were rarely writtendown.
And some trials were held insecret to avoid scandal or
public unrest.
Unlike Salem, where the trialswere a media spectacle even in
their own time, Connecticut'spanic was quiet, local, and
(19:50):
politically inconvenient.
But it wasn't just lost.
It was buried.
In the decades that followed,Connecticut's leaders sought to
distance themselves from the eraof suspicion.
They embraced Enlightenmentthinking, scientific progress,
in religious moderation.
(20:13):
In the witch trials, they becamean embarrassment.
Even churches stopped mentioningthem.
Histories written in the 1700sand 1800s left out the names of
the condemned entirely.
In public memory, the gallowsvanished.
Alice Young's name was nearlyerased.
(20:33):
For centuries, she was just aline in a diary.
Alice Young was hanged.
No grave, No memorial, noapology.
It wasn't until 2006, over 350years later, that efforts began
to formally exonerate her andothers who died in Connecticut's
(20:56):
witch panic.
And even then, it took years ofadvocacy before Connecticut's
General Assembly officiallyacknowledged the injustice.
Not until 2023, just two yearsago, did the state formally
exonerate all of the knownvictims, including Alice Young,
(21:16):
Mary Johnson, Joan Carrington,and others.
After nearly four centuries,they were finally believed.
The Hartford Witch Panic mayhave vanished from the history
books for centuries.
but its shadow never fully left.
(21:39):
It lingered in New Englandfolklore, in whispered stories
passed down in families, inchurchyards where no markers
stood.
And slowly, piece by piece, itbegan to return.
In Hartford's ancient buryingground, there's no monument to
Alice Young, no stone carvedwith her name.
(22:03):
But researchers and historianshave worked to document her life
and her death.
Genealogists traced herdescendants.
Advocates petitioned the statefor recognition.
And artists, writers, andeducators began to reclaim her
story.
Books, podcasts, historicalfiction, and local tours have
(22:26):
begun to give voice to the womenand men who are silenced.
In 2023, after years of pressurefrom descendants and historians,
the Connecticut statelegislature passed a formal
resolution.
It exonerated all known victimsof the Connecticut witch trials,
(22:47):
acknowledging that they had beenwrongfully executed or
imprisoned, and that no evidencehad ever justified the charges
against them.
It was late, but it was real.
And in a country that so oftenforgets its darker corners, that
act of remembrance mattered.
(23:08):
But the legacy of the witchpanic isn't just found in
plaques and politics.
It lives in the way we tellstories, in how we treat
outsiders, in the fear we stillcarry of women who are too bold,
too strange, too alone.
The same dynamics that fueledHartford's panic in 1647, grief,
(23:33):
suspicion, control, still shapethe way that we respond to
uncertainty today.
It's easier to blame a personthan a system, and it's easier
to burn a body than to face afear we can't name.
What happened in Hartford wasn'ta spectacle.
(23:56):
It wasn't a trial by fire likethe ones we so often hear about
in Salem.
It was quieter.
But maybe that's what makes itworse.
Because when fear takes root insilence, when accusations spread
without torches, without mobs,it becomes something else
entirely.
(24:16):
It becomes normalized,acceptable, hidden in plain
sight.
The Hartford Witch Panic didn'tignite the nation.
It didn't go down in historybooks.
But it should have.
Because it was first.
The first executions forwitchcraft on what would be
(24:38):
American soil.
The first time a town turned onitself in the name of invisible
evil.
And it set the stage for whatwould come later.
We don't know the full storiesof every woman accused.
We don't know how many familieswere torn apart, how many
children were left behind, howmany apologies came too late, if
(25:03):
they ever came at all.
But we do know this.
These were not monsters.
They were mothers, midwives,neighbors, ordinary women caught
in an extraordinary storm ofgrief, fear, and belief.
And we owe them more thansilence.
(25:23):
Their names may be hard to find.
Their graves may be unmarked.
But the fear that surroundedthem?
That's easy to recognize.
Because it's still with us.
We still search for someone toblame when life stops making
sense.
Still demonize the different.
Still use fear to explain theunexplainable.
(25:46):
And maybe that's why storieslike this still matter.
because they remind us howfragile justice is when it's
twisted by belief, and howquickly a neighbor can become a
threat when you're afraid ofwhat you can't see.
This is State of the Unknown.
Every other week, we travel toanother corner of America,
(26:10):
mapping the haunted highways,hidden legends, and unnatural
stories buried just beneath thesurface.
If you're enjoying the show,take a second to follow, rate,
and share it with someone wholoves The Strange as much as you
do.
It helps more than you think,especially in these early weeks.
And it helps these stories reachpeople who may never have heard
(26:32):
of them.
The Hartford Witch Panic isn'tjust history.
It's a reminder that feardoesn't always arrive in flames.
Sometimes, it slips in throughthe cracks, quietly,
methodically until the peopleyou know aren't safe to know
anymore.
They said the devil could slip through walls.
That he wore the faces ofneighbors.
That he could whisper into yourdreams and steal your breath
before morning.
They said a woman could killwith a glance.
Spoil milk.
Sour a newborn.
Call down fever like rain.
(00:25):
They didn't need proof.
Only silence.
A shadow.
A name said too many times inthe wrong kind of voice.
In the spring of 1647, a womanwas led to the gallows in
Hartford, Connecticut.
Her name was Alce Young.
She had no defense, no jury, nosurviving trial record, just the
(00:50):
noose and a new precedent.
Because what happened inHartford didn't end there.
It spread.
across decades, across counties,across families.
Long before Salem, long beforethe world was watching, the
first witch was already dead.
(01:13):
This wasn't Salem.
This wasn't a cautionary talefrom Europe.
This was Hartford, Connecticut,a Puritan settlement still
carving itself out of thewilderness.
And in the mid-1600s, fear movedfaster.
than fact.
Witchcraft wasn't a rumor.
It was an explanation.
(01:35):
And for more than a decade, itwas law.
Long before the infamous trialsin Massachusetts, people were
being accused, tortured, andexecuted in Connecticut.
And when they died, historylooked away.
But their stories never reallydisappeared.
They just sank beneath thesurface, waiting.
(02:13):
I'm your host, Robert Barber,and today we're going back
further than Salem to a timewhen witches were real, the
devil lived next door, andsuspicion could get you hanged.
This is the story of America'sfirst witch panic, the one
history tried to forget.
(02:33):
This is State of the Unknown.
In the mid-1600s, Hartford,Connecticut was still more
wilderness than town.
(02:54):
It had only recently beensettled by a group of English
Puritans, strict Calvinists whohad fled Europe to create a
religious community in the NewWorld.
They came with bibles, plows,and fear.
Fear of the forest, fear of theunknown, and fear of the devil
himself.
(03:15):
Hartford was bordered by densewoods, where trees grew close
and light seldom reached theforest floor.
To the colonists, these woodsweren't just wild.
They were spiritually dangerous.
They believed Satan lived inuntamed places, just beyond the
reach of their cleared land andcleared consciences.
(03:38):
Their homes were timber-framed,simple and dark, huddled close
against the cold.
Chimneys smoked with green woodand the smell of damp stone.
Inside, light came from candlesand hearths.
But it didn't chase away theshadows.
Because the greatest danger,they believed, wasn't in what
(03:59):
they could see.
It was in what they couldn't.
In this world, superstitionwasn't a fringe belief.
It was woven into daily life.
If your child had died of asudden fever, if your cow
stopped producing milk, if breadspoiled too fast or your field
(04:21):
failed, there was a reason.
And if no earthly cause could befound, there had to be an
unearthly one, a hex, a curse,or even the devil's touch.
And behind all of it, theybelieved, was the witch.
(04:41):
Witches weren't just women whopracticed folk healing or
midwifery.
In Puritan theology, a witch wassomeone who had made a
deliberate pact with the devil,trading their soul for power.
They could fly, speak intongues, send spirits to torment
neighbors or kill livestock.
(05:03):
It wasn't just folklore.
It was a theological certaintybacked by scripture.
Exodus 22, 18, thou shalt notsuffer a witch to live.
It was more than a line in theBible.
It was policy.
So when things went wrong inearly Hartford, when children
(05:25):
got sick, when women miscarried,when dreams turned disturbing,
the question wasn't if the devilwas involved.
It was who he was workingthrough.
And once suspicion took root,the fire would spread.
Her name was Alce Young, spelledA-L-S-E in the colonial records,
(05:54):
possibly short for Alice.
She lived in Windsor,Connecticut, just north of
Hartford.
And on May 26, 1647, she becamethe first person known to be
executed for witchcraft incolonial America.
We don't know what she lookedlike.
There are no survivingportraits, no letters, no
(06:17):
confession.
Only this, written in the diaryof a Massachusetts clergyman.
Alce Young was hanged.
No reason given, no trialtranscript, No defense record.
We do know this.
She was likely in her 30s orearly 40s.
(06:37):
She was married to a man namedJohn Young, a man of modest
standing in the Windsorcommunity.
And she may have had onedaughter, Alice, who was later
also accused of witchcraft,years after her mother's death.
But beyond that, silence.
No surviving charges.
There were no witnesses listed.
(06:59):
and no court decision, just arope.
And the shadow had cast.
Historians believe that Alce mayhave been swept up in a larger
wave of fear because in themonths leading up to her
execution, Connecticut wasexperiencing a deadly outbreak.
A flu-like epidemic had killednumerous residents, including
(07:21):
the daughter of Governor JohnHaynes.
As was often the case in Puritancommunities, Unexplained illness
and death demanded a scapegoat.
And if the devil was to blame,then someone must have opened
the door.
That someone, they decided, wasAlice Young.
(07:41):
She was taken to Gallows Hill,just outside Hartford's town
center, likely on foot,surrounded by a crowd.
There were no formalexecutioners in the colonies
then.
Her death would have beenhandled by the town itself.
No coffin, no grave marker, onlya warning.
(08:01):
And after the rope tightened andthe crowd turned home, the panic
didn't fade.
It had only just begun.
We know the first name, AlceYoung.
She was a wife and mother fromWindsor, Connecticut, a quiet
farming town along the river.
(08:22):
In 1647, Alice became the firstperson executed for witchcraft
in what would become the UnitedStates.
She was hanged.
There's no surviving record ofher trial transcript, no
detailed list of evidence, justa chilling line in a journal
kept by John Winthrop Jr.,governor of the Massachusetts
(08:43):
Bay Colony.
Alice Young was hanged.
She left behind a youngdaughter, Alice Young Beeman,
who, remarkably, would later beaccused of witchcraft herself in
Springfield, Massachusettsduring the Salem Hysteria
decades later.
But Alice wasn't alone.
(09:05):
By 1663, the Hartford WitchPanic had reached its fever
pitch.
Between 1662 and 1663, at leastseven women were formally
accused of witchcraft in theregion.
Several were executed, Othersdied in jail.
Among the most well-known wasMary Johnson, a servant from
(09:28):
Wethersfield.
She was arrested in 1648 andinterrogated under duress for
years.
Eventually, she confessed,though how willing that
confession was remainsquestionable.
She said she'd made a pact withthe devil, practiced witchcraft,
and even unclean acts withSatan.
(09:50):
These were familiar tropes bythis point.
Cultural scripts people began tointernalize under intense
pressure.
Mary was executed in 1650,likely by hanging.
She had been pregnant whileimprisoned.
Her child was born just monthsbefore her death.
(10:10):
Then there were Nathaniel andRebecca Greensmith, a married
couple from Hartford.
Rebecca was known to be bold,outspoken.
and perhaps not particularlywell-liked.
But in 1662, she was accused bya young girl named Anne Cole,
who had fallen ill and claimedto be tormented by specters,
(10:32):
including Rebecca's.
Under questioning, Rebeccaconfessed to dancing with the
devil and consorting with otherwitches.
Her husband Nathaniel was lesscooperative, but he was found
guilty anyway.
Both were hanged together onJanuary 25th, 1663.
(10:54):
Other accused women during theHartford Panic include Elizabeth
Seeger, who was eventuallyacquitted, Goody Ayers, who
fled, and Mary Sanford, who wasalso likely hanged.
Unfortunately, the exact numberof those executed is debated.
Some records were lost.
Others were never written.
(11:15):
but scholars estimate thatbetween four and six people were
hanged in Hartford forwitchcraft during this period.
The most common method ofexecution in colonial New
England was hanging, notburning.
That's a European image, not anAmerican one.
Victims were often hanged fromtrees or makeshift gallows,
(11:35):
typically in public spaces.
Their deaths were meant to serveas warnings.
And unlike Salem, where records,trial documents, and even names
have been preserved, much ofHartford's witch panic was
swallowed by silence.
The accused were buried inunmarked graves.
Their names were left out ofchurch histories.
(11:58):
And over time, the memory oftheir deaths faded from the
town's conscience.
But if we listen carefully, wecan still hear what fear did to
them, and what it nearly erased.
To understand why theaccusations took hold, why
neighbors turned on each otherand people confessed to
(12:19):
impossible things, you have tounderstand what the Puritans
believed.
To them, witchcraft wasn'tmetaphor or myth.
It was as real as the plague, asreal as the forest outside their
doors.
They believed that the devilwalked among them, not as a
beast, but as a whisper, as atemptation.
(12:42):
as a presence behind your eyeswhen you spoke ill of your
neighbor or wished misfortune inyour heart.
And they believed that certainpeople could align themselves
with them.
Witches, they said, were notmerely evil.
They were chosen.
Chosen to carry out Satan's willon earth.
(13:03):
Chosen to poison children, spoilcrops, and make cows run dry.
to curse marriages, to bringdown entire households with
nothing more than a mutteredword.
They also believed in spectralevidence.
This meant that a person couldbe found guilty of witchcraft
based on, not physical proof,but on visions, dreams,
(13:27):
hallucinations, or the testimonyof someone who claimed to have
seen a spirit that looked likethe accused.
If a woman appeared in yourdream whispered in your ear or
sat on your chest while youslept, that was evidence.
If a sick child cried outsomeone's name in the middle of
a fever, that was evidence.
(13:49):
If a witness claimed they sawyour specter walking through the
woods when your body was athome, well, that was enough.
Witchcraft was often tied tosickness and death, especially
among infants and youngchildren.
A child born sickly could beseen as a sign that the mother
had sinned, or that a witch hadcursed the womb.
(14:11):
Stillbirths were explained notby disease or poor nutrition,
but by hexes.
A cow's sudden death wasn'tnatural.
It was the work of an invisiblehand.
Milk that turned sour overnightwas a sign.
In many towns, if two or threeunexplained deaths occurred in
(14:32):
close succession, a witch huntwas all but guaranteed.
They even looked for witchmarks, small moles, skin tags,
or birthmarks believed to beteats for feeding demons.
Midwives were often examined,stripped, and inspected for
these marks.
So were elderly women, evenchildren.
(14:56):
Pain, shame, Dignity?
None of that mattered when thesoul of a town was at stake.
And still, belief wasn't theonly fuel.
There was also power.
Accusations could be weaponized,used to settle land disputes, to
punish outspoken women, totarget those who didn't conform.
(15:20):
And once accused, there waslittle you could do to save
yourself, except confess.
and name someone else.
And so the fire spread, not justacross towns, but inside homes,
turning neighbor againstneighbor, family against family.
Because what they feared wasn'tjust the devil outside, it was
(15:44):
the possibility that he wasalready inside someone you
loved.
Not all fear lived in thecourtroom.
Some of it lived in the cornersof homes, under the
hearthstones, behind chimneys,or buried beneath the barn.
Because even as the Puritansclung to scripture, many still
(16:06):
held on to older beliefs.
Rituals passed down from Englandand whispered across
generations.
Folk magic, protective charms,ways to keep evil out when
prayers didn't feel like enough.
One of the most commonprotective practices was the use
of witch bottles.
(16:27):
These were small glass orceramic containers filled with a
mixture of pins or nails, hairor fingernail clippings, pieces
of fabric, and even urine.
The idea was that if a witchsent a curse your way, the
bottle would trap it.
The sharp objects inside wouldimpale the spirit, And if you
(16:49):
buried the bottle beneath yourthreshold or fireplace, the evil
couldn't enter your home.
Hundreds of these bottles havebeen found across New England
and the UK.
Still buried.
Still intact.
Some as recently as the 2000s.
Other homes used iron nails,horseshoes or daggers, hidden
(17:12):
inside walls or nailed abovedoor frames.
Iron was believed to repel darkspirits.
especially if it was old orforged by hand.
You might also find shoes,especially children's shoes,
concealed inside walls.
They were believed to absorb badluck or disease, decoys for
(17:33):
curses.
And in some homes, especiallythose near the woods, you'd find
marks carved into wood, symbolsmeant to confuse spirits or ward
off witches.
Circles, crosses, InterlockingVs thought to stand for Virgo
Virginum or the Virgin Mary.
(17:55):
Even those who would never callit magic still practiced these
rituals.
They were, after all, a form ofhome security.
They didn't challenge thechurch.
They didn't name the devil.
They just helped or seemed to.
Because if a child fell sick andyou had no protection buried
(18:17):
underneath your hearth, whatwould your neighbors think?
And if your barn caught fire andyou had no marks on your doors,
what would you think?
Sometimes the only differencebetween being accused of
witchcraft and protectingyourself from it was whether or
not someone was watching.
(18:42):
When most people hear Americanwitch trials, they think Salem.
They picture 1692, the gallows,the accusations, the hysteria.
But the truth is, Salem didn'tstart the fire.
It just made it impossible toignore.
By the time those trials began,Connecticut had already executed
(19:05):
at least 11 people forwitchcraft.
And unlike Salem, it wasn't asingle year of panic.
It spanned more than 15 yearsacross multiple towns.
So why don't we remember?
Part of it is the record.
Much of what happened inHartford was poorly documented
(19:27):
or never recorded at all.
Court notes were sparse.
Confessions were rarely writtendown.
And some trials were held insecret to avoid scandal or
public unrest.
Unlike Salem, where the trialswere a media spectacle even in
their own time, Connecticut'spanic was quiet, local, and
(19:50):
politically inconvenient.
But it wasn't just lost.
It was buried.
In the decades that followed,Connecticut's leaders sought to
distance themselves from the eraof suspicion.
They embraced Enlightenmentthinking, scientific progress,
in religious moderation.
(20:13):
In the witch trials, they becamean embarrassment.
Even churches stopped mentioningthem.
Histories written in the 1700sand 1800s left out the names of
the condemned entirely.
In public memory, the gallowsvanished.
Alice Young's name was nearlyerased.
(20:33):
For centuries, she was just aline in a diary.
Alice Young was hanged.
No grave, No memorial, noapology.
It wasn't until 2006, over 350years later, that efforts began
to formally exonerate her andothers who died in Connecticut's
(20:56):
witch panic.
And even then, it took years ofadvocacy before Connecticut's
General Assembly officiallyacknowledged the injustice.
Not until 2023, just two yearsago, did the state formally
exonerate all of the knownvictims, including Alice Young,
(21:16):
Mary Johnson, Joan Carrington,and others.
After nearly four centuries,they were finally believed.
The Hartford Witch Panic mayhave vanished from the history
books for centuries.
but its shadow never fully left.
(21:39):
It lingered in New Englandfolklore, in whispered stories
passed down in families, inchurchyards where no markers
stood.
And slowly, piece by piece, itbegan to return.
In Hartford's ancient buryingground, there's no monument to
Alice Young, no stone carvedwith her name.
(22:03):
But researchers and historianshave worked to document her life
and her death.
Genealogists traced herdescendants.
Advocates petitioned the statefor recognition.
And artists, writers, andeducators began to reclaim her
story.
Books, podcasts, historicalfiction, and local tours have
(22:26):
begun to give voice to the womenand men who are silenced.
In 2023, after years of pressurefrom descendants and historians,
the Connecticut statelegislature passed a formal
resolution.
It exonerated all known victimsof the Connecticut witch trials,
(22:47):
acknowledging that they had beenwrongfully executed or
imprisoned, and that no evidencehad ever justified the charges
against them.
It was late, but it was real.
And in a country that so oftenforgets its darker corners, that
act of remembrance mattered.
(23:08):
But the legacy of the witchpanic isn't just found in
plaques and politics.
It lives in the way we tellstories, in how we treat
outsiders, in the fear we stillcarry of women who are too bold,
too strange, too alone.
The same dynamics that fueledHartford's panic in 1647, grief,
(23:33):
suspicion, control, still shapethe way that we respond to
uncertainty today.
It's easier to blame a personthan a system, and it's easier
to burn a body than to face afear we can't name.
What happened in Hartford wasn'ta spectacle.
(23:56):
It wasn't a trial by fire likethe ones we so often hear about
in Salem.
It was quieter.
But maybe that's what makes itworse.
Because when fear takes root insilence, when accusations spread
without torches, without mobs,it becomes something else
entirely.
(24:16):
It becomes normalized,acceptable, hidden in plain
sight.
The Hartford Witch Panic didn'tignite the nation.
It didn't go down in historybooks.
But it should have.
Because it was first.
The first executions forwitchcraft on what would be
(24:38):
American soil.
The first time a town turned onitself in the name of invisible
evil.
And it set the stage for whatwould come later.
We don't know the full storiesof every woman accused.
We don't know how many familieswere torn apart, how many
children were left behind, howmany apologies came too late, if
(25:03):
they ever came at all.
But we do know this.
These were not monsters.
They were mothers, midwives,neighbors, ordinary women caught
in an extraordinary storm ofgrief, fear, and belief.
And we owe them more thansilence.
(25:23):
Their names may be hard to find.
Their graves may be unmarked.
But the fear that surroundedthem?
That's easy to recognize.
Because it's still with us.
We still search for someone toblame when life stops making
sense.
Still demonize the different.
Still use fear to explain theunexplainable.
(25:46):
And maybe that's why storieslike this still matter.
because they remind us howfragile justice is when it's
twisted by belief, and howquickly a neighbor can become a
threat when you're afraid ofwhat you can't see.
This is State of the Unknown.
Every other week, we travel toanother corner of America,
(26:10):
mapping the haunted highways,hidden legends, and unnatural
stories buried just beneath thesurface.
If you're enjoying the show,take a second to follow, rate,
and share it with someone wholoves The Strange as much as you
do.
It helps more than you think,especially in these early weeks.
And it helps these stories reachpeople who may never have heard
(26:32):
of them.
The Hartford Witch Panic isn'tjust history.
It's a reminder that feardoesn't always arrive in flames.
Sometimes, it slips in throughthe cracks, quietly,
methodically until the peopleyou know aren't safe to know
anymore.
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