In the Devil's Snare (49 page)

Quotations:
SWP
1:97; Calef,
MWIW,
in
WDNE
3:17–18. Recall that
SWP
erroneously intermingles documents in the cases of Sarah and Bridget Bishop. The report of the inquest on Christian Trask, 24 June 1690, EC Ct Recs/WPA, ser. 2, 50: 19/1, gives her death date as 3 June 1690. This Edward Bishop was not related to Bridget Bishop’s third husband (who had the same name), though some have mistakenly identified him as Bridget’s stepson. For biographical information: Robinson,
Devil Discovered,
297–98.

This paragraph and the next draw on
SWP
2:423. Her second confession, titled “The first Examination of Deliverance Hobbs in prison,” is undated on that page, but the date is given in the summary prepared for the case against Sarah Good, ibid., 363, the source of the second quotation. (My identification of Stephen Sewall as the author of that quotation is based on the handwriting of the original summary document, SWP/SJC/PEM 1:13.) Abigail’s second confession, too, revealed what she had learned from other prisoners. Inga Clendinnen identified a similar effect among confessed Mayan heretics held together in a Yucatán jail in 1562 in
Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatán, 1517–1570
(New York, 1987), chapters 6, 7, esp. 94–95.

On 11 April, Williams said the deacons at the 31 March sacrament were Cloyce and Good (
SWP
2:658–59). The four earlier confessors were, of course, Tituba, Dorcas Good, Mary Warren, and Deliverance’s stepdaughter, Abigail. In prison on 3 May, Deliverance reconfirmed the contents of the 22 April confession. She also described a recent “feast” attended by the specters of Wilds, Bishop, Good, and Osborne (ibid., 1:91–92). Deliverance’s failure to name Sarah Cloyce might have been what saved the latter’s life; she was the only one of the three Towne sisters who was not hanged.

This paragraph and the next are based on ibid., 1:320–21, 105–106. Sarah Buckley’s daughter was Mary Witheridge. Susannah’s charge that Bridget Bishop killed “john trasks wife” (Christian) confused her with Sarah Bishop, just as later historians and the compilers of
SWP
did. Sheldon’s statement, which she penned herself, is undated but covers 24–30 April 1692; she seems to have composed it shortly thereafter. It was separated into two parts at some point; that which is printed on 105–106 has no date, but picks up where the other leaves off. The docket on the original of that document (words not published in
SWP
), SWP/SJC/PEM 1:153, reveals the relationship of the two statements. That she was “pinshed” in the Town (rather than the Village) meetinghouse is evident from her account of the site of her postmeeting encounter with the specters, which lay between the Town and her family’s house.

Ellner Barge, deposition, 17 July 1676, Suffolk Court File #1526, JA, MSA; Ralfe Allanson and Joseph Oliver, deposition, 18 July 1676, ibid. Scottow’s reluctance to aid the Algers might also have stemmed from their prior acrimonious relationship, or so observers might have concluded. See documents in BPL detailing a 1671 dispute and subsequent lawsuit: ch. A 242 and ch. K 1.40 v. 2, 298; and in William S. Southgate Papers, box 114, collection 74, MeHS. Henry Brookens recalled the exchange with the refugees differently, declaring that the men had refused to go to Dunstan, citing fears for their families’ safety if they left Black Point essentially undefended. (Brookens, deposition, 2 August 1676, Suffolk Court File #1526, JA, MSA)

Quotation: Henry Brookens, deposition, 2 August 1676, Suffolk Court File #1526, JA, MSA. William Hubbard,
A Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians in
New-England . . .
[part 2]
From Pascataqua to Pemmaquid
(Boston, 1677), 25–26, gives an account of these events that avoids all mention of the contretemps about Joshua Scottow, an ally of the Bay Colony’s government. On the Sheldon, Scadlock, and Alger families and their relationships, see the entries in
GDMNH.
Susannah is designated as “c. 18” in the Salem records, so she was born about 1674 in Black Point. Although
GDMNH
and other genealogies do not so list Susannah, she clearly was the daughter of William and Rebecca Scadlock Sheldon. The name “Susannah” did not appear elsewhere in the Sheldon family, but it was common among the Scadlocks; Rebecca Scadlock Sheldon had both a sister and a niece named Susannah. Subsequent Sheldon genealogists apparently concealed Susannah’s relationship to the family, an enterprise facilitated by the fact she seems to have died unmarried and without children. Such genealogical suppression is not unique among notorious participants in the Salem trials; for example, John Willard, condemned and hanged as a witch in September, cannot be definitively linked to the large Willard family of Groton (Nashaway), Massachusetts, although he undoubtedly belonged to it.

Thomas Cousens, deposition, 16 January 1679/80, Suffolk Court File #1828, JA, MSA; John Libby, et al., statement, 15 July 1676,
DHSM
6:115; Henry Williams, court testimony, 28 January 1679/80, Suffolk Court File #1828, JA, MSA. Still other versions of the contested tale are given in Andrew Alger Jr., court testimony, 28 January 1679/80, ibid; an anonymous deposition sworn before Brian Pendleton, 17[?] July 1676, Collection 77, box 2/27, MeHS; and Michael Edgecombe, deposition, 20 July 1676, as printed in part in
NEHGR
43 (1889): 71–72.

For examples of reports of such statements by the Black Point men, see the depositions of John Purrington, 16 January 1679/80, and Thomas Cousens, 16 January 1679/80, both in Suffolk Court File #1828, JA, MSA.

See
GDMNH,
q.v. “Alger, Arthur,” for his place and date of death. Anne Scadlock Alger survived to remarry; she must have fled from Dunstan with the other women and children at the first sign of trouble on October 10 or 11. As the messenger who in late October 1675 carried to Scottow a request for assistance from Saco’s magistrate Brian Pendleton and his son-in-law Seth Fletcher, and then had to return with Scottow’s rejection, Sheldon also personally experienced another example of the captain’s reluctance to assist settlers in danger. See Brian Pendleton and Seth Fletcher to Joshua Scottow (endorsed as carried by Sheldon), 29 October 1675, Miscellaneous Manuscripts Bound, MHS. Sheldon signed the anti-Scottow petition to the General Court, n.d. [c. 15 July 1676], printed in
NEHGR
43 (1889): 71. But Sheldon too had failed to help some in need; for example, he told Henry Brookens, whom Richard Waldron sent to his household in 1675, that he “was not willing to entertaine us at his garison saying that my Children would eat his victualls out of the pot.” (Henry Brookens, deposition, 2 August 1676, Suffolk Court File #1526, JA, MSA.)

The records of later Suffolk County cases have supplied much of the evidence for this discussion; see #1526 (1676) and #1828 (1679/80) in Suffolk Court Files, JA, MSA; the Maine records do not survive. (Thanks to Elizabeth Bouvier for locating the documents for me.) Quotations: Waldron to Scottow, 29 January 1677/8, and statement by Waldron, 15 September 1679, both in Suffolk Court File #1828. The outcome of the 1676 case is printed in
NEHGR
43 (1889): 72; an additional compensatory land grant to Scottow after the war is recorded in
York Deeds
6 (1889): 9–10.

The Sheldons returned to Black Point by late 1681; see the tax list compiled on 28 November 1681, Scarborough, Maine, Records 1:3, Coll. 1229, MeHS, which shows William as the owner of 100 acres of land, 12 acres of marsh, and some livestock. On their presence in Black Point before and after the First Indian War, see also depositions in
York Deeds
14 (1906): 30, 39–40.

The Sheldons were residing in Salem Village by 30 November 1688, when their ten-year-old son Nathaniel died there. Godfrey is believed to have been one of the “stout young men” of the Village who marched north under the direction of John Walcott and Bartholomew Gedney in late May 1690 (
DHSM
5:109). For his death and those of his brother and father, see “Rev. Samuel Parris’s Record of Deaths at Salem Village during his Ministry,”
NEHGR
36 (1882): 188. The compiled “census” of the Village in
Salem-Village Witchcraft
, 391, erroneously designates Rebecca and Ephraim as husband and wife rather than mother and adult son, placing Susannah in another (phantom) household headed by “Widow Sheldon. ”
GDMNH
reveals that William’s age at his death was sixty-eight rather than the eighty recorded by Parris.

Philip English’s business papers, in box 1, English-Touzel-Hathorne Papers, PEM, show, e.g., that he was part-owner of a ketch based in Kittery and that he frequently sent cargoes of fish to St. Kitts (see esp. folders 2, 3). English has attracted a great deal of attention from scholars. See, e.g., the article by Bryan Le Beau, cited n. 50, above; George F. Chever, “A Sketch of Philip English—A Merchant in Salem from about 1670 to about 1733–4,”
EIHC
1 (1859): 157–81; Henry W. Belknap, “Philip English, Commerce Builder,” AAS Procs, new ser., 41 (1931): 17–24; David T. Konig, “A New Look at the Essex ‘French’: Ethnic Frictions and Community Tensions in Seventeenth-Century Essex County, Massachusetts,”
EIHC
110 (1974): 167–80; and Phyllis Whitman Hunter,
Purchasing
Identity in the Atlantic World (Ithaca, N.Y., 2001), chapter 2 (which focuses on English in the context of Salem). Bernard Bailyn places English in a still broader context in
The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century
(Cambridge, Mass., 1955), chapter 7, esp. 144–45.

James the Negro, deposition, 31 May 1690, EC Ct Recs/WPA, ser. 2, PEM, 49:58/2; Elizabeth Moody, deposition, 1 June 1690, ibid., 49:56/1; Robin Negro, deposition, 30 May 1690, ibid., 49:57/2. See also the report of the examination of Mousher, 31 May 1690, ibid., 49:58/1. (His name was spelled variously Major, Mousher, Mojer, and Mager alias Mayor.) See also Konig, “A New Look at the Essex ‘French,’ ”
EIHC
110 (1974): 178–80.

Order of General Court, 22 December 1691, broadside, CO 5/858, f 257. English was elected a Town selectman in early March 1691/2; that too would have called attention to him by placing him in a position to undermine the war effort.

The records of the cases are in EC Ct Recs/WPA, ser. 2; see
English v.
Reed,
49:137/1–139/3 (Beale’s testimony is 139/3); and
English v. Cromwell,
49:69/2–78/3 (English’s inheritance claim is 69/2). Ibid., 49:52/1 is the inventory of Eleanor Hollingsworth’s estate, designating English as administrator. See the Cromwell case (which English appealed) in Ipswich Court Records, 30 September 1690, Misc. Manuscripts Bound, MHS. Karlsen has argued that the same sort of aggressive litigiousness over inheritance helped to lead to witchcraft accusations of women (Karlsen,
Devil in the Shape of a Woman,
chapter 3 passim). On the norms of conduct, see Mary Beth Norton,
Founding Mothers & Fathers: Gendered
Power and the Forming of American Society
(New York, 1996), chapter 4 passim.

SWP
1:317–19. “Admired” here meant “were surprised by.”

Ibid., 1:151; Calef,
MWIW,
in
WDNE
3:127. For initial accusations in late April, see
SWP
2:397 (Hoar), 2:575–76 (Martin). The group was collectively accused of harming Ann Putnam Jr., Mary Walcott, Mercy Lewis, Abigail Williams, Betty Hubbard, and Susannah Sheldon. Calef’s source for his statement seems to have been
A Further Account of the Tryals of the New-England
Witches . . .
(London, 1693), 10. On English’s flight and destination: Noble, ed., “Some Documentary Fragments,”
CSM Pubs
10 (1904–1906): 18–19. For Sarah Morrell: Robinson,
Devil Discovered,
355.

SWP
2:558–59. Other evidence against Martin will be discussed in the context of her trial in June; see chapter 6, below. For more on Martin: Karlsen,
Devil
in the Shape of a Woman,
89–95.

This paragraph and the next two draw on
SWP
2:550–52. Another nearly identical version of her examination is printed ibid., 553–55. The original documents are both in the hand of Samuel Parris (SWP/SJC/PEM 1:174, 175).

SWP
2:389, 400, 394.

Ibid., 390–91, for this paragraph and the next. At the end of the day on May 2, Martin, Hoar, Morrell, and Dustin were all sent to jail in Boston (ibid., 2:550). Sheldon’s altered identification seems to have postponed a formal complaint against Goody Buckley for another two weeks; see below. No one appears to have remarked on the fact that Sheldon’s testimony indicated that a specter could
lie
about its identity; the truthfulness of apparitions’ reported statements was commonly taken for granted.

Hall, ed.,
Witch-Hunting,
342–43, 349 (Clawson); 322–25 (Disborough). For Disborough’s background, see Karlsen,
Devil in the Shape of a Woman,
139–40.

SWP
1:152. The need to consult people in Boston probably accounted for the ten-day interval between Ann Jr.’s initial accusation and the issuance of the warrant for Burroughs’s arrest. Because that warrant was dispatched (evidently from Boston) on the very day the formal complaint was filed against Burroughs in Salem Village, the process seems to have been carefully coordinated.

Ibid., 1:152, 174, 170. That he was held at Beadle’s: ibid., 1:176. Mary would have been eight years old when Burroughs left Salem Village in 1683.

Ibid., 1:166. Note that again a specter had lied; Burroughs’s apparition told Ann Jr. not to believe the specters of his dead wives, but since they told opposite stories, either they or he was not telling the truth. No one (even later critics of the trials) seemed to notice.

Ibid., 1:176–77. As was indicated in chapter 3, Daniel King was one of the leaders of the August 1691 expedition against the Wabanakis, and he presumbly knew Burroughs in Maine.

Ibid., 1:168–69. The deceased Rebecca Putnam Fuller Sheppard (Mrs. John) had been Sgt. Thomas Putnam’s cousin; the subject of this exchange seems to have been a currently afflicted daughter of hers not otherwise mentioned in the records.