The Witch's Trinity (32 page)

Learning about my ancestor was absorbing and ultimately sobering. She and her husband lived for a number of years in Springfield, Massachusetts, neighbors to Mary Lewis Parsons and her husband Hugh.
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Beginning in 1649, Mary Lewis Parsons experienced witchcraft troubles of her own. I will not give all the details of her well-documented case, but for our purposes, the important thing is this: in 1651 this neighbor and her husband stood trial, she for causing fits in the minister’s children, he for a dozen acts of mischief.
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Springfield consisted of only forty-seven households in 1651; undoubtedly turmoil over the case plagued the small community. My ancestor reacted strongly to her similarly named neighbor’s situation. When the minister’s children were having fits, she (a grown woman with four children of her own) was also having spells. One Sunday, she had to be carried out of Sabbath meeting along with the enchanted children. During another fit a neighbor carried her home. He said, “I discerned that she did not understand herself nor where she was.” Chillingly, Mary cried out a warning that witches would creep under someone’s bed. In her spells, she struggled with such power it took two men to hold her. Other neighbors saw her fits, later testifying, “Shee would looke fearfully somtymes as if shee saw something, & then bow downe her head, as others did on theire fits about that time.”

Why was Mary Bliss Parsons having fits? Was she epileptic? Was she part of a group delusion, three decades before the Salem hysteria? Was there ergot in her bread?
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According to a neighbor’s later testimony, my ancestor believed her fits were the result of being locked in the cellar by her husband, Joseph. She claimed the cellar was full of spirits she threw her bedclothes and pillow at, but they would not leave.
Bedclothes and pillow
in the cellar? Did Joseph lock her down there so often her bed was stationed there? After fighting spirits in the basement, Mary was washing clothes at the brook and spirits appeared to her in the shape of poppets (dolls). Seeing the tiny, fiendish specters caused her to fall into her first fit.

In 1654, Mary and Joseph Parsons moved to a new town, Northampton, nineteen miles away. Joseph and others had negotiated with Native Americans to buy the land then called Nonotuck. As a fur trader, Joseph dealt often with native peoples and spoke their language, at least enough to trade with them. As a seventeen-year-old in 1636, he had witnessed the deed of cession for the land that became Springfield, just sixteen years after the Mayflower landing.
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A founding father in Northampton, Joseph held many civic offices and began buying up land, becoming wealthy. He and Mary had their fifth child Ebenezer, in May 1655; he was the first white child born in Northampton.

Another family also moved from Springfield to Northampton: Sarah and James Bridgman. Sarah was eight years older than Mary, she had married a man whose finances and social standing were modest, and she had lost several children.
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In the same month that twenty-seven-year-old Mary gave birth to healthy Ebenezer, thirty-five-year-old Sarah gave birth to James, who died after two weeks. Sarah had previously lost a newborn about eight years earlier, and she lost another, named Patience, in February 1656.
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Several months after squalling Ebenezer arrived in the Parsons family and sadness visited the Bridgmans, Sarah’s eleven-year-old son John wandered out to look for the family’s cows. Some strange force struck the boy on the head, making his hat fly off and causing him to nearly fall to the ground. John thought it was an unseen bird; continuing on, he stumbled, fell, and put his knee out of joint. Back at home, a surgeon set the knee but John was in “grievous torture,” his mother later told the courts, for about a month. One morning at dawn John shouted out, waking his parents. He told them that Goody Parsons was trying to pull off his knee and “there shee sits on the shelfe.”

The frightened parents responded that there was no one on the shelf and struggled to keep the violent boy in his bed. After a time, he quieted and said Goody Parsons was running away, a black mouse following her. He repeated this many times with so much vehemence that they feared for his life. Soon Sarah was telling Goody Branch (a Springfield woman who presumably came for a friendly visit) her fears about Mary Parsons’ character. Several other women were there to hear this gossip; the news was too large to be contained in Sarah’s small Colonial home. It spread and other neighbors recalled strange interactions with Mary Bliss Parsons; one can imagine the suspicious glances and pinched faces on the dusty lanes of that small village.

Perhaps inspired by the slander trial of the other Mary Parsons, Joseph Parsons filed a slander suit against Sarah on behalf of his wife. This was a risky thing to do, given Mary’s history in Springfield. And it also put his wife’s reputation on trial. Proving one is being slandered means proving one is innocent of the tales being told.

Dozens of people testified, both for and against each woman. This showed extraordinary interest and involvement: Northampton only consisted of thirty-two households at the time. Springfield also contributed a few witnesses. Mary was said to have fits; speak of witches; make spun yarn diminish in volume; cause a cow, sow, and ox to die; be able to locate her house key even when it was hidden by her husband; and go into the water and not be wet.

We can look back at these accusations and wonder at a world where if a cow died early and unexpectedly, magic had to be the reason. Unable to elevate scientific explanations for natural (and naturally frightening) phenomena above their superstitious beliefs, the early settlers heard rough whispers in the wind and believed that sentient forces were behind them.

A neighbor, William Hannum, testified against Mary during the slander trial. They had fought about the volume of yarn his wife had sold her, and the next morning one of his cows lay in the yard, sick. He got the beast to her feet and fed her unceasing meals of “samp pease wholesome drinks eggs etc.” but the cow died two weeks later. The same week, Hannum said, he witnessed Joseph beating his child for losing a shoe. He testified, “To my apprehension he beat it unmercifully, & his wife comeinge to save it, because shee had beaten it before as shee said, he thrust her away.” The next day, neighborhood talk was about how Joseph had “in a sort beaten his wife.” Hannum jested about it and when word got back to Mary, she confronted him angrily. That same evening, his pig, who had four young piglets to nurse, went missing. While he was looking for the pig a neighbor told him he had seen a sow in the swamp. “I went thither and it was my sow & there shee stood with her nose to the ground looking steadily as if shee had seen something in the ground. Soe I drove her home & before noon that day shee died. Shee till now was a lusty swine and well fleshed,” testified Hannum.

Hannum also stated he had lost his ox to Mary’s evil influence. He had joined his two oxen with those of Mary’s brother and another man’s to break up some ground. Mary scolded him for abusing her brother’s oxen, because he had put them in the middle where they were “always under the whip.” Hannum disagreed with her assessment and she went away furious. Three days later, he was driving his oxen when a rattlesnake bit one on the tongue “and there he dyed.” Is it any wonder that the ox died in this way, when it was clearly Mary’s venomous temperament that was responsible?

“Thse things doe somethinge run in my mind that I cannot have my mind from this Woman, that if shee be not right shee may bee a cause of these things, though I desire to look at the over-rulinge hand of God in all,” concluded Hannum humbly.

Mary’s strong character and willingness to scold neighbors created hard feelings that led to testimony against her, but it also permitted her to stand up in court confidently and speak on her own behalf (attorneys did not generally represent litigants, especially in inland towns). Says a chronicler, “Mary Parsons was apparently a proud and nervous woman, haughty in demeanor and inclined to carry things with a high hand; she belonged to the aristocracy and evidently considered herself a dame of considerable importance.”
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Another report has her “possessed of great beauty and talents, but…not very amiable…exclusive in her choice of associates.”
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Hannum briefly appeared in court a second time to answer a question about the cow, and a week after his testimony about the untimely farm deaths, Hannum and his wife came before the court a third time with some surprising news. They admitted that Sarah Bridgman’s husband had “hiared them to downe to Springfield to give in there testimony.” Why were the Bridgmans so deeply against Mary, to the extent of pressuring the Hannums to testify against her? Entrenched bitterness is my best guess. After all, Joseph chose Sarah as the sole defendant in his suit, when seemingly half the village was passing rumors. She was still raw from the death of her newborn Patience four months prior.

Moreover, she was losing the case. Previous to the Hannums’ testimony, four people had testified on Mary’s behalf and only two for Sarah—one of those being herself. Sarah seemingly scrambled to fortify her case, coercing neighbors to testify and coming up with a grimmer accusation herself. On the same day in August that Hannum gave that compelled testimony, Sarah testified for a second time. When she had first spoken in June, she had focused only on her son’s injured knee and upon other neighbors agreeing that Mary was “not right.” But with Sarah’s second chance to speak her piece, she added a much more sobering allegation: she spoke of May 1655, when her sickly son James was a newborn. Sitting with James on her lap, she said, a “great blow” came upon the door. At the moment she heard this sound, her child “changed,” as she put it (from healthy to ill).

“I thought with myself and told my girle I was afraid my child would dy,” said Sarah. She sent the girl (presumably her oldest daughter, Martha, then twelve) out to answer the door, but Martha found no one. After the girl came back in, Sarah peered through a hole in the door and saw two women walk past the house with white cloths on their heads. The eerie sight spurred her to send out the girl yet again, who found no one outside. “This made mee think there is wickedness in the place,” said Sarah.

As we know, James was not long for this world. It’s interesting that Sarah never actually
named
Mary Bliss Parsons in relation to this incident, although she freely referred to her in the testimony that expanded on her description months previously of John’s knee being pulled by an invisible force. James had died shortly before John’s knee trauma, so why hadn’t Sarah mentioned it the first time she testified? As if somewhat ashamed, she only briefly spoke of the dead child in this amplified declaration, and devoted twice as much explanation to the knee episode. Most tellingly, James Bridgman testified right on the heels of his wife, confirming the knee grabbing but not mentioning the doomed newborn at all.

After Sarah’s second testimony, neighbors rallied in force to combat the increasingly serious allegations against Mary.
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On August 18, 1656, thirteen testified (formerly the largest number on a given day had been six), and every single person testified in Mary’s favor. Of these, seven rebutted the charges about the dead farm animals (including, as mentioned above, the Hannums themselves); one said Sarah had a grudge against Mary; two were Mary’s parents; and three women came forward to rebut the new charge about James. Hanna Lanton, Sarah’s next door neighbor, said that she had come to dress the child soon after his birth and that he had a “louseness” (looseness; i.e., diarrhea). She thought the child had a cold. Hanna Broughton who also came to nurse Sarah confirmed that James was sickly even before Sarah rose from childbed. Neighbor Anne Bartlett added that the baby was groaning from sickness right after its birth. Further, she had asked Sarah how the child was, and Sarah responded that he had “the louseness still which it had at the first and if it continueth I feare it will be the death of my child.” Anne was with the baby the night he died. He had another attack of diarrhea, and Sarah had said, “Thus hath it been from the first.”

It was all damning testimony against Sarah Bridgman, and on September 8, 1656, a bond for her arrest was issued. However, the constable responded that Sarah was not able to appear without hazard to her life. She was pregnant again (the historical record does not show a birth date for this child, so possibly she miscarried). In the following days, more witnesses would show for Sarah, then several for Mary, and finally a decision was rendered.

Sarah Bridgman was found guilty of slander and ordered to publicly apologize to Mary Bliss Parsons, both in Springfield and in Northampton, within the next sixty days. If she did not comply, she could pay a £10 fine instead. She was also ordered to pay Joseph Parsons’ court costs: 7 pounds, 1 shilling, and 8 pence. It is unknown whether Sarah made the humiliating public acknowledgment or simply paid the fine. The case was over, but in such an insular environment, feelings doubtless continued at high pitch. When Sarah and Mary next met on the street or in meetinghouse on Sabbath day, we can only imagine their emotions and reactions. But the interactions were short-lived. Sarah died in 1668 at the age of forty-seven.

Eighteen years later, in 1674 and at the age of forty-six, my ancestor found herself in court again for the charge of witchcraft. Sarah’s daughter Mary Bridgman Bartlett, who was four years old at the time of the slander trial, had died very suddenly; her bereaved husband, Samuel, and her grudge-holding father, James Bridgman, filed suit against Mary Bliss Parsons.

Unfortunately, testimony in this case no longer exists, but the original complaint states that Samuel Bartlett believed his wife died “by means of some evil instrument.” James Bridgman, similarly, “strongly suspects she come to her end by some unlawfull & unatureall means.” Whatever the “diverse evidences” the two men showed to the court were, they reflected badly on Mary, who was warned to prepare “to answer what shall be objected against her.” The witnesses were also warned to back up what they’d already said upon oath.