June 4, 2025 • 48 mins
Hosts Josh and Sarah welcome back author Beth Caruso to discuss Alice Young, New England's first documented witch trial victim, executed in Hartford, Connecticut in 1647. Beth shares her groundbreaking research that led to Alice's official exoneration by the Connecticut legislature in May 2023, after centuries of her story being nearly lost to history. The conversation explores how Beth pieced together Alice's life through limited historical records, neighborhood land documents, and epidemiological patterns from a 1647 flu outbreak that may have contributed to the accusations against her. They discuss Alice's lasting legacy through her descendants, connections to broader New England witch trial history, and what still needs to be done to honor her memory through exhibits and memorials.
Episode Highlights:
• Alice Young's Story - New England's first documented alleged witch hanging, executed in Connecticut in 1647 (June 5th by modern calendar)
• Historic Exoneration - Connecticut's bipartisan legislative vote in May 2023 officially cleared Alice Young's name after centuries
• Research Challenges - How limited historical records have been pieced together to share Alice's life
• The 1647 Flu Epidemic - How neighborhood deaths and epidemiological patterns may have led to Alice's accusation
• Historical Connections - Links between Alice Young's case and broader New England witch trial history, including connections to the Mather family
• Governor Winthrop Jr.'s Role - His alchemical views and connections to people in Alice Young's life
• Alice's Legacy - Her descendants and lasting impact on Connecticut heritage and colonial history
• Ongoing Memorial Efforts - What still needs to be done through exhibits, memorials, and continued awareness
• Beth's Work - Her Connecticut Witch Trial Exoneration Project, CT Witch Memorial Facebook page, and Connecticut Witch Trials Trilogy
• Podcast Promotion - Launch announcement for "The Thing About Salem" podcast and its first episode about TitubaBuy the book One of Windsor by Beth Caruso
Article: Between God and Satan by Katherine A. Hermes; Beth M. Caruso
CT W.I.T.C.H. Memorial https://www.facebook.com/ctwitchmemorial
Help Us Build Our New Patreon Community for The Thing About Salem Podcast
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to the thing about witchhunts.
I'm Josh Hutchinson. I'm Sarah Jack.
We're thrilled to have one of our favorite returning guests
with us today, author Beth Caruso, who's been instrumental
in growing awareness of the witch hunt of Alice Young and
other victims. Alice Young was New England's
first documented witch child victim, executed in 1647 due to
(00:24):
the change from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian
calendar that was happening at that time.
Her actual death date would be June 5th by her modern calendar,
where it was recorded as May 26th by the Old Calendar, but
for centuries her story was nearly lost.
Then, in May of 2023, Connecticut finally cleared her
(00:45):
name with a bipartisan legislative vote.
Beth's investigations and writings are a passionate
tribute demonstrating that AliceYoung's life in Windsor is
Connecticut heritage. Her ties to the local families
and colonial settlers are significant to understanding the
colony itself. Today, we'll discuss Alice's
lasting legacy through her descendants and what still needs
(01:09):
to be done to honor her memory. Welcome back to The Thing About
Witch Hunts podcast author Beth Caruso.
Please. Tell our listeners about your
accomplishments, from bringing more light to Connecticut's
history of the witch trials. Hi, it's so good to be back with
both of you. I love your podcast.
(01:30):
I love visiting with people on it.
And as far as accomplishments, gosh, that's a little
embarrassing because as far as getting more people informed
about the Connecticut witch trials, it's, you know, a whole
group of people, not just me. I guess my part in this is
(01:56):
working to do research on Alice Young because she is a person
who was from my town, the very first one in the New England
colonies to hang for witchcraft.And that bothered me that people
didn't know more about her. And that's what prompted the
(02:17):
research into Alice Young. Along the way, I've learned more
about Lydia Gilbert, also a Connecticut witch trial victim
from Windsor, and hooked up withwonderful people like you 2 to
do even more to get the word outabout the Connecticut witch
(02:37):
trials. So I started with really just
learning at first about Alice Young, who she's from my town,
and along the way discovered that there were others
interested in this. Tony Grigio for one, I had tried
(02:57):
to get exoneration along with many others in the state of
Connecticut years earlier. So, you know, I got involved
with him to get an exoneration in Windsor, CT in 2017 for R2
witch trial victims with the town count.
(03:20):
And what really helped get it going was research that I did
about Alice Young, which turned into a novel because I wanted
people to really, you know, understand who she was from the
heart, as much as I could conveythat.
(03:46):
I also have an academic article out with Doctor Catherine
Hermes. We capitalized on the initial
research I did into Alice Young and wrote a more lengthy article
about connections to later trials.
This very first case, which we can go into a little bit more,
(04:11):
but once I started writing that book is one of Windsor and
that's this one I'm also pointing.
To my my new. Hardback.
Copy right back there. From there, I had such a great
amount of material from that andso much research done, you know,
(04:33):
that it turned into a second novel, The Salty Rose.
And that largely talks about John Winthrop Junior and how he
stopped the witch trials in Connecticut, as well as the
Hartford witch panic and some stuff going on in New Amsterdam
at the time because there was a woman who was accused of
(04:58):
witchcraft in Hartford who was Dutch only.
I wrote Between Good and Evil which is the story about Alice
Young Junior who would have witnessed the accusation of
Lydia Gilbert cause surprisinglyshe was still in Windsor at the
(05:19):
time and what she had to go through.
She escaped by marrying someone and went to Springfield, MA.
But the stain of witchcraft lingered with her and people
viewed her differently. The article as far as that
(05:40):
accomplishment it in Connecticuthistory review and I'm trying to
get to it here. It's called between God and
Satan and it's about Thomas Thornton who is he was actually
the father of children that diedwhile they lived right next door
(06:03):
to Alice Young during an influenza epidemic.
And then as far as other accomplishments, working with
you 2 and Tony Grigio, Mary Bingham and many others to get
exoneration passed On this date,actually two years ago right
(06:24):
around this time in the Connecticut State legislature,
just working with various peopleand to trying to bring forward
this history because hey, a lot of people didn't know about it.
Hopefully more do now, but I think still even more need to
(06:47):
know. It's so great to be talking to
you about how this young. Again, this goes all the way
back to our first episode when we were called Thou Shalt Not
Suffer. We talked with you and Tony
Grigio about the Connecticut witch trials, and you first
informed our audience about Alice Young and her execution
(07:10):
being the first in the colonies.And why is it that we're talking
about her right now, today? Well, we're talking about her
today because tomorrow is the day that we tend to recognize
Alice Young. May the 26th, 1647.
(07:31):
But that was a Julian year. It's easier to commemorate her
on that day since that's the date known.
Most people don't realize that when you convert from the Julian
calendar to our calendar today, which is the Gregorian calendar,
her death date would probably beJune 5th because it goes forward
(07:56):
11 days. It was interesting in colonial
times because if you were traveling from New England into
New Amsterdam, the days would change by 11.
Wow. So, you know, it could be using
going back to Alice Young, why talk about her so much?
(08:21):
Beside it being an anniversary, she was also the first one to
hang. And that really opened up the
witch trials that gave the OK that, hey, we're fine with this.
We're fine hanging people who wethink are witches when there was
(08:41):
a lot that built up to that. They were in a new place, even
though witch hunting had been traditionally done in both
England and in Europe. This was the first time in quote
I'm saying quotes with this the new world that someone had
(09:02):
hanged in the colonies. And with doing that, it gave
permission for people to hang witches when they thought
witches were in their myth. It just a few years before they
started the laws in both Connecticut and Massachusetts
that prescribed hanging. And this was from the Bible.
(09:25):
Thou shalt not suffer a witch tolive was, which is how you got
your first podcast name right. So we have to talk about her and
her case because what happened with her help to set up patterns
(09:46):
later on, not just give permission for it to happen.
And that whole trajectory, whichstarted in Windsor, CT, built up
to the first seven cases in Connecticut, which were brutal.
All of those led to hanging. Then there was some moderation
(10:09):
that came in with John Winthrop junior testifying at witch
trials. There were a few cases in
Massachusetts at that time as well.
And then you have the Hartford witch panic where everything
went haywire again. I would say that was probably
(10:30):
the kind of the middle of the witch trial history in New
England anyway. And then you have more
individual cases in Connecticut.By the way, those hangings from
the Hartford witch panic, those stopped in 166263.
(10:50):
Those were the last ones in Connecticut, even though there
were witch trials that continued.
But in Massachusetts, you know, 30 years later, you end up with
the Salem witch trials and you know the many reasons again how
they came about. But there may have been an
(11:13):
influence because of witch trials got going already as a
way to handle fearful situations.
But also there was someone who Doctor Hermes, and I wrote the
article about Thomas Thornton, who was right next door to Alice
(11:33):
Young in 1647 of the year. She was accused and hanged and
ends up in Cotton Mather's church in Boston in 1692.
He's a retired minister by that point.
And you find him also, accordingto Robert Caliph, at the bedside
(11:59):
of Margaret Roll at Cotton Mather's house.
Margaret Roll was somebody who would have been bewitched, and
she was supposedly there to healat Cotton Mather's home.
It's important to talk about Alice.
First of all, she's an innocent person.
All these people were innocent. But second of all, I think it's
(12:21):
important to talk about her to bring in the overall history and
understand the overall history alittle bit better.
Yeah. And we also have something
really amazing that happened twoyears ago, which is her
exoneration. And when we talk about the
(12:43):
exaggeration, it really wasn't something that happened
overnight. It was an accumulation of
efforts. But that last battle, if we call
it, really is an amazing story. And that was two years ago
today. Yeah.
Or. This weekend, yeah.
I think exactly 2 years ago today, we were all with each
(13:08):
other in the state legislature, in the Senate, and we were
watching them debate. And I think it was, correct me
if I'm wrong, I think it was a little bit before 5:00.
They introduced this resolution to recognize Connecticut's witch
trial victim. They changed the wording to
(13:31):
absolution. So I'm not sure this is our
final thing within the Connecticut State legislature.
Exoneration is truly more appropriate because absolution
implies that you're being forgiven for something that
you've done wrong. And these witch trial victims
did absolutely nothing wrong. Let's just be clear about that.
(13:55):
Not to be hanged for witchcraft,you know and you know
exoneration implies you haven't done anything wrong.
You were wrongfully convicted. So nonetheless this we still
call it a creation because engine right in this resolution
(14:18):
there's so much that had never been done before that's so
important. The victims got named.
There was an apology by the state.
And I explained to people who are like, we weren't there, why
are people now apologizing? And I explained to them it's an
apology in the same way that youwould say you're sorry to
(14:41):
someone when you attend a funeral, you go up to the loved
ones and you say, I'm so sorry. These are my condolences.
This was something very, very important, I think for
descendants, US especially, but I think for anyone who's
(15:03):
interested in justice, it was animportant thing to happen.
And as you mentioned the names, it is really historic because if
somebody knows that their ancestor was accused in court in
(15:24):
Connecticut, they can know that their ancestors name is in this
resolution. Everybody that is known to the
state was included. Absolutely.
And that's so important because these victims do not have graves
that we know of. We have no idea where they
(15:44):
finally were laid to rest. Yeah, I think it's important
that we have that resolution in place, and I think it's
important now that we do have that in place to continue to
figure out other ways we can commemorate these victims and
(16:05):
recognize them. And certainly the stories,
whether they're through novels or lectures.
There's another novel by Catherine Spade, Abasto.
She's since passed on, but she writes about the Hartford witch
(16:26):
panic. She's also written about
Catherine Harrison, another person who almost hang for
witchcraft about luckily she well, she had to flee to escape
being hanged and being convicted.
What she suffered a lot, too, and that book is also available
(16:51):
too. So there are many different
ways. But what hasn't happened in
Connecticut yet, which I hope will happen soon, is that there
be a permanent historical display about these Connecticut
victims and about this whole trajectory of what happened with
the witch trials, how they started in Windsor.
(17:15):
The trial itself was probably inHartford, but the accusations
started in Windsor. So how he went from that all the
way to Salem, Certainly the focus would be Connecticut and
why don't you hear about Connecticut so much?
A lot of that is because we had John Winthrop Junior who
(17:37):
actually ended up lowing down the witch trials a lot and stop
the hangings because he advise for a two person rule.
In those days, people could hangon spectral evidence alone.
And so with a two person rule under him, it was decided that
(18:00):
you couldn't have just one person thing.
Oh, and so pinched me in my sleep and she made me sick.
There had to be another person, and of course, there never was,
which is why witch trials sloweddown in Connecticut.
That's very, very important, too.
So I hope we will have a permanent exhibit one day.
(18:23):
And as I mentioned earlier, these victims have no grave.
There are many, many descendants.
There's nowhere for them to pay their respects.
There's a couple bricks here andthere, a plaque on a rock here
and there in different towns, but as far as a memorial for all
(18:45):
of them, we really don't have that, so I hope we do one day.
It's so important for people to have a place that they can go
and commemorate this tragedy andalso learn about the history.
And it's so important to tell all of these stories of the
(19:06):
individual human beings that were involved, like Alice Young.
You had mentioned that her neighbor had some children, died
the same year that she was hanged.
Is that possibly why she was targeted?
Yeah. So going back to Alice as the
(19:27):
focus, I tried to figure out what was going on in that
situation. Historians had speculated for a
while that there were probably deaths related to her witchcraft
accusation, and indeed in the year 1647 there was an influenza
(19:52):
epidemic. There were 27, not including
Alice, who died, compared to just six the previous year.
Most of those mentioned in the Matthew Grant record are
specified as children. Some of them not specified I
know are children just from studying early Windsor.
(20:15):
And so this was a disease that claimed a lot of child victims
and Puritans were extremely protective of their children.
Family life was the center of their life.
And so when this pandemic came along, it wiped out a lot of
(20:37):
people, mostly children. Now, how did that relate to
Alice Young? What no one had done before was
try and figure out where these deaths were.
So I found an old map by James Hammond Trumbull in a History of
(20:59):
Hartford County book. So I looked at back a row and I
recreated it because the years that he had for that map were
just a range of dates. It wasn't a specific date.
So I looked at 1647 specificallyand realized, oh, OK, well maybe
(21:23):
if I figure out who the owners were of each property, I can
maybe figure out what was going on.
Also, in the Matthew Grant diary, which was called the old
Windsor Church record originally, there were vital
statistics in there, Births, death, some marriages.
(21:44):
There's not a lot of records in there.
But luckily we do have them for 1647.
And lo and behold, by figuring out back a row at least, and
some other areas in Windsor, I could piece together where
people lived, who had died, who were listed in that Matthew
(22:07):
Grant diary. And of course, lo and behold, on
back a row I see Alice. She's living on a property that
was sold to her by a Tinker family member and all on either
side of her. They're Tinkers all up the
(22:29):
street. But that's the women's name.
They were all sisters and Alice was in the middle of them.
But they were called Sentient Hubbard because they took on
their husbands name. So that's why you see different
names. But if you look at Backer row
during this influenza epidemic 1647, you see that a lot of the
(22:54):
child deaths, at least five maybe 6 are on backer row and
that it was a pretty short St. Today it's just a driveway.
It's not a through St. anymore. Used to go to old Kennedy Rd.
and Windsor but. Miss Sarah.
Senchen. She's a child.
(23:15):
She lives right next door to theThorntons.
She dies then of the Thorntons, we know of three children named
by Matthew Grants, and then there's a fourth child who just
disappears from the records all together after that.
So we don't know for sure, but it's quite probable that this
(23:39):
last child, Samuel, died also atthat time, which wiped out I
think he had five going on 6. His wife Ann was pregnant at the
time. But for the Thornton family,
Thomas Thornton the father, thatmeant that family lost 2/3 of
their children. It was a big.
(24:01):
Cluster. You know what you call cluster
and epidemiology, and Alice Young lived right next door.
She just had one child. And her child, Alice Junior
lived. And we know she lived because we
have her marriage record. We have some stories about her.
So, you know, that puts Alice ina very difficult predicament if
(24:27):
there's other factors that couldhave worked against her.
Now, other factors that might have worked against her, and I
don't know that necessarily it was Thomas Thornton pointing the
finger and saying she's a witch.I don't know that for sure.
But there could be anyone in town saying, wait a minute,
(24:49):
isn't this weird? Look at all these children.
They died right next to her. And most of the deaths are on
Backer Road right where she is. How come her child, her one
child lives and all these other children die?
You never know exactly who or how these rumors start, which is
why it it is a loss that we don't have the actual trial
(25:13):
records. And this is, you know,
definitely not as good as havingthose specific records, but it
gets us at least a lot closer tounderstanding why this could
have happened. So anyway, Alice, but I think
because of where she is, where she and John Young are on backer
(25:35):
row, there's all these Tinker family people and them, all
these people left like right after the epidemic.
So it leads you to believe couldAlice have been related to all
these people or her husband? Could her husband have been
related? And we know that.
(25:59):
They were. From an area called Windsor,
what's the town called now? Windsor, I don't know how it
went to being called Windsor because it was called something
else initially and most of the settlers in Windsor at that time
were not from central England near Windsor or from London
(26:20):
area. They were from the southwest of
England. So that may have been a factor
too. The other thing that I think may
have been a factor and again I don't have absolute final
concrete information on this because no trial records and
some vital statistics is missingas far as marriage record or
(26:46):
John and Alice Young and for thebirth of Alice Young Junior.
So anyway, I think, and other historians have speculated this
too, that she may have been a healer.
Why? There's a few reasons why for
(27:07):
me. I can't speak to what other
historians like why Richard Rosswho wrote a book about the
Connecticut witch Childs about why he assumed this, but I think
it's a probability because you have someone being blamed during
an epidemic and the most likely person to be blamed is a healer
(27:30):
whose remedies are not working. But it's beyond that.
The first case usually sets a pattern for later cases at least
some parts of the pattern. And the second person hang for
witchcraft is Margaret Jones in Boston, MA.
Why was she hanged? We have this on the record.
(27:52):
She was hanged because they found her to be a malignant
healer, John Winthrop senior in his journal says.
People were coiled from her touch.
But the other reason why I think, and this is more
definitive for me about why Alice Young may have been a
(28:14):
healer is that I was trying to trace, you know, who she was,
what was her identity before shegot married.
And I literally went through every single Alice I could find
in Colonial records. I had like a three page long
(28:35):
list. And when I looked at each Alice
that, you know, they settled somewhere else.
They were connected to other families.
It was pretty to easy to go through.
Yep. Never heard from her again.
Oh yeah, she's married. This family, this family, this
(28:55):
family. And by process of elimination, I
eliminated all of them except for one in Cambridge.
And her name was Alice Ashby. Well, I tried to go to Cambridge
to see if there were any birth records for Alice Junior to see
(29:15):
if there was a marriage record for Alice, and John Young didn't
find it. That Historical Society there
said we don't have these original records anymore, which
is a shame, but they were aroundin the 1800s because someone in
(29:37):
the late 1800s wrote a book and included early property records.
And when I. Saw this book, I thought OK
there may be something to this. They're on.
A street, it's identified quite clearly that there's a young
(29:57):
household next to a Holman household.
Now the Holman's are significantbecause the one Alice that I
found, Alice Ashby that I could connect to a tinker.
Remember how I said she was living amongst the Tinkers?
I couldn't connect that family as knowing John Tinker.
(30:19):
And anyway, that person, Alice Ashby, was a maidservant to the
Holmans and the matriarch of that family, Winifred Holman,
had been accused of witchcraft later on.
And she had been a healer practicing herbal medicine.
(30:43):
And we have it well documented that Winifred Holman was accused
of witchcraft. And why?
So if Alice Ashby, who worked for Winifred Holman, was under
her tutelage as a maidservant, she could have learned about
herbal medicine. She could have learned about
(31:04):
healing. Plus there's the tinker
connection. But that final piece that made
me think I do think this is the right person was that the young
and the Holman, The Holman having the maidservant Alice
Ashby, lived right next door to each other in Cambridge.
(31:24):
Yet I can't prove it because we don't have those records from
Cambridge. However, and this is to another
piece of it. There.
Is a. What do you call it?
There's marriage records of New England.
There's a book about this, and in the book there's something
(31:47):
about John and Alice, No last name.
There's another one about Young,no other last name.
It's in this data that someone collected about marriages in New
England. I think that's the name of the
book, actually. But so there's just the there's
(32:09):
this last little link about who she was, but all of that ties in
together along with the fears ofthe time to make Alice Young a
target. It's so.
Great to hear about your research and to hear about those
(32:30):
lives. And.
It's really. Exciting to consider the
possibilities. Absolutely.
And I know we're there at one point because someone from the
1800s was looking at them, so maybe they'll show up again.
I mean the Matthew Grant diary where about those vitals are and
(32:55):
early Windsor Church record it'smostly lectures in there that
wasn't found until the late 1800s.
So you never. Know we didn't even know Alice
Young's name until that showed up in a pile of rubble.
It turns out Matthew Grant's great granddaughter or something
(33:18):
like that still owned his house in Windsor and it was torn down.
And there was stuff in it when it was torn down, including that
book, believe it or not. And so some kid is walking
through the rubble and he sees this book.
(33:39):
Oliver Ellsworth Homestead is right nearby.
So it was a Ellsworth child was walking around.
And Oliver Ellsworth is famous for being on the Supreme Court
at one time, years later. So this kid sees this book and
brings it to his dad. And the dad says, oh, I, I think
(34:01):
that might be something really important.
Let's bring it to the minister. The minister is like, oh, wow,
yeah. We should show this to the the
state historian at the time, James Hammond.
Trumbull looks at it and he finds on the inside cover Alice
(34:24):
Young, hanged May 26th, Dash 47.And again, remember, this is
being written in the Julian calendar, but we know he's
writing in the 1600s. So that's why A-47.
And actually he found the Carringtons there as witch
(34:46):
hanging victims too. So that was a huge piece of
information that told us a lot. And so if we could just find
another seemingly little piece of information about Alice Ashby
and John Young marriage record or the birth of Alice Young
(35:08):
Junior, it might lead us to a lot more.
I want to hear too about how Governor Winthrop Junior was
connected to some people in Alice's life.
Yeah, this was so interesting. It kind of blew me away.
And I actually this might be another reason why Alice was
(35:32):
targeted. There were things going on
politically. The group from Dorchester, Mass,
they're originally from southwest of England,
Dorchester, England. They followed their minister to
Massachusetts, founded the town of Dorchester, Mass, Roger
(35:53):
Ludlow, who you hear about in other witch trial stories too.
He led the group from Massachusetts into Windsor.
And why did he do that? Well, he was pissed off because
he lost the election for governor to John Winthrop Senior
(36:15):
and he hated the Winthrops, he really did.
And I don't think they liked him.
He, well, he was obnoxious, really obnoxious.
He gets credit for the fundamental orders of
Connecticut. He was a lawyer.
He wrote some good stuff. But he was the one who later
moved to Stratford, Fairfield area, and ends up trying to
(36:40):
accuse women of witchcraft there.
Mary Staples. So anyway, he's in Windsor at
the time of Alice Young's accusation, and he's kind of in
the hate Winthrop crowd. So who do you have with the
Tinkers? The Tinker family?
One really important person in the Tinker family, the only
(37:03):
remaining son is named John Tinker.
And he actually worked for the Winthrops.
He worked for Winthrop Senior and he worked for Winthrop
Junior. His allegiance for years until
his death was working for the Winthrops.
It's so interesting. We know he was a really trusted
(37:25):
person of John Winthrop Junior because it's well documented
that Junior actually sent him tohis good friend to pick up
alchemical books and alchemical supplies and bring them directly
to Winthrop Junior. So he was important in that way.
(37:50):
But later on, like when John Winthrop Junior leaves
Connecticut for England to get the charter for Connecticut,
guess who's handling all the Indian treaties?
I mean, I have to go through this more, but not a couple
years ago I found a Native American treaty.
And who's there in John WinthropJunior Stead signing this
(38:13):
treaty? It's John Tinker, his movement
follow John Winthrop juniors andhe's strong in the Winthrop
camp, right? And he also owns a huge piece of
land in Windsor, which rivals anything that Roger Ludlow has
(38:34):
as well. Could have been like a a
political piece to this as well.The people who?
Ended up staying in town. Were indeed, even though Roger
Ludlow left, a lot of people from Dorchester, England were
the ones that ended up staying. And the history always told in
(38:55):
Windsor is about the Mary and John, the ship that all of those
people came on so. You touched.
On John Winthrop junior's alchemical beliefs, he had a
number of. Beliefs in.
His worldview that were a littlebit different than some of the
other thinkers in New England atthe time.
(39:17):
How did his beliefs in things like alchemy affect his
interactions with the witchcraftaccusations?
What? He practiced and what others
thought he practice was high magic and I we're talking about
(39:39):
it. I want to recommend a book
Prospero's America. It's by Walter Woodward.
It's a. Really, it's an intense read, a
lot of references and but he's the one who really looks into
John Winthrop Junior's alchemical beliefs and how they
(40:00):
intersected with stopping the witch child's.
Basically, he was someone who followed this ancient
philosophy. And alchemy aim to achieve
basically purification of the soul, right?
(40:22):
And but they did that through not just spiritual works, but
also through the idea of changing lead into gold.
That was a metaphor for spiritual transformation.
The person with sin transformingthemselves to be more pure.
(40:46):
And so because of all these experiments with trying to turn
lead into gold, they learned a lot about different elements.
And alchemy became the very beginnings of chemistry.
So why you would see it in a chemical lab now?
Like some of the smoke and colors, things like that, the
(41:11):
explosions, whatever. We know now from being students
in chemistry at least at one point in time, and having to go
to chemistry labs that things happen that can appear magical,
but they're not. They're natural.
It's a natural science. And so Winthrop was starting to
(41:35):
learn about this. This was the beginnings of
enlightenment really started with a lot of people who studied
alchemy. And so he realized that what
these witch child victims were accused of, they couldn't, they
couldn't do. They couldn't do as human
(41:57):
beings. He still believed in witchcraft.
All of them believed in witchcraft, but he looked at it
a little more logically, and Winthrop was called upon in some
of the earlier witch trials in Connecticut as an expert.
(42:18):
At the time, he wasn't a governor yet, but he was an
expert in alchemy, which they thought was imagic, and he was
also a doctor of alchemical medicine.
So because of that expertise, they would call him into witch
trials and they would ask him, do you think this person truly
(42:41):
did witchcraft? Or was this person bewitched
because Mary over here bewitchedher?
Or was it because of something that had to do with a medical
reason and every single time he got called into a case he would
say no, it's not witchcraft, it's something else.
(43:05):
I understand if you're perturbedwith this person in your
community, maybe they don't act right according to how you think
they should behave or whatever being rude.
Or in the case of women, they really were looked down upon if
they spoke their mind or stuck up for themselves or were more
(43:28):
assertive. But he would say, but that
doesn't mean they're a witch. And every time he got involved,
the person, they were not convicted.
The high magic. Was not diabolical whereas.
The women. 'S perceived magic.
(43:49):
They were determining that it must be diabolical, right?
Yeah, there were. Basically three kinds of magic
at the time, and Woodward talks about this in his book Behind
Magic was the learned men of Harvard.
They were studying alchemy there.
(44:09):
He and other wealthy learned menwould study this, and so it had
to be OK. It couldn't have anything to do
with the demon because it was their group.
The people who decided the ruleswere studying alchemy, so of
course it was going to be OK. Then.
You know, common folk, what did they believe in?
(44:32):
They believed in magic. Everybody believed in magic.
And they practice magic to a certain degree too, with a
horseshoe over the door or good luck stenciling of a Mason into
a fireplace. It's like we do good luck charm
things. Now watching sports games,
(44:53):
that's where you see the most superstition the most.
Common. Magic now is people turning
their hats around to get their team to rally wearing the same
shirt over and forget without washing it so their team will
win the championship. Those are examples of folk
magic, right? And that didn't necessarily get
(45:16):
you in trouble. What got you in?
Trouble is, if the folk magic happened at a time where a bad
thing happened, like all these deaths next door, it was
normally just a little thing. The ministers probably didn't
like it, but it wasn't considered diabolical until
(45:42):
really strange things started happening.
Thank you SO. Much for joining us again today.
This has been a real pleasure. Before we wrap up, is there
anything else you wanted to makesure you had a chance to cover?
I encourage. People come to my Facebook page.
(46:02):
That's where most everything is.I'm very bad about newsletters.
I have a list, but I don't do newsletters too often.
But come to the Facebook page. That's where you're going to
find the most information. See the article on Connecticut
History Review. Go to my website, one of
Windsor. That's where you will find the
(46:22):
absolute most information. There's a bunch of interviews
there. I will put this interview there.
The links interview as well. And check out the Connecticut
Witch Trout trilogy. If you love the history but you
don't like going through all thedry facts, it kind of brings it
to life. The biggest thing is to remember
(46:44):
how these trials started and that they were an injustice and
these mentalities, they carry on.
You know, now the people being targeted, at least in this
country, are immigrants. In other.
Countries, they're targeted for other reasons, but they still go
(47:05):
on and we need to increase awareness about these things and
really think about how gossip and targeting people does great
harm. Thank you.
So. Much.
I love that we're able to dive in and talk through the records
that are there in the stories. It really shows you that this
(47:29):
history has been concealed or untold, but it is the history
that was there comes out of the communities that are part of the
colonial history. And it's really easy to see them
as people when we're able to talk about them and to really
(47:50):
just picture that colonial life and it.
It didn't happen in a vacuum, ithappened alongside the rest of
the history. Thank you, Beth.
Thank. You for such an excellent
discussion and for bringing thishistory to life in such a
powerful way. Thank you for.
Your. Work on the Connecticut Witch
Memorial Facebook page, the Connecticut Witch Trial
(48:10):
Exoneration Project, and with the nonprofit and Witch Hunts.
Everyone don't forget that this week was the launch of The Thing
About Salem podcast. You don't want to miss it, so
download the first episode The Thing About Tituba today.
Have a great. Today and a beautiful tomorrow.
Welcome to the thing about witchhunts.
I'm Josh Hutchinson. I'm Sarah Jack.
We're thrilled to have one of our favorite returning guests
with us today, author Beth Caruso, who's been instrumental
in growing awareness of the witch hunt of Alice Young and
other victims. Alice Young was New England's
first documented witch child victim, executed in 1647 due to
(00:24):
the change from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian
calendar that was happening at that time.
Her actual death date would be June 5th by her modern calendar,
where it was recorded as May 26th by the Old Calendar, but
for centuries her story was nearly lost.
Then, in May of 2023, Connecticut finally cleared her
(00:45):
name with a bipartisan legislative vote.
Beth's investigations and writings are a passionate
tribute demonstrating that AliceYoung's life in Windsor is
Connecticut heritage. Her ties to the local families
and colonial settlers are significant to understanding the
colony itself. Today, we'll discuss Alice's
lasting legacy through her descendants and what still needs
(01:09):
to be done to honor her memory. Welcome back to The Thing About
Witch Hunts podcast author Beth Caruso.
Please. Tell our listeners about your
accomplishments, from bringing more light to Connecticut's
history of the witch trials. Hi, it's so good to be back with
both of you. I love your podcast.
(01:30):
I love visiting with people on it.
And as far as accomplishments, gosh, that's a little
embarrassing because as far as getting more people informed
about the Connecticut witch trials, it's, you know, a whole
group of people, not just me. I guess my part in this is
(01:56):
working to do research on Alice Young because she is a person
who was from my town, the very first one in the New England
colonies to hang for witchcraft.And that bothered me that people
didn't know more about her. And that's what prompted the
(02:17):
research into Alice Young. Along the way, I've learned more
about Lydia Gilbert, also a Connecticut witch trial victim
from Windsor, and hooked up withwonderful people like you 2 to
do even more to get the word outabout the Connecticut witch
(02:37):
trials. So I started with really just
learning at first about Alice Young, who she's from my town,
and along the way discovered that there were others
interested in this. Tony Grigio for one, I had tried
(02:57):
to get exoneration along with many others in the state of
Connecticut years earlier. So, you know, I got involved
with him to get an exoneration in Windsor, CT in 2017 for R2
witch trial victims with the town count.
(03:20):
And what really helped get it going was research that I did
about Alice Young, which turned into a novel because I wanted
people to really, you know, understand who she was from the
heart, as much as I could conveythat.
(03:46):
I also have an academic article out with Doctor Catherine
Hermes. We capitalized on the initial
research I did into Alice Young and wrote a more lengthy article
about connections to later trials.
This very first case, which we can go into a little bit more,
(04:11):
but once I started writing that book is one of Windsor and
that's this one I'm also pointing.
To my my new. Hardback.
Copy right back there. From there, I had such a great
amount of material from that andso much research done, you know,
(04:33):
that it turned into a second novel, The Salty Rose.
And that largely talks about John Winthrop Junior and how he
stopped the witch trials in Connecticut, as well as the
Hartford witch panic and some stuff going on in New Amsterdam
at the time because there was a woman who was accused of
(04:58):
witchcraft in Hartford who was Dutch only.
I wrote Between Good and Evil which is the story about Alice
Young Junior who would have witnessed the accusation of
Lydia Gilbert cause surprisinglyshe was still in Windsor at the
(05:19):
time and what she had to go through.
She escaped by marrying someone and went to Springfield, MA.
But the stain of witchcraft lingered with her and people
viewed her differently. The article as far as that
(05:40):
accomplishment it in Connecticuthistory review and I'm trying to
get to it here. It's called between God and
Satan and it's about Thomas Thornton who is he was actually
the father of children that diedwhile they lived right next door
(06:03):
to Alice Young during an influenza epidemic.
And then as far as other accomplishments, working with
you 2 and Tony Grigio, Mary Bingham and many others to get
exoneration passed On this date,actually two years ago right
(06:24):
around this time in the Connecticut State legislature,
just working with various peopleand to trying to bring forward
this history because hey, a lot of people didn't know about it.
Hopefully more do now, but I think still even more need to
(06:47):
know. It's so great to be talking to
you about how this young. Again, this goes all the way
back to our first episode when we were called Thou Shalt Not
Suffer. We talked with you and Tony
Grigio about the Connecticut witch trials, and you first
informed our audience about Alice Young and her execution
(07:10):
being the first in the colonies.And why is it that we're talking
about her right now, today? Well, we're talking about her
today because tomorrow is the day that we tend to recognize
Alice Young. May the 26th, 1647.
(07:31):
But that was a Julian year. It's easier to commemorate her
on that day since that's the date known.
Most people don't realize that when you convert from the Julian
calendar to our calendar today, which is the Gregorian calendar,
her death date would probably beJune 5th because it goes forward
(07:56):
11 days. It was interesting in colonial
times because if you were traveling from New England into
New Amsterdam, the days would change by 11.
Wow. So, you know, it could be using
going back to Alice Young, why talk about her so much?
(08:21):
Beside it being an anniversary, she was also the first one to
hang. And that really opened up the
witch trials that gave the OK that, hey, we're fine with this.
We're fine hanging people who wethink are witches when there was
(08:41):
a lot that built up to that. They were in a new place, even
though witch hunting had been traditionally done in both
England and in Europe. This was the first time in quote
I'm saying quotes with this the new world that someone had
(09:02):
hanged in the colonies. And with doing that, it gave
permission for people to hang witches when they thought
witches were in their myth. It just a few years before they
started the laws in both Connecticut and Massachusetts
that prescribed hanging. And this was from the Bible.
(09:25):
Thou shalt not suffer a witch tolive was, which is how you got
your first podcast name right. So we have to talk about her and
her case because what happened with her help to set up patterns
(09:46):
later on, not just give permission for it to happen.
And that whole trajectory, whichstarted in Windsor, CT, built up
to the first seven cases in Connecticut, which were brutal.
All of those led to hanging. Then there was some moderation
(10:09):
that came in with John Winthrop junior testifying at witch
trials. There were a few cases in
Massachusetts at that time as well.
And then you have the Hartford witch panic where everything
went haywire again. I would say that was probably
(10:30):
the kind of the middle of the witch trial history in New
England anyway. And then you have more
individual cases in Connecticut.By the way, those hangings from
the Hartford witch panic, those stopped in 166263.
(10:50):
Those were the last ones in Connecticut, even though there
were witch trials that continued.
But in Massachusetts, you know, 30 years later, you end up with
the Salem witch trials and you know the many reasons again how
they came about. But there may have been an
(11:13):
influence because of witch trials got going already as a
way to handle fearful situations.
But also there was someone who Doctor Hermes, and I wrote the
article about Thomas Thornton, who was right next door to Alice
(11:33):
Young in 1647 of the year. She was accused and hanged and
ends up in Cotton Mather's church in Boston in 1692.
He's a retired minister by that point.
And you find him also, accordingto Robert Caliph, at the bedside
(11:59):
of Margaret Roll at Cotton Mather's house.
Margaret Roll was somebody who would have been bewitched, and
she was supposedly there to healat Cotton Mather's home.
It's important to talk about Alice.
First of all, she's an innocent person.
All these people were innocent. But second of all, I think it's
(12:21):
important to talk about her to bring in the overall history and
understand the overall history alittle bit better.
Yeah. And we also have something
really amazing that happened twoyears ago, which is her
exoneration. And when we talk about the
(12:43):
exaggeration, it really wasn't something that happened
overnight. It was an accumulation of
efforts. But that last battle, if we call
it, really is an amazing story. And that was two years ago
today. Yeah.
Or. This weekend, yeah.
I think exactly 2 years ago today, we were all with each
(13:08):
other in the state legislature, in the Senate, and we were
watching them debate. And I think it was, correct me
if I'm wrong, I think it was a little bit before 5:00.
They introduced this resolution to recognize Connecticut's witch
trial victim. They changed the wording to
(13:31):
absolution. So I'm not sure this is our
final thing within the Connecticut State legislature.
Exoneration is truly more appropriate because absolution
implies that you're being forgiven for something that
you've done wrong. And these witch trial victims
did absolutely nothing wrong. Let's just be clear about that.
(13:55):
Not to be hanged for witchcraft,you know and you know
exoneration implies you haven't done anything wrong.
You were wrongfully convicted. So nonetheless this we still
call it a creation because engine right in this resolution
(14:18):
there's so much that had never been done before that's so
important. The victims got named.
There was an apology by the state.
And I explained to people who are like, we weren't there, why
are people now apologizing? And I explained to them it's an
apology in the same way that youwould say you're sorry to
(14:41):
someone when you attend a funeral, you go up to the loved
ones and you say, I'm so sorry. These are my condolences.
This was something very, very important, I think for
descendants, US especially, but I think for anyone who's
(15:03):
interested in justice, it was animportant thing to happen.
And as you mentioned the names, it is really historic because if
somebody knows that their ancestor was accused in court in
(15:24):
Connecticut, they can know that their ancestors name is in this
resolution. Everybody that is known to the
state was included. Absolutely.
And that's so important because these victims do not have graves
that we know of. We have no idea where they
(15:44):
finally were laid to rest. Yeah, I think it's important
that we have that resolution in place, and I think it's
important now that we do have that in place to continue to
figure out other ways we can commemorate these victims and
(16:05):
recognize them. And certainly the stories,
whether they're through novels or lectures.
There's another novel by Catherine Spade, Abasto.
She's since passed on, but she writes about the Hartford witch
(16:26):
panic. She's also written about
Catherine Harrison, another person who almost hang for
witchcraft about luckily she well, she had to flee to escape
being hanged and being convicted.
What she suffered a lot, too, and that book is also available
(16:51):
too. So there are many different
ways. But what hasn't happened in
Connecticut yet, which I hope will happen soon, is that there
be a permanent historical display about these Connecticut
victims and about this whole trajectory of what happened with
the witch trials, how they started in Windsor.
(17:15):
The trial itself was probably inHartford, but the accusations
started in Windsor. So how he went from that all the
way to Salem, Certainly the focus would be Connecticut and
why don't you hear about Connecticut so much?
A lot of that is because we had John Winthrop Junior who
(17:37):
actually ended up lowing down the witch trials a lot and stop
the hangings because he advise for a two person rule.
In those days, people could hangon spectral evidence alone.
And so with a two person rule under him, it was decided that
(18:00):
you couldn't have just one person thing.
Oh, and so pinched me in my sleep and she made me sick.
There had to be another person, and of course, there never was,
which is why witch trials sloweddown in Connecticut.
That's very, very important, too.
So I hope we will have a permanent exhibit one day.
(18:23):
And as I mentioned earlier, these victims have no grave.
There are many, many descendants.
There's nowhere for them to pay their respects.
There's a couple bricks here andthere, a plaque on a rock here
and there in different towns, but as far as a memorial for all
(18:45):
of them, we really don't have that, so I hope we do one day.
It's so important for people to have a place that they can go
and commemorate this tragedy andalso learn about the history.
And it's so important to tell all of these stories of the
(19:06):
individual human beings that were involved, like Alice Young.
You had mentioned that her neighbor had some children, died
the same year that she was hanged.
Is that possibly why she was targeted?
Yeah. So going back to Alice as the
(19:27):
focus, I tried to figure out what was going on in that
situation. Historians had speculated for a
while that there were probably deaths related to her witchcraft
accusation, and indeed in the year 1647 there was an influenza
(19:52):
epidemic. There were 27, not including
Alice, who died, compared to just six the previous year.
Most of those mentioned in the Matthew Grant record are
specified as children. Some of them not specified I
know are children just from studying early Windsor.
(20:15):
And so this was a disease that claimed a lot of child victims
and Puritans were extremely protective of their children.
Family life was the center of their life.
And so when this pandemic came along, it wiped out a lot of
(20:37):
people, mostly children. Now, how did that relate to
Alice Young? What no one had done before was
try and figure out where these deaths were.
So I found an old map by James Hammond Trumbull in a History of
(20:59):
Hartford County book. So I looked at back a row and I
recreated it because the years that he had for that map were
just a range of dates. It wasn't a specific date.
So I looked at 1647 specificallyand realized, oh, OK, well maybe
(21:23):
if I figure out who the owners were of each property, I can
maybe figure out what was going on.
Also, in the Matthew Grant diary, which was called the old
Windsor Church record originally, there were vital
statistics in there, Births, death, some marriages.
(21:44):
There's not a lot of records in there.
But luckily we do have them for 1647.
And lo and behold, by figuring out back a row at least, and
some other areas in Windsor, I could piece together where
people lived, who had died, who were listed in that Matthew
(22:07):
Grant diary. And of course, lo and behold, on
back a row I see Alice. She's living on a property that
was sold to her by a Tinker family member and all on either
side of her. They're Tinkers all up the
(22:29):
street. But that's the women's name.
They were all sisters and Alice was in the middle of them.
But they were called Sentient Hubbard because they took on
their husbands name. So that's why you see different
names. But if you look at Backer row
during this influenza epidemic 1647, you see that a lot of the
(22:54):
child deaths, at least five maybe 6 are on backer row and
that it was a pretty short St. Today it's just a driveway.
It's not a through St. anymore. Used to go to old Kennedy Rd.
and Windsor but. Miss Sarah.
Senchen. She's a child.
(23:15):
She lives right next door to theThorntons.
She dies then of the Thorntons, we know of three children named
by Matthew Grants, and then there's a fourth child who just
disappears from the records all together after that.
So we don't know for sure, but it's quite probable that this
(23:39):
last child, Samuel, died also atthat time, which wiped out I
think he had five going on 6. His wife Ann was pregnant at the
time. But for the Thornton family,
Thomas Thornton the father, thatmeant that family lost 2/3 of
their children. It was a big.
(24:01):
Cluster. You know what you call cluster
and epidemiology, and Alice Young lived right next door.
She just had one child. And her child, Alice Junior
lived. And we know she lived because we
have her marriage record. We have some stories about her.
So, you know, that puts Alice ina very difficult predicament if
(24:27):
there's other factors that couldhave worked against her.
Now, other factors that might have worked against her, and I
don't know that necessarily it was Thomas Thornton pointing the
finger and saying she's a witch.I don't know that for sure.
But there could be anyone in town saying, wait a minute,
(24:49):
isn't this weird? Look at all these children.
They died right next to her. And most of the deaths are on
Backer Road right where she is. How come her child, her one
child lives and all these other children die?
You never know exactly who or how these rumors start, which is
why it it is a loss that we don't have the actual trial
(25:13):
records. And this is, you know,
definitely not as good as havingthose specific records, but it
gets us at least a lot closer tounderstanding why this could
have happened. So anyway, Alice, but I think
because of where she is, where she and John Young are on backer
(25:35):
row, there's all these Tinker family people and them, all
these people left like right after the epidemic.
So it leads you to believe couldAlice have been related to all
these people or her husband? Could her husband have been
related? And we know that.
(25:59):
They were. From an area called Windsor,
what's the town called now? Windsor, I don't know how it
went to being called Windsor because it was called something
else initially and most of the settlers in Windsor at that time
were not from central England near Windsor or from London
(26:20):
area. They were from the southwest of
England. So that may have been a factor
too. The other thing that I think may
have been a factor and again I don't have absolute final
concrete information on this because no trial records and
some vital statistics is missingas far as marriage record or
(26:46):
John and Alice Young and for thebirth of Alice Young Junior.
So anyway, I think, and other historians have speculated this
too, that she may have been a healer.
Why? There's a few reasons why for
(27:07):
me. I can't speak to what other
historians like why Richard Rosswho wrote a book about the
Connecticut witch Childs about why he assumed this, but I think
it's a probability because you have someone being blamed during
an epidemic and the most likely person to be blamed is a healer
(27:30):
whose remedies are not working. But it's beyond that.
The first case usually sets a pattern for later cases at least
some parts of the pattern. And the second person hang for
witchcraft is Margaret Jones in Boston, MA.
Why was she hanged? We have this on the record.
(27:52):
She was hanged because they found her to be a malignant
healer, John Winthrop senior in his journal says.
People were coiled from her touch.
But the other reason why I think, and this is more
definitive for me about why Alice Young may have been a
(28:14):
healer is that I was trying to trace, you know, who she was,
what was her identity before shegot married.
And I literally went through every single Alice I could find
in Colonial records. I had like a three page long
(28:35):
list. And when I looked at each Alice
that, you know, they settled somewhere else.
They were connected to other families.
It was pretty to easy to go through.
Yep. Never heard from her again.
Oh yeah, she's married. This family, this family, this
(28:55):
family. And by process of elimination, I
eliminated all of them except for one in Cambridge.
And her name was Alice Ashby. Well, I tried to go to Cambridge
to see if there were any birth records for Alice Junior to see
(29:15):
if there was a marriage record for Alice, and John Young didn't
find it. That Historical Society there
said we don't have these original records anymore, which
is a shame, but they were aroundin the 1800s because someone in
(29:37):
the late 1800s wrote a book and included early property records.
And when I. Saw this book, I thought OK
there may be something to this. They're on.
A street, it's identified quite clearly that there's a young
(29:57):
household next to a Holman household.
Now the Holman's are significantbecause the one Alice that I
found, Alice Ashby that I could connect to a tinker.
Remember how I said she was living amongst the Tinkers?
I couldn't connect that family as knowing John Tinker.
(30:19):
And anyway, that person, Alice Ashby, was a maidservant to the
Holmans and the matriarch of that family, Winifred Holman,
had been accused of witchcraft later on.
And she had been a healer practicing herbal medicine.
(30:43):
And we have it well documented that Winifred Holman was accused
of witchcraft. And why?
So if Alice Ashby, who worked for Winifred Holman, was under
her tutelage as a maidservant, she could have learned about
herbal medicine. She could have learned about
(31:04):
healing. Plus there's the tinker
connection. But that final piece that made
me think I do think this is the right person was that the young
and the Holman, The Holman having the maidservant Alice
Ashby, lived right next door to each other in Cambridge.
(31:24):
Yet I can't prove it because we don't have those records from
Cambridge. However, and this is to another
piece of it. There.
Is a. What do you call it?
There's marriage records of New England.
There's a book about this, and in the book there's something
(31:47):
about John and Alice, No last name.
There's another one about Young,no other last name.
It's in this data that someone collected about marriages in New
England. I think that's the name of the
book, actually. But so there's just the there's
(32:09):
this last little link about who she was, but all of that ties in
together along with the fears ofthe time to make Alice Young a
target. It's so.
Great to hear about your research and to hear about those
(32:30):
lives. And.
It's really. Exciting to consider the
possibilities. Absolutely.
And I know we're there at one point because someone from the
1800s was looking at them, so maybe they'll show up again.
I mean the Matthew Grant diary where about those vitals are and
(32:55):
early Windsor Church record it'smostly lectures in there that
wasn't found until the late 1800s.
So you never. Know we didn't even know Alice
Young's name until that showed up in a pile of rubble.
It turns out Matthew Grant's great granddaughter or something
(33:18):
like that still owned his house in Windsor and it was torn down.
And there was stuff in it when it was torn down, including that
book, believe it or not. And so some kid is walking
through the rubble and he sees this book.
(33:39):
Oliver Ellsworth Homestead is right nearby.
So it was a Ellsworth child was walking around.
And Oliver Ellsworth is famous for being on the Supreme Court
at one time, years later. So this kid sees this book and
brings it to his dad. And the dad says, oh, I, I think
(34:01):
that might be something really important.
Let's bring it to the minister. The minister is like, oh, wow,
yeah. We should show this to the the
state historian at the time, James Hammond.
Trumbull looks at it and he finds on the inside cover Alice
(34:24):
Young, hanged May 26th, Dash 47.And again, remember, this is
being written in the Julian calendar, but we know he's
writing in the 1600s. So that's why A-47.
And actually he found the Carringtons there as witch
(34:46):
hanging victims too. So that was a huge piece of
information that told us a lot. And so if we could just find
another seemingly little piece of information about Alice Ashby
and John Young marriage record or the birth of Alice Young
(35:08):
Junior, it might lead us to a lot more.
I want to hear too about how Governor Winthrop Junior was
connected to some people in Alice's life.
Yeah, this was so interesting. It kind of blew me away.
And I actually this might be another reason why Alice was
(35:32):
targeted. There were things going on
politically. The group from Dorchester, Mass,
they're originally from southwest of England,
Dorchester, England. They followed their minister to
Massachusetts, founded the town of Dorchester, Mass, Roger
(35:53):
Ludlow, who you hear about in other witch trial stories too.
He led the group from Massachusetts into Windsor.
And why did he do that? Well, he was pissed off because
he lost the election for governor to John Winthrop Senior
(36:15):
and he hated the Winthrops, he really did.
And I don't think they liked him.
He, well, he was obnoxious, really obnoxious.
He gets credit for the fundamental orders of
Connecticut. He was a lawyer.
He wrote some good stuff. But he was the one who later
moved to Stratford, Fairfield area, and ends up trying to
(36:40):
accuse women of witchcraft there.
Mary Staples. So anyway, he's in Windsor at
the time of Alice Young's accusation, and he's kind of in
the hate Winthrop crowd. So who do you have with the
Tinkers? The Tinker family?
One really important person in the Tinker family, the only
(37:03):
remaining son is named John Tinker.
And he actually worked for the Winthrops.
He worked for Winthrop Senior and he worked for Winthrop
Junior. His allegiance for years until
his death was working for the Winthrops.
It's so interesting. We know he was a really trusted
(37:25):
person of John Winthrop Junior because it's well documented
that Junior actually sent him tohis good friend to pick up
alchemical books and alchemical supplies and bring them directly
to Winthrop Junior. So he was important in that way.
(37:50):
But later on, like when John Winthrop Junior leaves
Connecticut for England to get the charter for Connecticut,
guess who's handling all the Indian treaties?
I mean, I have to go through this more, but not a couple
years ago I found a Native American treaty.
And who's there in John WinthropJunior Stead signing this
(38:13):
treaty? It's John Tinker, his movement
follow John Winthrop juniors andhe's strong in the Winthrop
camp, right? And he also owns a huge piece of
land in Windsor, which rivals anything that Roger Ludlow has
(38:34):
as well. Could have been like a a
political piece to this as well.The people who?
Ended up staying in town. Were indeed, even though Roger
Ludlow left, a lot of people from Dorchester, England were
the ones that ended up staying. And the history always told in
(38:55):
Windsor is about the Mary and John, the ship that all of those
people came on so. You touched.
On John Winthrop junior's alchemical beliefs, he had a
number of. Beliefs in.
His worldview that were a littlebit different than some of the
other thinkers in New England atthe time.
(39:17):
How did his beliefs in things like alchemy affect his
interactions with the witchcraftaccusations?
What? He practiced and what others
thought he practice was high magic and I we're talking about
(39:39):
it. I want to recommend a book
Prospero's America. It's by Walter Woodward.
It's a. Really, it's an intense read, a
lot of references and but he's the one who really looks into
John Winthrop Junior's alchemical beliefs and how they
(40:00):
intersected with stopping the witch child's.
Basically, he was someone who followed this ancient
philosophy. And alchemy aim to achieve
basically purification of the soul, right?
(40:22):
And but they did that through not just spiritual works, but
also through the idea of changing lead into gold.
That was a metaphor for spiritual transformation.
The person with sin transformingthemselves to be more pure.
(40:46):
And so because of all these experiments with trying to turn
lead into gold, they learned a lot about different elements.
And alchemy became the very beginnings of chemistry.
So why you would see it in a chemical lab now?
Like some of the smoke and colors, things like that, the
(41:11):
explosions, whatever. We know now from being students
in chemistry at least at one point in time, and having to go
to chemistry labs that things happen that can appear magical,
but they're not. They're natural.
It's a natural science. And so Winthrop was starting to
(41:35):
learn about this. This was the beginnings of
enlightenment really started with a lot of people who studied
alchemy. And so he realized that what
these witch child victims were accused of, they couldn't, they
couldn't do. They couldn't do as human
(41:57):
beings. He still believed in witchcraft.
All of them believed in witchcraft, but he looked at it
a little more logically, and Winthrop was called upon in some
of the earlier witch trials in Connecticut as an expert.
(42:18):
At the time, he wasn't a governor yet, but he was an
expert in alchemy, which they thought was imagic, and he was
also a doctor of alchemical medicine.
So because of that expertise, they would call him into witch
trials and they would ask him, do you think this person truly
(42:41):
did witchcraft? Or was this person bewitched
because Mary over here bewitchedher?
Or was it because of something that had to do with a medical
reason and every single time he got called into a case he would
say no, it's not witchcraft, it's something else.
(43:05):
I understand if you're perturbedwith this person in your
community, maybe they don't act right according to how you think
they should behave or whatever being rude.
Or in the case of women, they really were looked down upon if
they spoke their mind or stuck up for themselves or were more
(43:28):
assertive. But he would say, but that
doesn't mean they're a witch. And every time he got involved,
the person, they were not convicted.
The high magic. Was not diabolical whereas.
The women. 'S perceived magic.
(43:49):
They were determining that it must be diabolical, right?
Yeah, there were. Basically three kinds of magic
at the time, and Woodward talks about this in his book Behind
Magic was the learned men of Harvard.
They were studying alchemy there.
(44:09):
He and other wealthy learned menwould study this, and so it had
to be OK. It couldn't have anything to do
with the demon because it was their group.
The people who decided the ruleswere studying alchemy, so of
course it was going to be OK. Then.
You know, common folk, what did they believe in?
(44:32):
They believed in magic. Everybody believed in magic.
And they practice magic to a certain degree too, with a
horseshoe over the door or good luck stenciling of a Mason into
a fireplace. It's like we do good luck charm
things. Now watching sports games,
(44:53):
that's where you see the most superstition the most.
Common. Magic now is people turning
their hats around to get their team to rally wearing the same
shirt over and forget without washing it so their team will
win the championship. Those are examples of folk
magic, right? And that didn't necessarily get
(45:16):
you in trouble. What got you in?
Trouble is, if the folk magic happened at a time where a bad
thing happened, like all these deaths next door, it was
normally just a little thing. The ministers probably didn't
like it, but it wasn't considered diabolical until
(45:42):
really strange things started happening.
Thank you SO. Much for joining us again today.
This has been a real pleasure. Before we wrap up, is there
anything else you wanted to makesure you had a chance to cover?
I encourage. People come to my Facebook page.
(46:02):
That's where most everything is.I'm very bad about newsletters.
I have a list, but I don't do newsletters too often.
But come to the Facebook page. That's where you're going to
find the most information. See the article on Connecticut
History Review. Go to my website, one of
Windsor. That's where you will find the
(46:22):
absolute most information. There's a bunch of interviews
there. I will put this interview there.
The links interview as well. And check out the Connecticut
Witch Trout trilogy. If you love the history but you
don't like going through all thedry facts, it kind of brings it
to life. The biggest thing is to remember
(46:44):
how these trials started and that they were an injustice and
these mentalities, they carry on.
You know, now the people being targeted, at least in this
country, are immigrants. In other.
Countries, they're targeted for other reasons, but they still go
(47:05):
on and we need to increase awareness about these things and
really think about how gossip and targeting people does great
harm. Thank you.
So. Much.
I love that we're able to dive in and talk through the records
that are there in the stories. It really shows you that this
(47:29):
history has been concealed or untold, but it is the history
that was there comes out of the communities that are part of the
colonial history. And it's really easy to see them
as people when we're able to talk about them and to really
(47:50):
just picture that colonial life and it.
It didn't happen in a vacuum, ithappened alongside the rest of
the history. Thank you, Beth.
Thank. You for such an excellent
discussion and for bringing thishistory to life in such a
powerful way. Thank you for.
Your. Work on the Connecticut Witch
Memorial Facebook page, the Connecticut Witch Trial
(48:10):
Exoneration Project, and with the nonprofit and Witch Hunts.
Everyone don't forget that this week was the launch of The Thing
About Salem podcast. You don't want to miss it, so
download the first episode The Thing About Tituba today.
Have a great. Today and a beautiful tomorrow.
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