The Witch's Trinity (33 page)
Read The Witch's Trinity Online
Authors: Erika Mailman
After a preliminary trial in Springfield, the case was referred to Northampton. Mary once again vigorously proclaimed her innocence, while neighbors provided more testimony against her. A committee of “soberdized, chaste women” examined Mary, performing a survey of her naked body to see if any marks of witchcraft showed on her flesh. Eighteen years earlier, during the slander case, William Houlton said Sarah Bridgman was so suspicious of Mary that she wouldn’t be satisfied until women searched her three times. Sarah Bridgman’s wish now came true posthumously. We can only imagine Mary’s humiliation at having neighbors poke and prod her. We have no record of what those women found or did not find but the report was sent along to Boston with the testimonies; Northampton, less gracious than last time, referred the case to that city, making Mary post bond to be sure she’d appear. Witnesses briefly pulled Mary’s twenty-four-year-old son John into the case, calling him a witch as well, but he was dismissed.
The Boston grand jury indicted Mary in early March 1675 and imprisoned her until her trial in mid-May. We can assume Mary was confined in a cold cell with a dirt floor, and mixed in with men and women together, which may have provided its own dangers. The prison might have reminded her of the cellar her husband had locked her into, where she believed she encountered the spirits that caused the first fits that drew attention to her as a witch.
On May 13, 1675, she faced a jury and spoke for herself. In attendance was no less a personage than the governor of Massachusetts. Again, no transcript survives, but the final record does summarize the decision. Despite Mary Bliss Parsons’ initial indictment for “not having the fear of God before her eyes” and for having “entered into familiarity with the divill and committed several acts of witchcraft,” the court proclaimed her not guilty. She was released. Twice now, Mary Bliss Parsons had effectively and persuasively argued her own innocence of witchcraft.
The Parsonses stayed in Boston as Joseph pursued real estate purchases. They eventually moved back to Springfield, perhaps finding it friendlier in the end than Northampton.
12
There were several unfortunate reverberations from Mary’s witchcraft battles; people wouldn’t let the scandal die. Ebenezer Parsons, the child who thrived while the Bridgmans’ son faded, died in a surprise Indian attack at Northfield, Massachusetts, in September 1675. Mary’s Boston acquittal had taken place that same year in May. Cruelly, neighbors put out the word that this was God’s retribution for Mary’s false exoneration. “Behold, though human judges may be bought off, God’s vengeance neither turns aside nor slumbers,” wrote one historian, imagining how the criticism was worded.
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Second, in 1702, a slave named Betty Negro was indicted for cursing and striking a child. The child, Peletiah Glover Jr., told the court that Betty claimed his grandmother (Mary Bliss Parsons) “had killed two persons over the river, and had killed Mrs. Pynchon and half-killed the Colonel, and that his mother [Hannah Parsons] was half a witch.”
Fortunately, Mary was not pulled into court again; instead, poor Betty was lashed ten times by the constable (who was Mary’s nephew). It may have helped that the two justices of the peace were Mary’s son Joseph (and thus Peletiah’s brother-in-law) and John Pynchon, who had testified favorably in Mary’s slander case.
Joseph Parsons had died in 1683, while Mary continued as a widow for almost thirty years, dying in 1712 at about eighty-five. She was confused and unwell at the end, to the extent that two of her sons, Joseph and John, took over her estate in 1711.
The rumors have finally quieted. Some of Mary’s own descendants—including me—were unwitting of her alleged misconduct. My heart goes out to my ancestor, whose life was marred by continuing gossip—and strangely enough, it goes out to Sarah Bridgman as well, who seemingly only sought an explanation for the hard luck she endured. Sarah and her family chose to scapegoat my ancestor…a shameful decision, but one supported by the culture of the time.
Note:
Fortunately, there is much material available on both Mary Parsonses; unfortunately, sources often contradict each other. Moreover, it’s difficult to interpret these events through the filmy veil of 350 years. The anecdote of the hidden key, for example, strikes me as something whose meaning is lost to culture and time. Was it commonplace for husbands to commandeer the home’s locks? Was it understood at the time as a teasing gesture or an abuse? Some researchers think Joseph was locking Mary up to keep her from sleepwalking. I am grateful that chroniclers have fastidiously logged the details; I take responsibility for all errors.
S
OURCES
Burt, Henry M.
The First Century of the History of Springfield; The Official Records from 1636 to 1736, with an Historical Review and Biographical Mention of the Founders.
Sections about Mary Lewis Parsons posted as “Witchcraft in Springfield: Hugh and Mary Parsons.” American Local History Network, http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ ma/county/hampden/hist/witchcraft.html, accessed October 2006.
Demos, John Putnam.
Entertaining Satan.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
“The Mary (Bliss) Parsons Witchcraft Trial.” Center for Computer-Based Technology, University of Massachusetts, http://ccbit.cs.umass.edu/parsons/hnmockup/home.html, accessed October 2006.
Parsons, Gerald.
Our Parsons Heritage.
Baltimore: Gateway Press, 2003.
Parsons, Henry.
Parsons Family: Descendants of Cornet Joseph Parsons.
New York: Frank Allaben Genealogical Company, 1912.
Acknowledgments
I am indebted to my agent, Marly Rusoff, and her partner, Michael Radulescu, and to my editor, Allison McCabe. I have found our collaborations to be absolutely energizing and fruitful and I’m grateful to be working with such wonderful people.
Thanks to Joe Quirk for loaning me Teofilo F. Ruiz’s
The Terror of History
audiotapes, which inspired this novel, and to Teo himself for reading the manuscript and graciously answering my never-ending questions. Thanks to readers Jennifer Lee and Maria Strom, to the Oakland Schuhplattler group for teaching me the Miller’s Dance, and to Herb Schmidt for help with German words. Thanks to Tamim Ansary, Joe Quirk, and Gary Turchin for their years-long support and friendship, and all the other members of the San Francisco Writers Workshop. There are many wonderful books out there about the European witch craze; one I particularly liked was Jeffrey Burton Russell’s
Witchcraft in the Middle Ages.
Of valuable assistance to my research on Mary Bliss Parsons was John Putnam Demos’
Entertaining Satan,
and I thank Mr. Demos personally for reading my essay. I somewhat altered the song “I Must Go Walk the Wood,” a lyric dating to 1500, found in R. T. Davies’
Medieval English Lyrics.
I also want to extend appreciation to the Web site agentquery.com, which connected me with my agent and whose staff rooted for me. Thanks also to Alan Howard, Cathy Clarke, Kenneth G. Hecht Jr., Scott James, and Melodie Bowsher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2007 by Erika Mailman
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
CROWN is a trademark and the Crown colophon is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mailman, Erika.
The witch’s trinity: a novel / Erika Mailman.—1st ed.
1. Famines—Fiction. 2. Germany—History—1273–1517—Fiction. 3. Witches—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3613.A349345 W58 2007
813'.6—dc22 2006103292
eISBN: 978-0-307-40559-3
v1.0
FOOTNOTES
1
Goody
is short for
Goodwife,
an early and less prestigious form of
Mrs.
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2 More than a quarter of the people accused of witchcraft in seventeenth-century New England were acquitted, according to
Entertaining Satan
by John Putnam Demos.
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3 Genealogists have been unable to establish a familial relationship between Hugh and Joseph Parsons. It is possible, but quite unlikely, that they were brothers.
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4 Here are the bare bones. In 1649, Mary Lewis Parsons was accused of slander, for calling another woman a witch. Found guilty, she paid twenty-four bushels of Indian corn to avoid the alternative: twenty lashes. After this, she began losing her mental faculties. Later testimony revealed that Mary believed more than one person was a witch; she told a neighbor that she suspected her husband. In 1651, husband and wife stood trial, she for causing fits in the minister’s children, he for a dozen acts of mischief such as making an ox tongue disappear from the kettle it was cooking in. During the time of examination, their five-month-old child died. Mary confessed both to witchcraft and to murdering the child and was sent to Boston for further trial. She was acquitted of witchcraft but found guilty of murder and sentenced to die by hanging. Due to her extreme illness, her execution was postponed and it is believed she died in prison. Hugh was originally found guilty of witchcraft, but his wife’s confession got him off the hot seat. In 1652, he was ultimately acquitted. He left Springfield and remarried.
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5 Behavioral psychologist Linnda Caporael introduced a theory in 1976 that ergot poisoning (from a rye fungus) caused the convulsions and hallucinations of the Salem witchcraft trials.
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6 Springfield was bought for eighteen yards of wampum (shells on strings), eighteen coats, eighteen hatchets, eighteen hoes, and eighteen knives. Northampton was bought for two hundred yards of wampum, ten coats, and a few trinkets.
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7 When Joseph died in 1683, his estate was valued at more than £2,000. James Bridgman’s estate was a mere £114 in 1676.
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8 Although the
timing
of these sad events was exquisitely painful for Sarah, the two women were basically neck and neck in their fertility at the time of the first trial. Sarah had experienced three newborn losses, while Mary had undergone two. Both at the time had four healthy children at home who would indeed grow to adulthood. However, after the trial, Mary went on to be über-fertile, giving birth to fourteen children total, with nine reaching adulthood. Sarah ultimately gave birth eight times, with only four living to adulthood.
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9 James Trumbull, as quoted in
The Parsons Family
by Henry Parsons, vol. 1.
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10 Mary Walton Ferris, as quoted in
Entertaining Satan.
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11 Besides the Hannums, three other witnesses would end up changing their negative testimony against Mary Bliss Parsons to positive.
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12 Some historians believe the move to Springfield was precipitated by yet another accusation against Mary. In 1678, Northampton resident John Stebbins died, believed killed by witches. He was Samuel Bartlett’s brother-in-law; this familial connection spurs the surmise that one of the unnamed suspects in the inquest was Mary Parsons. No action was taken after Boston reviewed the evidence.
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