Bicentennial envisioning of the trial of
Rebecca (Towne) Nurse from the 1890s
One of my far flung cousins is Clarissa Harlowe Barton, better known as Clara, founder of the American Red Cross. She is a third cousin, four times removed. Our common ancestor is a woman born Hannah Bridges in 1669, at what's now known as Danvers, Massachusetts.
Danvers used to be Salem Village (not to be confused with the adjacent port city of Salem), but they changed the name in 1752, wanting to put some of their unsavory history aside. Danvers (Salem Village) is where the actual Salem witch trials took place in 1692. In this diary, when I say "Salem", it refers to Salem Village, aka present day Danvers.
HANNAH BRIDGES
Hannah's paternal grandfather, Edmund Bridges, arrived from England in 1635 during the Great Migration. His first child, Hannah's father Edmund Jr., was born 2 years later. The immigrant was a blacksmith by trade, an important skill needed in every town. Blacksmiths were sometimes offered incentives to relocate to a town in need of their services; perhaps that's why Edmund is recorded as living in several towns near the coast north of Boston throughout his life. He died in Ipswich in 1685 when Hannah was 16.
Edmund, Jr. was married to Sarah Towne in nearby Topsfield, inland from the coast, in 1660. Their first several children were born there, but they moved in 1668 to a new farm at Salem. Hannah was the first of their offspring born at Salem, 1669. Hannah's father Edmund Bridges died in 1682 when she was 13. Her mother remarried the next year. Sarah & her new husband Peter Cloyes had 3 more children over the next few years. Cloyes also brought 6 of his own children to the marriage. It was a a large family. (The name Cloyes has also been recorded as Cloyce, as Clayes.)
At the age of 21, Hannah Bridges was married in Salem. Her firstborn, named after his father Samuel Barton, arrived October 1691. She was a newlywed, nursing her first baby, when the accusations of witchcraft began. It hit like an earthquake, leaving devastation in its wake.
The first execution was on June 10; Bridget Bishop had been accused a mere week before.
Rebecca (Towne) Nurse was an upstanding fully covenanted member of the church, first accused in April 1692, when young Hannah's firstborn was only 6 months old. The accusations were shocking. There was a petition in her support. Several people testified on Rebecca's behalf, including her two younger sisters, Mary (Towne) Esty and Hannah's mother, Sarah (Towne) Cloyes. Both were soon accused themselves and jailed. Rebecca's jury found her Not Guilty, but soon thereafter the verdict was reversed. She was hanged on July 19th at the age of 71, her sister Mary followed her to the gallows on September 22nd. By this time, 20 people had been executed and six more died in jail. The witch hunt was burning itself out. Sarah Cloyes remained jailed in Boston until the next January, at which time charges were dropped, a fine was paid to cover the costs of her incarceration and she was freed. Her brother Jacob was on the jury which released her; perhaps he played a role.
Rebecca's accuser, young Ann Putnam, recanted not long after the dust started to settle. It was less than 20 years later, 1711, when the Nurse family received a compensatory award from the government for her wrongful death. Over the years, official pardons were obtained for most all the accused and executed witches. The town changed its name. A monument was erected in honor of the brave citizens who signed the petition on Rebecca Nurse's behalf.
FRAMINGHAM, MASSACHUSETTS
Sarah and Peter Cloyes did not return to Salem when she was released from custody. Their new house, built 1693 in what is now Framingham, still stands, albeit abandoned now and in disrepair. It has a FaceBook page. The name of the road has not changed in the intervening three centuries. It's still called Salem End Road.
Hannah (Bridges) Barton gave birth to her second child, Mercy, Framingham in 1694. Her six other children were all born there, too. The town of Framingham was incorporated in 1700, with other people who'd fled Salem comprising many of the townfolk. At some point the Bartons moved on; Hannah died at Oxford in Worcester County in 1727. That's the same place Hannah's great great granddaughter, Clara Barton, was born nearly a century later in 1821. They're both buried in the same cemetery.
WITCHCRAFT, INQUISITIONS
More than 3 centuries later, the term "witch hunt" is still in common usage, referring back to the baffling and destructive events at Salem Village, so it's fair to say it made a lasting impression. And nobody's ever really made sense of it either.
Key players in the accusations were Tituba, a slave; Ann Putnam, whose family was engaged in an ongoing feud with the Porter clan; and troubled Abigail Williams. Abigail is portrayed in Arthur Miller's The Crucible as having had an illicit liaison with John Proctor, as being 17 years old. In real life, she was only 11, so Miller's carnal motives weren't likely in the mix. Abigail had endured a difficult ordeal, her entire family having been killed in an Indian raid. Her uncle took the traumatized orphan in. (Tituba was his slave.) History has not recorded what happened to Williams after the trials were over. Speculation has included prostitution or stowing away to the Caribbean. Perhaps a name change. There's no evidence for those or any other hypotheses as to her fate.
It's also been speculated that the girls were afflicted by ergotism, an LSD-like experience caused by ingesting a fungus which grows on rye. There's no proof, and no one will ever know. Even if it were true, it can't explain about how the whole town went mad in an orgy of paranoia and killing, even given that the Puritan culture of the time generally believed that dangers of the devil were widely present in the world around them.
Throughout history, wealth changes hands in these kinds of upheavals. The Spanish Inquisition saw a mass influx of wealth to the Catholic Church; Henry VIII's break with the Pope meant the closing of monasteries and a major transfer of wealth away from the Church to the King and his aristocratic allies.
In Salem, there were feuds and land disputes. Sarah's father Edmund had won a suit there over a land boundary dispute in 1640, later moving on to Topsfield. Edmund Sr. was involved in subsequent Salem land disputes over the years. There was also a running feud between the Putnam and Porter families in Salem. There was certainly property changed hands due to the Salem witch trials.
That last explanation of land disputes and feuds and property transfers makes the most sense to me. Hell if I know, really, though I'm pretty sure there wasn't any Satanic magic involved like they all said it was at the time.