Boynton - Connecticut witch trials: the first panic in the new world

Published by The History Press

Charleston, SC 29403

www.historypress.net

Copyright 2014 by Cynthia Wolfe Boynton

Unless otherwise noted, all images come from the public domain.

All rights reserved

First published 2014

e-book edition 2014

ISBN 978.1.62584.917.5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Boynton, Cynthia Wolfe, author.

Connecticut witch trials : the first panic in the new world / Cynthia Wolfe Boynton.

pages cm

print edition ISBN 978-1-62619-387-1 (paperback)

1. Trials (Witchcraft)--Connecticut--History--17th century. I. Title.

KFC3678.8.W5B69 2014

133.4309746--dc23

2014032817

Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

To Teddy, who cast the first spell

Every old woman with a wrinkled face, a furrd brow, a hairy lip, a gobber tooth, a squint eye, a squeaking voice, or a scolding tonguea dog or cat by her side, is not only suspected but pronounced for a witch.

seventeenth-century English clergyman John Gaule

Contents

Acknowledgements

All those cited as sources within chapters and the bibliography deserve to be acknowledged. So do all those touched by Connecticuts witch trials. Though the Puritans lived in a new world, most followed old beliefs. Too many also allowed fear, and the black side of human nature, to guide their actions.

All those approached for information, interviews and insights during the researching and writing of this book were tremendously generous in how they shared their time, resources and expertise. Special recognition to author R.G. Tomlinson for his meticulous and magnificent Witchcraft Prosecution: Chasing the Devil in Connecticut, as well as to Stanley-Whitman House executive director Lisa Johnson, Connecticut state historian Walter Woodward and the gracious staff of the Connecticut State Librarys History and Genealogy Department.

Also unending thanks-yous to my parents, Barbara and Ted Wolfe; my husband, Ted; my sons, Teddy and Steven; my inspiring colleagues in the Writing and Oral Tradition cohort at The Graduate Institute; Tabitha Dulla at The History Press for her equally unending patience; and to my purr-fect writing companion, Coal the cat. If I were a witch, you would be my familiar.

INTRODUCTION

Emerging Out of Salems Shadow

Connecticuts witch hunt was the first and most ferocious in New England. Yet few know it ever occurred.

Puritans throughout young, colonial America accused at least one hundred people of witchcraft before Salems infamous, and now internationally known, witch hysteria. Maine, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina and New York all conducted witchcraft trials during the seventeenth century, though Connecticut holds the dark honor of carrying out young Americas first witchcraft execution in 1647, forty-five years before Salem hanged Bridget Bishop or crushed Giles Corey.

Connecticut also holds the dubious distinction of having a witch panic that spanned several decades versus Salems seven months and, ultimately, a witch hunt that was proportionally much more deadly. Salem executed just 20 of the roughly 180 women and men brought up on formal witchcraft charges, while Connecticut executed 11 out of 34.

In other words, a charge of witchcraft in Connecticut meant that you would very likely die, said Connecticut state historian Walter Woodward at a lecture in Stratford, Connecticut. In that coastal city roughly 360 years earlier, a woman listed in court records as Goody Basset confessed to witchcraft in May 1651 and was hanged, most likely from crude gallows erected near whats now the West Broad Street exit off Interstate 95, in the area of Sterling Park and the Old Congregational Burying Ground.

Although court records are scant, those that exist show that while Goody Basset maintained her innocence throughout her trial, whatever courage she had left disappeared as she walked to the gallows: Bursting from the procession ofmagistrates, ministers and all the dignitaries of the neighborhood, the unfortunate woman threw herself upon a large rock by the roadside, one historian wrote. She clutched it so desperately that, when at length she was forcibly detached, bloody marks like fingerprints were seen upon it.

Although most of Connecticuts witchcraft cases occurred in Hartford and Fairfield, the colonies of New Haven, Wethersfield, Saybrook, Windsor, Wallingford, Easthampton, Farmington, Setauket and Stamford all had outbreaks of women and men believed to be in league with the devil.

After Goody Basset, Stratford became involved in Connecticuts witch trials a second time in November 1692 when a man named Hugh Crotia said the devil told him to hold down and assault a young girl. Judges dismissed the charge, calling Crotias case not one of witchcraft but of ignoramus, which in the seventeenth century did not, as it does today, describe a person who is an idiot or a fool. In the 1600s, ignoramus was a legal term for we are ignorant of, meaning judges were not able to determine what exactly happened between Crotia and the girl. So rather than him being bodily punished, he was released with a fine.

Unfortunately, just as judges in 1692 were ignoramus of what happened between Crotia and the young girl, most people today are ignoramus of Connecticuts witch trials.

Part of the reason is a lack of records. There are no known diaries or first-person accounts from those who witnessed the trials. And the majority of court ledgers and other documents from the period no longer exist. The few delicate, handwritten court papers and depositions that do remain are housed in archives at the Connecticut State Library, Connecticut Historical Society and within the Samuel Wyllys Papers at Brown Universitys John Hay Library. Many of these sheets are torn and yellowed, though the Wyllys Paperswhile incompleteinclude insightful details about several of Connecticuts accused women, men and couples.

Through the slow, painstaking work of dedicated historians and the ancestors of those accused, details about the lives of some of these witches have begun to take shape over the years, as snippets of information found in long-unopened files and town records have been matched with those scrawled onto pages of family Bibles, letters and scrapbooks. But still, Connecticuts witch trials are unknown to most. Although a handful of plays and stories have been written about the time period, Connecticut has had no Nathaniel Hawthorne, Arthur Miller or other famed storyteller to bring the trials to vivid or widespread life.

In 1958, Massachusetts author Elizabeth George Speare wrote the Newbery Medalwinning The Witch of Blackbird Pond inspired by Wethersfield, Connecticuts witchcraft history. But despite being part of language arts curriculums in middle schools around the country, Blackboard Pond has never brought to Connecticut the kind of historical recognition that Salem received from Hawthornes The House of the Seven Gables, Millers The Crucible or countless other works.

Connecticuts role in colonial witchcraft history has, in fact, been so well hidden over the centuries that when Yale-educated historian and theologian Benjamin Trumbull wrote