Grace Sherwood: The Witch of Pungo with Scott O. Moore

Fresh from the release of his book The Witch of Pungo: Grace Sherwood in Virginia, historian Scott O. Moore joins us to uncover the true story behind colonial Virginia's only witch trial. In 1706, Grace Sherwood faced an unusual trial by water—but what really happened, and why does it still captivate us today? Moore examines both the legend and reality of Grace Sherwood, showing how local tensions transformed neighborhood conflict into a witch trial.

Learn how this singular case differed from the infamous Salem trials, and why Virginia Beach continues to grapple with Sherwood's legacy three centuries later.

From ducking stools to modern-day memorials, this episode challenges what we think we know about witch trials in America, revealing how historical memory shapes—and sometimes distorts—our understanding of the past and present.

Purchase the book The Witch of Pungo: Grace Sherwood in Virginia

Eastern history professor publishes book on legendary Virginia ‘witch’

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Connecticut Witch Trial Exoneration Project

Massachusetts Witch-Hunt Justice Project

Maryland Witches Exoneration Project 
Purchase the book The Witch of Pungo: Grace Sherwood In Virginia

Author's Corner with Scott O. Moore
Witch Hunt Website

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to Witch Hunt, the podcast where for the last two
years we've explored the historyof witch trials and their impact
on society. I'm Josh Hutchinson.
I'm Sarah Jack. The first full episode of this
podcast premiered October 6th, 2022 with a look at the history
of the Connecticut Witch Trials.Since that premiere, we have

(00:21):
done more than 100 episodes on the history of witch trials
around the world and how witch hunting has continued in the
21st century. From our beginnings in New
England, today we are venturing to the southern US to uncover a
fascinating chapter in colonial American history.
We're digging into the story of Grace Sherwood, known as the

(00:42):
Witch of Pungo, who faced accusations of witchcraft in
early 18th century Virginia. Taking place 13 years after the
end of the Salem Witch Trials, this is a tale that challenges
much of what we think we know about witch trials in America,
from the legal proceedings to the long lasting cultural
impact. To help us unravel this

(01:04):
intriguing story, we're joined by historian Scott O Moore, who
has extensively researched GraceSherwood's case and its
significance in Virginia's history and written this book,
The Witch of Pungo, available now from your local booksellers.
Or bookshop.org/end Witch House.Scott's insights will take us on

(01:27):
a journey from colonial courtrooms to modern day
memorials, showing how one woman's story has shaped a
community's identity for centuries.
We'll explore the economic and social factors behind witchcraft
accusations, the practice of ducking people accused of
witchcraft, and how historical memory can sometimes diverge
from historical. Fact.

(01:48):
Here's our conversation with Scott Omoore.
Welcome to Wichita. Scott Moore, it's great to have
you today. Can you tell us about your work
and interests? Sure.
I'll start with the big picture,and then I'll narrow down to
what brought me here today. If you were to look at the
broader scope of my work as a historian, I am more interested

(02:11):
in what you could call historical memory more than
history itself. In other words, how do
communities remember their past?How does that remembrance of
their past shape the way they think about themselves?
They think about other people, the way they think about the
world around them. And having grown up in Virginia
Beach, VA, where the story takesplace, I was obviously very

(02:34):
exposed to all of the the legacyof Gray Sherwood, the so-called
witch at Hongo. And you can't be a historian
thinking about other people's history and not have it bleed
into your own life. And as I looked around, I was
thinking it would be a really interesting project to explore
the impact of this singular witch trial and the singular

(02:57):
accused witch on Virginia history.
In order to tell that story, I also then had to, of course,
explore the actual history. And so if you were to look at
the book, what it essentially does was break the story into
three pieces. The first part is the actual
history of what we could brave happened.
But then also I look at the way legends and stories and told

(03:18):
about this trial and this accused which Gray Sherwood.
And then I also look at the verylong term cultural impact, the
way that that culturally this has influenced the way this
urgent thinks about itself, thinks about its past and tells
its story. And so it's been a really
rewarding experience to get to, to unpack that story.
It's also been a sort of bedeviling story because as I'm

(03:42):
sure we'll get into, there is somuch missing from the actual
history. And also untangling history and
legend can be challenging at times.
But I think it's still an important story to tell.
And it's been an interesting story, been an interesting
experience for me. It's a really interesting book,
very entertaining and informative, and it's great for

(04:05):
us to get to explore the southern half of the country.
We haven't been really South of New England yet on this podcast,
So what should we know about colonial Virginia to set the
stage? I think the most important
there, there are two things thatI think are important to unpack
and, and as I move into the first one, I think again,

(04:27):
dealing with the historical memory.
If you were to look at starting in the 1800's, the 19th century,
as we began to really write the history of witch trials in North
America, and by that I'm in English speaking North America,
there was this perception that which trials and which belief
was, I'm going to use a paraphrase, a direct quote from

(04:48):
a source at the time was a uniquely Puritan dysfunction.
There's the sense of this only really happened because the
Puritans were in New England andeverybody else was quote UN
quote, more rational. They were less, but, you know,
consumed by these beliefs and this really wasn't true then.
The truth is that it's just all of the records for Captain New

(05:08):
England while other places were sparser and so we have a less
documentary evidence about witchtrials in other places, but that
doesn't mean that they didn't happen.
But I do think and but what I what I this basically gets to is
that everybody that was part of the English speaking North
American world shared approximately the same beliefs,

(05:29):
witches and witchcraft and magic.
The main difference, and this gets to the second part, is that
when once you leave New England,the colonial governments were
more hesitant actually prosecutewitchcraft as a crime.
All of the New England colonies immediately passed witchcraft
statutes when they were founded,and so they had their own laws

(05:50):
that were separate and distinct from the rest of the English
speaking world. And in all of those cases, using
magic, regardless of how, when and what purpose, was
technically a capital offense inNew England.
And this was not the same in Virginia, for example, where
they were bound by the English witchcraft statues, which
treated it as a secular crime, not a religious crime.

(06:11):
So if you're to look at, for example, every, well, arson in
Europe, what witches supposedly did with magic was secondary to
the fact that by the standards of the time, they were
considered heretics. They were devil worshippers.
And so in the rest of Europe, witchcraft was was prosecuted as
a heresy first and foremost, which is why it was a capital
offense. In the case of England, it was

(06:32):
always a secular crime. And so it was prosecuted
depending on what witches supposedly did with their magic.
And this creates a really bizarre world.
And I know for your listeners, this will seem strange where you
could actually be convicted of misdemeanor witchcraft or felony
witchcraft, depending what you did with it.
If you were a fortune teller or if you made love potions or if
you curse someone's crops, that was less punished or punished by

(06:56):
a lesser sentence in England andlet's say being accused of
causing a miscarriage or killing.
So the other thing that I think is unique to Virginia and not
unique to Virginia, but what separates it from New England is
because the governors were less likely to prosecute witchcraft.
You essentially had witch accusations more occurring with

(07:16):
slander suits. Basically someone being called a
witch by their neighbor and thenthem taking that neighbor to
court to reclaim their good nameto try to restore theirs.
And the so we have literally dozens of people who were called
witches by their neighbors, but only a handful of people were
formally prosecuted by the actual government of Virginia

(07:37):
full witchcraft. Thank you so much.
That's so helpful to set the stage for learning about Grace
before we jump into who she actually was.
Would you want to tell us about her and popular lore or who the
witch of Pungo is known to be? Sure.

(07:59):
And so I think the and this willset that stage for both.
I think the historical and legendary Gray Sherwood is that
we the only records we have fromcolonial Virginia at the time
she was tried in the early 1700sare court records.
And those court records, which Iknow we're probably going to dig
into, are very sparse on details.
We know what happened in the trial, but we don't know a lot

(08:20):
of, for example, we have no ideawhat she looked like.
We have no idea how she talked. We have no idea what she said in
her trials. And the the challenge, though,
is because she was prosecuted, part of the evidence used
against her was that she failed a trial by water.
So she was put in water or ducked using the cloaky

(08:41):
language. And because she floated, that
kept the trial moving along. Well, that was a weird event,
tying up a woman and putting herin water to see if she float, to
see if she was a witch. And so there's a region of
Virginia Beach called Witch DuckPoint.
And it has been called some variation, witch duck point, the
witch's duck or witch duck really since at least the 1700s.

(09:04):
And what that did was generate awhole host of the legends and
stories, some of which are very fantastical, that really have
nothing to do with a woman namedGray Sherwood.
And once we found out the witch was Gray Sherwood, then they
added her name to these legends.So they're very fantastical
stories. For example, she sailed in egg
shells to bring back a Rosemary to Virginia that she was able to

(09:25):
cause storms when she was duckedas a way of ducking the crowd
that was watching her. But you also began to see
starting in the 19th century, once knowledge of her case was
uncovered, people essentially filling in an equally legendary
story which is trying to figure out, OK, who was this woman
actually? And in this regard, who Gray
Sherwood was has really changed in popular consciousness with

(09:48):
the times. Starting in the 19th century,
she was this meek, demure woman who was victimized by powerful
men around her. And that very much fit the vogue
of how writers at the time thought about witch trials but
also thought about the idea of the damsel in distress.
By the time you get to the 1950s, local legend tellers
began to make her a little more spirited.

(10:10):
So there's a very famous woman named Louisa Venable Kyle who
wrote a children's book called The Witchapungo, and it contains
a little story about Gray Sherwood.
And according to Louisa Venable Kyle, who literally told this
story off and on for probably 30or 40 years, Gray Sherwood was
this iconoclastic, unconventional woman who was
just out of time and the sense of she she belonged more in the

(10:32):
modern era than in time she was.And so she offended her
neighbors by challenging social norms.
And by the 1970s, she rumor was that she would wear pants
because she found them more comfortable and essentially
better to work in the fields. But the scandalized her
neighbors because they were morefun fitting and long standing.
Legend also argued that she was breathtakingly beautiful.

(10:53):
And so there was this assumptionshe was the seductress going
around southeastern part of thanPrincess County.
This sort of image has stopped, you know, recently, I'd say in
the last 20 years or so, there also began to be this image of
her as a midwife or healer. And so she was a woman who was
good with herbs, a person who tried to take care of her

(11:14):
community and was in tune with nature.
And This is why she ran afoul ofthose in her community.
And this is a very modern phenomenon, yet it's also the
one almost all of your readers are going to encapture.
If they immediately Google Gray Sherwood, everything that pops
up is going to say she was persecuted as a midwifer healer.
And yet this image is actually less than 25 years old.

(11:35):
And there really is no evidence of any of those perceptions.
And in fact, I think it's interesting if you look, by the
time you get to around 2000, if you were to go to public
consciousness or popular consciousness of what made women
Boulder, boulder accused of witchcraft, by 2000, you did
have this image of essentially new age women who were ahead of

(11:56):
their time. And in this sense, the stories
of Gray Sherwood almost went national.
They essentially began adopting broader characteristics that
were ascribed generically, witches in general.
But that's the legendary Gray Sherwood.
And then I'm sure you'll have questions about the woman we
actually can figure out based onrecords. 1st I want to say that

(12:17):
having a witch be beautiful strikes me as little unusual.
That's not the stereotype that is in my head.
Oh yeah, it's, it's really, I think one of the more unique
pieces of the puzzle because if you look at all of the legends I
just went through, a lot of themhave antecedents and other witch

(12:38):
tales from other places. You even have witches sailing in
egg shells and other traditions.And the fact that she was
beautiful, as I pick an interesting, very local spin.
And it's also, I think, interestingly, one of the oldest
pieces of legend about her. We have records going back to
the early 20th century, late 19th century that described her

(12:58):
as shockingly beautiful, but in one of the early sources and
said that it disturbed the serenity of her community, how
beautiful she was. And that is sort of stuck.
But you're right, it runs very much against the grain of what
we normally assume which is to be and who was the actual grace.
Sherwood. Right.

(13:19):
So from what we can tell, and again, we're basing our
knowledge on very scant surviving evidence.
And I want to apologize for the fact you're going to hear a lot
of from what we can tell or you could assume, and I know even
just telling the story. And when I give talks and speak
with people, I know one of the things that often people are

(13:39):
frustrated by is they want more than me.
They want more truth. And the problem is there is not
a lot that we can find, but we do know based on court records,
land deeds and things like that,that Gray Sherwood was the
daughter of a relatively successful mid tier planter.
Her father owned 195 acres of land, which was by no means

(14:01):
extravagant, but it made him comfortable.
It made him respectable. More importantly, he was also a
Carpenter, which was a very rareskill in Virginia by the middle
of the 1600s. There really wasn't a strong
manufacturing sector in Virginiaearly on and by all accounts,
based on where he shows up in people's wills, the way that he

(14:23):
interacted with the community, he was very well respected.
I mean no slander to Gray Sherwood's husband James, but if
you judge their marriage purely on socio economic conditions,
her husband James Sherwood was aless prosperous person that her
father. He couldn't read, he didn't have
a trade, he didn't have the land.
And what that meant is when theygot married and her father died

(14:45):
literally a year later, the onlything they've had to root them
in the community is what her father provided her and what we
can tell us that their economic condition began to deteriorate.
We know, for example, James Sherwood Brace's husband was
sued several times for not paying back debts they were
forced to sell off land as neighbors.
These things aren't exceptional,but what is unique is that he is

(15:08):
never lending money to anyone and he is never buying land.
In other words, we only ever seehim interacting with the court
in a vulnerable economic position.
And we do know, if you were to compare the broad history of
witch trials in both Europe and North America, we do know that
people who experience declining economic fortunes are more
likely to be targeted as witchesby their community.

(15:31):
And there's lots of reasons if you all want to get into them
can do that. Around the time her husband
starts, she also ends up in court with her husband suing to
defend her reputation. In 1698, she is involved in
three lawsuits related to slander.
The first, we don't know exactlywhat the slander was.
It just says she's suing a neighbor, Richard Capps, for an

(15:53):
definition. Two other cases that occur later
that year are explicitly relatedto witchcraft.
She and her husband sue 2 sets of neighbors, John and Jane
Gisborne and Anthony and Elizabeth Barnes, both of whom
had apparently told neighbors that she was a witch.
These are really the only allegations where we have
specific sort of tantalizing details about what people

(16:14):
thought Gray Sherwood could do with magic.
For example, they sued John and Jane Gisborne because they were
contesting an allegation that Gray Sherwood had first and
bewitched their cotton and theirpigs.
So basically they were telling neighbors that she had killed
some cotton crops and that she had killed some of their pigs.
The Elizabeth Barnes allegation is always a little more exciting

(16:36):
because she was apparently telling people that Brie
Sherwood came to her at night, rode her like a horse, and then
turned into a cat and disappeared out the door.
Your listeners are listening regularly.
They'll know these are actually really generic allegations of
witchcraft. They are very much out of the
stock of what Europeans believedthat witches would do to people

(16:59):
they were tormenting. So there's nothing exceptional
in and of of those allegations. It's notable that Gray Sherwood,
even though they brought 9 witnesses to allege they had
heard this slander, the Sherwin's lost both cases and
the jury found for or the defendants.
Which tells me First off, slander usually had to be very

(17:21):
egregious for a jury to actuallyaward somebody damages.
Most of the time it was an action people took just to show
they wanted to reclaim their good name.
But I, I think it's, it's notable that the jury discounted
9 witnesses. And what that tells me is either
they didn't think the slander damaged her reputation that much

(17:43):
because her reputation was already so bad, or that really
there was nothing to gain for her for them doing this.
I'm not sure if there was, if itwas widespread thought that she
was a witch. There seems to be evidence.
If you look, the only people that ever accused her of lived
literally right next to her. And she lived at a very remote
part of Princess Anne County, Virginia.

(18:04):
And so I'm not sure how much those allegations filtered
outside of that region, but she was suing people that had a lot
of respect. She literally sued 2 sitting
constables. Richard Capp, the first person
she sued, and then John Gisbornewere both constables who would
have had a lot of friendship andsupport with their courts.
Things calm down for Grace Sherwood.
Unfortunately, her husband dies in 17 O1.

(18:26):
She also loses the title to her land, most likely for not paying
taxes in 17 O 4. So those economic
vulnerabilities keep perpetuating.
And in 17 O 5, she's back in court suing another neighbor,
Elizabeth Hill, for assault. So to see, it's basically
arguing Elizabeth Hill attacked her.
And in this case, she actually won.
And the odds are because there was no other evidence besides

(18:50):
the testimonies, Gray Sherwood was probably still visibly
injured from that assault. And so there was no denying the
fact it happened. But you can tell that she
doesn't have a great reputation because even though the jury
fines for her, they literally award her the equivalent of $66
in damages, which is a far cry. I think she asked for something
like 7000 or $7500. And I'm adjusting for inflation,

(19:14):
obviously. But also the jury foreman never
signed the verdict, which meant it was never official.
So she never received those damages.
And we do have evidence the court asked them to come back
and asked him to come back to sign it.
And he there's no evidence he did.
And you might think, oh, that could just be an oversight.
This is a time where maybe people didn't know what they
were supposed to do. Well, this guy, Mark, Mark

(19:34):
Powell had been on countless juries before.
He had also been a foreman before.
More importantly, there is literally an assault case the
exact same day by purred by the exact same jury that finds for
the plaintiff and that verdict is signed in the damages are
awarded. So it was a very specific
decision to not award gracious with the damages they gave her.

(19:56):
And what that tells me is they wanted to signal a degree of
contempt and gracious with they could not deny the validity of
her claims, but they didn't wanther to actually.
Sort of get the win. Regardless, things get more dire
for her because Elizabeth Hill and her husband Luke immediately
then accused her of witchcraft. And this means now there has to

(20:17):
be an informal procedure. And that at the same time, this
is the first witch trial that's had a formal witch accusation of
witchcraft in Princess Anne County and several years there
one that many to begin with. There's only evidence of one
other formal witch trial and that ended with an immediate
acquittal. So there's no evidence of one
where the judges actually had tokeep the ball rolling to figure

(20:39):
out what to do. I'm not going to get into the
the weeds of the trial because I'm sure you'll have questions,
but basically it drags on until finally, in a last ditch effort
to resolve the matter, as I mentioned, the judges
essentially ask that she be ducked, that they that and this
is to be evidence of guilt. It's not actually going to

(21:00):
decide her guilt, but it's evidence that could be used in
the trial itself. And frustratingly, because.
The. Court records from the from the
Colonial General Court, which was heard by the governor.
Those records were destroyed in the Civil War, so we have no
idea what the outcome of the final trial would have been if
the case was referred to him. But we do know after her

(21:21):
ducking, nothing else had been at the county.
And so we don't frustratingly know what actually ends at the
end of her trial. We just know she was ducked.
We do know however she lived. We do know she's back on her
farm by seventeen O 8 where she continued to eke out a living.
She did get her land back officially in 1715 by paying

(21:41):
back taxes, but she was in courtseveral times for not paying
debts. So this tells us she continued
to we make ends meet though she did live to 1740 to about the
age of 80. And by all accounts, from what I
can uncover, she actually outlived everybody that accused
her and so she was last woman standing.
But like I said, this sort of final decades were not exactly

(22:02):
prosperous, but at least she avoided future legal
entanglements. So much of her case seems very
typical that neighborly disputesthe crop failure and the
livestock getting harmed. We see that a lot.
But the witch ducking is unusualin the colonies.
We've only seen that a couple times in New England.

(22:26):
Can you explain what the purposeof that test was and how it
worked? Yeah.
It's if you were, if you want tobe official, historians like to
call it a trial by water or a water test.
And it's based on the medieval belief that water repels and
pure water, especially running water of a river, would be
repelled by evil and therefore if you put someone unclean in

(22:48):
it, they would float unnaturally.
This was part of a wide series of medieval tests that were used
when you had a trial, but you didn't have evidence of who
might be guilty. And let's say you have a murder
or theft, something like that, and we can spend literally the
entire podcast talking about thevery bizarre trials that
Europeans used to determine guilt.

(23:10):
For example, you'd have a thief hold a red hot iron to see if
their hand burned, and if it didn't burn, then that meant
they were innocent. If it did burn, that meant they
were guilty. All of this was based on the
idea that God would not allow aninnocent person to be unjustly
convicted, and so there would bedivine intervention.
In these tests. Almost all of them had fallen

(23:30):
out of popular use except for trial by water, which became
almost exclusively associated with witchcraft, the idea that
witches, being the devil's servants, would be unnaturally
repelled by water. That said, even though thanks to
Monty Python and a lot of other sort of popular consciousness,
we see this as almost the go to test to determine the guilt of a

(23:51):
witch, as you rightly point out,it was relatively infrequently
used. In fact, we have more evidence
of it being used by vigilante bobs to determine if somebody
was a witch because they're frustrated the courts aren't
doing enough. And, and many other cases you
mentioned in New England are. Actually, there's several in
Connecticut where I live where mobs basically attacked the
supposed local witch, tied her up and put her in the water.

(24:14):
And if you look even at the time, you could go back to the
15 and 16 hundreds to see very rigorous fighting over the
validity of this test. Plenty of people who very much
believed in witchcraft. We're also saying we don't think
this can actually work. And you have lots of skeptics
that point out all the various wings somebody might sink or or

(24:35):
float depending how they're put in the water, how body weight is
distributed, because nobody is technically supposed to die.
Most of the time somebody was holding on to the rope.
And so the idea was, if it lookslike they're about to drown, you
have to pull them quickly out ofthe water.
If you have two people holding apiece of rope and they're really
nervous already and all of a sudden somebody's acting weird,

(24:56):
what's to stop them from, let's say, pulling it too hard and
making that person look like they're floating simply by how
rib salad. So plenty of people pointed out
these issues. There's another thing that
taints the test and that is during the English Civil War in
the 1640s, a man named Matthew Hopkins, who was a Puritan
zealot proclaimed himself to be witch Finder Jill.

(25:18):
And he argued that he had a divine calling to eradicate all
of the witches from England to help in the unrest of the Civil
War. And over the course of about two
years, he was responsible for the worst witch hunt in English
history. He was responsible for the death
of around 300 women in a very short span of time.
And his preferred method of determining the guilt of the

(25:38):
accused witches was done. And because the Puritans lost
the Civil War and also because of the fact that you've had this
association, it was a very dubious test.
And in fact, I think that reality of that Virginia or that
the Princess Anne County court resorted to this test is a
really clear sign that they had no idea what to do to make this

(26:00):
go away. And I think it was a last ditch
effort to try to resolve. Even in the court records, they
say this is to finally decide ifshe was guilty or innocent and
to to sort of determine once andfor all what should be done.
And I think it's part of the reason I'm suspicious of that
she was ever formally tried Williamsburg, which we'll talk

(26:23):
more about that in a second. Part of the reason I'm
suspicious of that is because the only evidence Princess Anne
County could really give is thatwe think she floated when we put
her in the water. And keep in mind, this isn't
over a decade after the sale of which trials where you have now
at this point, libraries of books being with about the
injustices that happened becauseof dubious evidence.

(26:44):
And so, you know, would Virginia's government, knowing
full well of what's been going on in New England at this time,
be willing to formally prosecutea woman based on something so
dubious and so questionable? I'm suspicious, but I think it's
it's a side of desperation if you'll indulge about 30 more
seconds. I do also think there's another

(27:05):
reason she might have been done and that is as rare as she is.
The only known case where a woman was ducked to test for
witchcraft in Virginia, but women were ducked constantly in
Virginia as troublesome women because of the colonial away.
Colonial laws were determined. A husband had to represent his
wife in court, so a woman had noright to petition the court on

(27:30):
her and behalf. So that meant if you were a
husband and your wife was, you were on the book for whatever,
she was fine. There were so many slander suits
and other cases involving women that were gossips or scolds or
I'm using the language they use at the time that Virginia
finally passed a law that said, OK, husbands, if you don't want
to pay the penalty, you can haveyour wife publicly ducked

(27:54):
instead as a form of almost public humiliation.
And if she is public youth, humiliated and then also
promises to never be bad again, that will be sufficient to wipe
out whatever the result of the trial would be.
And so in my mind, and knowing that association and knowing
that the court would frequently use that as a tool of punishing

(28:16):
women that were seen as problematic in the community, I
can't help but think in their mind, this is a 2.
For one thing, they're able to signal they're taking the
witchcraft accusation seriously while also signaling to both Ray
Sherwood and the community around her that they think she's
a problem and she needs to essentially get in.
And there's no way. Also, the witnesses of the

(28:36):
ducking would not have had that association.
And I think there's two things going on.
She's humiliated in public and frightened, of course, by being
ducked in the water. And that kind of serves just to
say, don't do this again. Absolutely.
And I think also for the folks that thought she was a witch,

(28:59):
that vindicated their suspicion,seeing the fact that she floated
and for the rest of the community that just really
didn't want to see her in court again, the signal we're
signaling to her get in line. And I'm sure she got the message
herself because she doesn't showup in court for anything besides
very mundane matters related to economics.
You know, there are no more disputes with neighbors.

(29:21):
And so that doesn't I, I obviously we can't say she got
along with her neighbors, but nothing rose to the point where
people felt the need to bring her to court or she felt the
need to bring court. And it would obviously, even if
it, it was didn't result in a formal conviction, which for it
would have been a very obvious signal of the community to, of,

(29:41):
of trying essentially, as I said, put her back in line,
which is what that punishment was meant for in most of her
cases. And.
Did they happen? To do that in Connecticut as
well. I would have to.
Check. I'm sure there the idea of the
ducking stool was really common.Yeah, but it and it was.
And so I'm guessing there probably would have been some

(30:04):
possibility. But I don't want to get a rest
of you because I haven't dug in.Yeah, I'm curious.
I descend from Winifred Benham, who Robert Califf reports as
being ducked during her last witch trial.
So I was curious if she they had.
Her and her husband. We're not community favorites.
Also, Yeah, it's just I'm sure that association probably

(30:27):
filtered out of Virginia, but I do know Virginia actually took
the step of literally passing law or it was a formal function
that was almost exclusively reserved for what they called
rambling women, women who just talked and gossiped and just
didn't stay in their appropriatelanes.
And and there are plenty of court cases where we have women
repeatedly submerged because they many counties actually had

(30:50):
a formal ducking stool, as I mentioned, which was this little
device that literally put underwater and could be held
until they cranked it out again.And so a woman would be
essentially held underwater while she was tied to this
chair. And then that would happen
several times. And we know based on other
counties that women were essentially required to promise

(31:10):
to never do bad things again as part of the the ducking when
they would pull her out, they say, Are you ready to be good?
And if she seemed hesitant, theywould put her back in.
And it wasn't formable was public.
Obviously a public humiliation and a form of public torture of
women were seen as challenging, I find.
This so informing. Because now I'm, and I wasn't

(31:31):
aware of this until this conversation, but I know that
some of the trials that GovernorWinthrop Junior was on, he, I
think it was Catherine Harrison,he told her to straighten up.
And I always thought, why are they doing that?
But evidently women were really told to straighten up like

(31:53):
physically too. It sounds like I didn't
understand that element of it. Absolutely.
And we know also and, and again,you can sync this with Rachel's
case, but it, I think looking atother cases of witchcraft to
help to make her case make so much more sense.
We know that. Certain one of the things.
Especially in North America, that made women vulnerable to
being accused of being a witch is essentially a rapidly

(32:17):
declining reputation. In other words, it starts out
with, oh, she argues too much with her neighbors.
Oh, she doesn't do things the right way, or she's challenging
the way things are supposed to operate, or she's a gossip.
She's a skull. We think she has questionable
sexual morality. And these things essentially
compound until finally when people have something unusual
happen, they're like, we need our witch.

(32:39):
And so obviously it's there because who else is going to be
a witch? It's going to be the woman who's
not doing things the right way. And so it, it's really hard to
not see a lot of the punishmentsthat were done when supposed
witches were investigated or punished when they were
executed. But if they were punished in
other ways, to also not look at that.
And and in conjunction with the way colonial governments punish

(33:02):
women who challenged social norms, which was all of those
things were legislate. In other words, the idea that a
woman had to be faithful to her husband, a woman could not
gossip or talk a bit, you know, I'll of her neighbors.
All of those things were statutory so that you could be
prosecuted or essentially those things.
And I want to go. Back to something you mentioned

(33:23):
earlier, you talked about how a decline in a person's economic
status contributes to witch hunting.
And we certainly see in that in cases like in Salem with Sarah
Good, who came from a good family but inherited basically
nothing and was reduced to begging for assistance.

(33:46):
So how did economic decline? How did that play into Grace
Sherwood's trial and other caseslike hers?
So I and Senator. I think there's only two things
that are going on and I want to acknowledge I'm very much
sitting on the shoulders of muchbetter historians than me who
have dug deeper into the witch trials in other places.

(34:07):
You know these this is the context that I used to help me
make sense of looking at pretty sure what circumstances two
things are going on, especially in the Puritan case, somebody
who experienced rapid decline ineconomic fortune that could be
seen as a sign of God's displeasure.
Obviously God is, is withdrawingfavor from that individual and I

(34:28):
see especially in the Puritan case, but also in general and,
and the broader Christian world during this period in Europe,
that could be seen as as a sign of of something amiss.
I think the the the more robust answer is, and this is going to
involve sort of two things. We're going to have to try to do
the dangerous work appearing into psychology.

(34:48):
But for example, we know that ina small community for especially
let's say a New England colony or bridging at this time, which
is a very small population, if somebody is poor, they're going
to occasionally need assistance.They're going to need to borrow
money or they're going to need help.
For example, they may need to, let's say, beg food or beg other
assistance. And we know that when people beg

(35:12):
their neighbors for things, thatbreeds resentment and
frustration. And so often what would happen
is people would ask for things and they would be denied.
And we know that. Often these denials.
Would then be followed by allegations that the beggar was
a witch. And there are two things that
can often go on. Some historians have argued it's

(35:33):
basically displaced to guilt. In other words, I know from a,
let's say, a charitable Christian perspective, I should
help my needy neighbor, but I didn't.
And so I feel bad about that. And so how can I make myself
feel less guilty for not doing the godly thing?
Well, obviously she was a witch,and so I was righteous and not
giving it to her. Also, you tended to see, and

(35:55):
this is again, almost a guilt byassociation, circumstances where
somebody denies a neighbor assistance and then something
bad happens to them afterward. And so again, in your mind,
wait. And is God punishing me for not
being charitable? Well, that I don't like that.
And So what if I'm being attacked by the witch because I

(36:16):
didn't help her and, you know, tend to basically blame the
misfortune on being the witch asopposed to, let's say, divine
lack of favor. My favorite example of this
phenomenon because it almost lined up too well.
There was a woman in the 1600s, Elizabeth Goodman, who is in New
Haven in Connecticut, and we have two cases.
We know that she was a beggar who tended to beg aggressively

(36:41):
in the sense that she would be very insistent for assistance.
And neighbors thought she did some quote a sullen and
ungrateful manner. And we know on one case she
asked a neighbor for buttermilk.She needed buttermilk.
The neighbor said I can't, I need to give it to my pigs.
And she apparently looked at himand said, but won't do your pigs
any good. And then the pigs started dying

(37:02):
one after another soon after. In another case, she asked the
neighbor for beer and was told that he didn't have enough to
give and that all of a sudden his beer started going sour even
though he kept burning fresh patches.
And so take that sort of association, almost ironic
misfortune followed after you deny assistance and then well,
that's obviously which is. Thank you so much.

(37:26):
What do we know, what do we needto know or what can we know
about her trial after the dunking?
And so as I mentioned, so if youlook, there's a whole series of
events that lead up to Gray Sherwood's ducking.
Most of it, to be honest, is back and forth with trying to
get evidence. The only evidence the court was
able to find was that she had suspicious marks on her body,

(37:49):
which were were seen as devil's marks or Mitch's marks, sort of
sign that she was in in league with the devil.
But they didn't have much else. And we know, for example, Luke
Hill, who was the one who brought the case against Gray
Sherwood, was frustrated by whathe saw as the court dragging at
the counting level. So he actually took the very

(38:09):
bold action for a guy who's essentially very lower middle
class and wrote the governor of Virginia personally and said, I
want you to intervene and prosecute Gray Sherwood.
And he referred that to the attorney general.
The attorney general reviewed everything and basically said
the charge is too general. I need something specific
because remember in Virginia youhad to be accused of

(38:31):
specifically doing something witchcraft.
And so all the the charge said is that she bewitched Elizabeth
Hill. Well, we what specifically did
she do? He argued that had to be there.
He also said we need more evidence.
I can't prosecute based on this evidence.
And so essentially what he's saying is so Virginia had a 2
tier courses, the county court tried all misdemeanors and the

(38:54):
General Court in Williamsburg tried all felonies.
And so also what he's basically saying is if this is a
misdemeanor, I don't have the authority to try it.
I can only try this if this is afelon.
And so give me evidence, give mea charge, and we'll see what
happens. And so now the county court has
to do something and they have trouble getting more evidence.
So they arrive at ducking. We do know that according to the

(39:16):
records, after she's ducked, theargument was she floated
contrary to nature. And so they argued this was not
enough to secure immediate release.
So they're they remanded her to the county jail to await future
trial. And that's the exact phrase to
await future trial. This was not a conviction.
And I keep harping on this or any of your listeners that don't

(39:36):
know why I'm harping on this, because one of the things that
constantly pops up and collective memory of, of her
trial is that she is the only convicted witch in Virginia's
history. We have no evidence that she was
actually convicted. We only know that she was
ducked. The county court did not.
Convict her. There was never a jury that
heard the case. The judges never rendered a
verdict. They essentially just said we

(39:58):
need to hold her into a man until future trial happens.
The fact that there is no trial that takes place in Princess
Anne County signals they didn't have that trial.
And So what is likely the case is they wanted the the General
Court heard by the governor to be the final say as to what
happens. That they didn't want that hot

(40:19):
potato and the decision made, they wanted them to make the
final call. As I said, those records were
burned. So we have no idea what would
have happened. But there are several.
And I the phrase I use is there are several dogs that aren't
barking. Even if we don't have their
records. There are other ways there.
The General Court's actions showup in other places and I'm going

(40:41):
to give you some of them. The governor of Virginia was one
of the most well connected men at the time in the English
speaking world. He was personally appointed by
the king, I say governor, he wasactually a Lieutenant.
But what that means, since he was very well connected with
England, he was very well connected to other merchants and
other governors. And in North America, so was his

(41:03):
governor's council. So were the merchants that came
in and out of Williamsburg. Even though nobody would have
looked through their records to find evidence of Gray Sherwood,
we other historians have looked through all sorts of stuff that
those men have written to tell the story of England's colonial
empire. And I have a hard time believing
something so weird wouldn't haveshown up in a letter somewhere

(41:24):
where the even if it's just an offhanded so we had a witch
trial today, or there's the strange case where a woman was
ducked in. There's nothing.
It's complete silence. The other thing is.
If we think back, the attorney general said I need a specific
charge and I need evidence. Well, they haven't clarified.
The charge at all and the only new evidence was very dubious

(41:48):
and so would he have found that robust enough to pull ahead for
a trial when he was skeptical before?
Added to this, because of the way those trials took place,
when a county court sent someoneto be prosecuted, they had to
provide 6 jurors. So they had to provide half of
the jury and they also had to provide all the witnesses.

(42:09):
And so that meant people had to pay to travel to Williamsburg,
which would have been a weeks, if not months, if you think
about how long the trial made ittaken.
And so it was very expensive. And the way Virginia law worked
is whoever lost the trial. So if you were prosecuted in the
General Court and lost, you had to pay for you to go and
everybody else who went. So it was an enormous financial

(42:32):
hit, too. If you couldn't pay, then the
county and the colony colonial government divvied up the the
cost. There is no mention in the
Princess Anne County records of having to settle accounts for
this trial. And even if it had been hard in
Williamsburg, they still would have had to pay for their end or
had to secure jurors or they would have had to order somebody

(42:52):
to pay. There is nothing related to
that. And we know from other counties
and other county court records you see all the time where you
have these mentions of so and sois returned from Williamsburg or
we have to send this money because so and so had to travel
to Williamsburg. And all of that's missing.
My personal suspicion is that itwas referred to the General

(43:13):
Court and they basically either the attorney general dismissed
it outright and refused to prosecute or he brought it to
the grand jury who found it unconvincing.
And then basically she was remanded in jail until that was
resolved within a few months. And as I said, we know for
certain she was back on her bra by 1708, and there is never any

(43:34):
mention of her being punished. And if you want to think of the
range of how people were punished for witchcraft,
technically, if it was a felony,that was death.
Technically, according to English law, if it was a
misdemeanor, you were imprisonedfor a year or you could fix
punishment. The only known person we know of
certain with certainty that was convicted by a court in Virginia

(43:55):
for witchcraft was a man named William Harding, who was
convicted by a county court in Northamberland and he was
whipped and banished. So it was an immediate
punishment. And those were clearly stated in
the county court records. And we have no mention of her
ever having any punishment. There's never mentioned in any
of the subsequent court cases fully to the deaths that she had
been previously convicted. And it seems like.

(44:21):
The men who were charged with investigating the case didn't
want to proceed with punishment because maybe they were
skeptical of the evidence, whichseems a shift in attitudes,
certainly in the 14 years since Salem.
So this seems to be occurring ata turning point in.

(44:45):
How these cases? Were dealt with.
Yeah, I would say. Absolutely.
I think the two things are goingon.
So First off, I know from digging through the county court
records, merchants from Salem traded in Princess Anne County.
And so even if normal people living on Remake farms didn't
know what happened, the justicesprobably did.

(45:06):
And also, as I, I know from all of the work I've done, literally
within years of the single witchtrials, so not decades, years,
months, people were writing about it and essentially
critiquing it. And, and so that had to be on
some on the minds of the county justices and especially the the
colonial General Court, this idea of happy, are we going to

(45:27):
prosecute somebody based on suchtangential evidence?
And the county court really justwanted this all to go.
They First off, they track theirfeet.
Most of the time these things are resolved within one or two
court days. These things you don't have
multi month trials really duringthis period once they're ready
to get the ball rolling. And also, we know you can tell
they wanted to go away because they make the very controversial

(45:50):
decision early on. So within the first hearing or
two to basically say to Luke Hill, like the accuser, all
right, you want us to dig into this, fine, we'll keep digging.
But you're paying for everything.
So we're not waiting for who loses to pay.
You're on the hook for all of the costs related to this trial.
And he was not a rich man. He was the same class as Gray

(46:10):
Sherwood. And you can, this was obviously
the county court basically said,fix this yourself and leave us
out of it. And yet he looks to them and
says, fine, I will be happy to keep pain and get the ball
rolling. And and so they're forced to
have to keep it on when it comesto I think the the comparison.
And I don't think I mentioned this when I talked about the

(46:31):
difference in, let's say New England and the rest of the
colonies. If you were to look again, I'm
relying on other historians. The biggest determination of
when a court is willing to actually prosecute suspected
witches, when they're really going to go for it, is the
belief and what we would call diabolism, the being convinced
the devil is active in your community and is using human

(46:53):
agents like witches to try to destroy the godliness of your
community. We know that in order for witch
trials to take place, a formal witch trials where you're going
to prosecute and punish women for being witches, that you have
to have that belief. And you certainly had it with
the irritants where they were very convinced God was attacking

(47:14):
their city on a hill. And if you look at other
jurisdictions in Europe, it waxes and wanes.
And so when you have this fervor, that's that's when you
get these periods of intense, which for some reason, I have no
explanation. The only thing I can say is that
it's not that they are more rational and more intelligent,
but the for some reason, Englishjurisdictions and this filters

(47:34):
into all of the non New England colonies of England were never
worried about diabolism. You know, there was never this
this conviction that the devil is active in the community and
you have to ferret out the witches.
Instead, they're worried about witchcraft the same way normal
people are, which is, oh, what if we have a witch who's cursing
microbes and we have to punish her because she's cursing for

(47:56):
OPS? There's not this belief that
satanic conspiracies that's driving their fervor.
And I had no idea why, but that is unserved X Factor that's very
much missing from those governors.
I'm curious if she. Has any memorials and if she's
had any exoneration or anything like that?
Yes, in fact she has. So there's lots of, I'll call

(48:18):
them in formal memorials. As I mentioned we and Virginia
Beach has been telling stories about her literally for
centuries. There is that children's book I
mentioned The Witch of Pungo. Pungo, by the way, for anybody
is what is this Pungo place? It's the the name given to the
small little village that she here, she actually lived about a

(48:39):
20 minute drive from today, but but it's today it's this little,
tiny little spot of Virginia Beach, which is this large
sprawling city. But if you go to the southern
tip of the city, past the oceanfront, it's this rural area
and so. They there has been.
For decades until COVID, an event called the Pungo
Strawberry Festival, and one of the dignitaries of that was an

(49:01):
honorary witch of Pungo, where people got together and awarded
the title to somebody who was a particularly good public
servant. And people who worked with the
community well, did charity work, were the honorary witch of
Pungo with lots of jokes of onlyin Pungo is it an honor to be
called a witch. But more formally, there is a
highway marker near Woodchuck Point in Virginia Beach that was

(49:24):
put up in 2002 that essentially the standard historical worker
you would have in your other sites.
In the early 2000s, there was a woman named Belinda Nash who was
a a the city's sort of authorityon Gray Sherwood, who by all
accounts felt this very passionately deep connection to
Gray Sherwood and her story. And she very much took it upon

(49:46):
herself, even though she had no relation.
She actually came to the area ofCanada.
She took it upon herself to exonerate and honor Gray
Schuler. And so it's thanks to her
efforts that in 2006, Governor Tim Kaine did formally, quote UN
quote, restore the good name of Gray Sherwood.
It was not a formal part because, again, we have no

(50:07):
evidence she was actually convicted.
And I'm sure there is somebody in the governor's at the Times
legal department that's like, wecannot issue a formal burden,
don't have an actual fiction. Also, Virginia doesn't normally
pardon posthumously, especially somebody from the colonial era.
And instead, what Tim Kaine did is write a personal letter to
Belinda Nash that restored the good name of Gray Sherwood,

(50:29):
acknowledged the injustice of our booking.
But that was not the nuances that were totally lost.
And everybody said Virginia justpardoned their witch.
And so there was a lot of fanfare because by this point,
Belinda was having annual reenactments of Gray Sherwood
stuck in as part of her work with the historic house.
The. Next year, she built.

(50:50):
A statue to Gray Sherwood that very much reflected the way
Belinda Nash imagined her as this midwife and dealer.
All of these events were attended by a lot of lead local
leaders and dignitaries. The mayor of Virginia Beach read
the governor's exoneration. City Council members were at the
statues unveiling and Belinda Nash was also responsible or the

(51:11):
driving force or getting the thechurch that ascribes itself as
the the parish Church of the whole area for the colonial
period to put up a marker that honors Great Sherwood.
So there are several that were all put up thanks to the upper
sub Belinda Nash before she diedin 2016.
And also for any of your listeners who are interested,
they're all like within a walking distance from each

(51:33):
other. If you were to drive to to where
the the statue is, the marker isliterally like 100 feet away and
the the stone that's in the church is bad that have front
lawn is like a diagonal walk across the street.
So all these things are within along distance.
It sounds like. She's a very important figure in

(51:55):
the local history and to Virginia has a whole as being
what you said as Virginia's witch.
Absolutely. And a lot of this is because she
was the first set of records of witchcraft in Virginia that were
covered back in 1833. My suspicion is, and it's more
than a suspicion, it's because of the name Witch Duck.

(52:16):
And to give you a brief sort of analysis of why, if you think
about it, nobody has access to records in the 1600s.
Nobody can go to the county court and read through things or
the 1700s, and you don't have newspapers at the time.
You don't have books written about it.
But what you do have are stories, and you have a name
called Witch Duck. And we know from the from
folklore field work that all it takes is a weird name, a weird

(52:39):
place or something that looks strange and people will tell
stories about it. And so you had this name, a
Witch Duck, and you had these legends about Witch Duck.
And in 1833, the county clerk ofPrincess County was hand
transcribing all of the earliestcolonial records to make sure
they were saved. And he was responsible for
specifically writing out the five pages related to her

(53:01):
ducking and sending it to the Virginia Historical Society
where it got published. And from that point forward, she
was literally Virginia's switch for the next 100 years.
She showed up in in literary magazines and things like that.
And we? Know also that.
From from Folkhorse that had done field work while a student
named Betty Oliver was there in the 1960s.
And she made the argument that folks around woodched up have

(53:24):
what she called an ironic pride.Embrace Sherwood.
There was also a historic house in the Pungo area that was an
old farmhouse, very dilapidated by the 1990s.
But everybody said it was very Sherwood's house.
It was not very Sherwood's house, but local legend had that
that was her house. And by this point it was
literally collapsing. It also didn't have plumbing or

(53:44):
electricity, so and you couldn'tadd them because of where it was
located. And so the Fish and Wildlife
Service bought the property it was on and they were like, we
have this dilapidated farmhouse and the survey report literally
sends, I'm loathe to our advocate tearing this house down
until we find out if it's free Sherwood's and he goes because
we don't want to offend the quote UN quote affection that

(54:07):
the area has. And she is a a very active part.
She has her story has literally been detailed, the book
sculpted, re enacted, built in, drawn, sketched, performed on
the ocean front for tourists. And she's the sort of signal
point of what it means to be Virginia Beach.
As the area grew and expanded, it became a local legend and a

(54:31):
local tradition that old timers could latch onto to, to to give
them bearing and connection to their community as a change and
newcomers could add to basicallyhelp them feel acclimated to
their area. And what I would argue is that
ironically, that's perversely more important than the actual
history of the woman who lived because all of this was done

(54:53):
without really a strong grasp ofwho that woman actually was.
And so that cultural impact, though few could have ever
assumed that she had the cultural resonance that she's
at, she certainly couldn't have.Thank you, Scott.
And now Sarah has this. Week's edition of End Witch
Hunts News. Here's end witch hunts.

(55:13):
News The association of women with witchcraft has historically
served and continues to functionas a mechanism for obscuring
truth and designating scapegoats, a normalized
practice that extends far beyondthe early modern period into our
contemporary society. Around the globe, witchcraft
accusations serve multiple purposes of shifting blame.

(55:35):
Not only is it used as an explanation for unexplained
misfortune and perceived evil, but also as a socially
acceptable veil for crimes perpetrated against women,
crimes that warrant thorough investigation.
A case in point from the United States is a popular true crime
case that's currently getting highlighted by podcasts and

(55:56):
documentaries. Occurring nearly five decades
ago in the 1970s, it illustratesthe ongoing nature of this
issue. The unexplained death of a
missing female teenager, while not officially classified as
homicide by officials, was emphatically attributed to
satanic sacrifice by officials. It is being reported that there

(56:18):
in fact was no evidence linked to the occult.
This unacceptable narrative has significantly contributed to the
case remaining unsolved. At the time of the death, men in
multiple positions of power madesatanic accusation claims to the
public, using the media to spin the web of deception.
The intent of this deception is unknown and her cause of death

(56:41):
has remained unknown. The use of witchcraft
accusations as a means to adjudicate any victim's right to
justice, humanity, and dignity will persist as an accepted
societal construct until collective action is taken to
eliminate this practice. We call upon you and all members
of society, institutions of justice, and governing bodies to

(57:03):
recognize the ongoing harm caused by witch hunt mentality,
properly investigate crimes against women without resorting
to supernatural assumptions or excuses, implement policies and
practices that protect women from baseless accusations, and
ensure their access to justice. We stand firm in our commitment
to ending witch hunts in all their forms and establishing a

(57:25):
society where every individual'shumanity and right to justice
are respected and protected. We thank you for joining us
today and look forward to next week.
Thank you. Sarah, you're welcome and thank
you for joining. Us for this episode of Witch
Hunt. Join us every week.
Have a great today. And a beautiful tomorrow.