Stephen Hawley Martin - A Witch in the Family: The Salem Witch Trials Re-examined in Light of New Evidence

Nobody broke the news to megently or otherwiseand I didnt find out by delving into family genealogy. As far back as I can remember, Ive known I was descended from a witchor rather, I was descended from a woman who was hanged as one. When I probe my memory, the first family discussion I recall on the subject had to do with the correct form of the past tense of the verb to hang.

Pictures are hung, my mother told me. People are hanged.

My father died when I was young, and the only other male in the immediate family, my brother, went away to college when I was four. The result was my mother, grandmother, and sister, who was five years older, raised me. Surrounded by three of the feminine persuasion and hearing often about my seven-times-great grandmother who ran a farm by herself and was able to do things women werent supposed to be able to doand was hanged as a witch for itits no wonder I came to be what you might call an early feminist, believing a woman could do anything a man could do.

In recent years Ive wondered if my ancestor really was a witch. Having studied transcriptions of as many original documents from the time of the New England witch hysteria as I could get my hands on, Im almost certain at least some of the accused were practicing magic, or witchcraft as it then was called. Ill hold off until later to give an opinion about my ancestors guilt or lack of it but will say my mother was convinced she was innocent. It was generally accepted in the Martin household that the words on her memorial in Amesbury, Massachusetts were true. She was, An honest, hardworking, Christian woman. Accused as a witch, tried and executed at Salem, July 19, 1692. A martyr of superstition.

Perhaps as a result, my parents were what you might call staunchly anti Christian-fundamentalists.

Let me revise that statement. My mother was, which is perhaps a little strange since it was my fathers side that had the witch in it. Now that I think about it, Im not sure what my father felt because I was so young when he passed away. His two brothers were Methodist ministers, and I recall now my mother saying hed wanted to be one, too, but shed talked him out of it. Shed said she simply couldnt be a ministers wife. Maybe it had to do with her husbands six-times-great grandmother having been hanged as a witch. Or maybe it was something more than that. As an outward display of contempt for what she considered a narrow-minded and dangerously-superstitious worldview, she insisted on naming my sister Susannah North Martin after the family martyr, which makes me wonder now if the connection between my mother, whose name was Evelyn, and the first Susannah Martin wasnt somehow closer than it would appear at first glance.

Whatever the case may be, nowadays youd think most people wouldnt care one way or the other if you had someone in the family who was tried, convicted, and executed more than 300 years ago for what was then the felony of witchcraft. Its probably true most wouldnt. But one time, when it came out in conversation I was descended from one of the Salem Witches, the mother of a girl I was dating gave me the strangest look. It turned out she was a staunchly Christian ladywhat my mother would have called, with a hint of scorn in her voice, a Bible thumper. Even in this modern age, this woman believed witches were real, evil, and to be feared and shunned.

I guess she never watched Bewitched.