Escaping Salem: The Other Witch Hunt of 1692

E
scaping
S
alem

The Other Witch Hunt of 1692

RICHARD GODBEER

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

London     New York

Table of Contents

Copyright © 2005 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Godbeer, Richard.
Escaping Salem: the other witch hunt of 1692 / by Richard Godbeer.
p. cm.—(New narratives in American history)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ).
ISBN: 0195161297
ISBN: 0195161300 (pbk.)
1. Trials (Witchcraft)–Connecticut–Stamford–History–17th century.
I. Title. II. Series.
KFC3678.8.W5G66 2004
133.4'3'097469–dc22
2004043399

Printing number: 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America

on acid-free paper

for all those

falsely accused

In matters of witchcraft, the outbreak at Salem Village is the Jupiter of the solar system. It has attracted more notice in the popular press—and even among scholars—than any other such episode in American history. Yet the sheer magnitude of the outbreak, with its multiple trials, attendant hysteria, and wide geographical spread, has created a kind of gravitational distortion that has colored our broader notions of witchcraft. Although Salem was not typical of most outbreaks in colonial New England, it remains, by default, the archetype through which most Americans understand, or misunderstand, the subject.

Yet Salem was not the only community to serve up a witch hunt in 1692. Farther south, another incident roiled the area around Stamford and Fairfield, Connecticut, without producing an equally lasting notoriety. As Richard Godbeer demonstrates in the engrossing narrative presented here, in many ways the Stamford controversy reveals more about the anguish and ambiguities of witchcraft than do the more frequently examined tumults at Salem. Godbeer has drawn upon a rich trove of court transcripts and depositions to recreate the events arising out of the fits of one Katherine Branch, a servant in the household of a respected Stamford townsman.

Escaping Salem
is one of Oxford’s New Narratives in American History, a series of books that foregoes the detached, often Olympian manner of much historical prose. We have challenged our authors to envision less traditional approaches to their subjects, both in method and in language. Godbeer conjures the world of Stamford in 1692 not by deploying the explicitly analytical techniques of the social scientist but through a deceptively simple rendering of events, viewed from the perspectives of the various participants. At the same time, the insights of the social sciences have not been neglected, for as the afterword reveals, they very much shape the way the narrative is drawn.

Readers may be surprised to learn that the men and women struggling to understand Katherine Branch’s fits exhibited a broad range of emotions and ideas. They were not always eager to blame the Devil for Branch’s afflictions, on the one hand, or to assume, on the other, that she was either an impostor or a woman beset by mental illness. In Godbeer’s carefully reconstructed world, all these readings were options, as the natural and supernatural coexisted uneasily alongside folk wisdom, superstition, and skepticism, as well as the natural philosophies and theologies of early New Englanders.

James West Davidson
Michael B. Stoff
Series Editors

It was in the late 1980s that i first encountered the cast of characters whose ordeal in the year of their Lord 1692 this book reconstructs. The witch hunt that began in Stamford, Connecticut, a few months after the outbreak of afflictions in Salem Village appeared as a short case study in my doctoral dissertation and later in my first book. I had a feeling at the time that there was much more to be written about the Stamford witch hunt and its significance, but this was clearly another project for another day. Since then I have often used the transcripts in an undergraduate course that I teach on witchcraft in early New England. That experience has taught me that Stamford’s witch hunt has much to tell us about the varied, often remarkably cautious, ways in which New Englanders reacted to allegations of witchcraft; it also shows with singular clarity how disagreements between neighbors over who or what was really causing an alleged bewitchment could compromise and undermine accusations. Above all, it is a gripping story that deserves to be told as such. Watching and listening as my students reacted to the documents, pondering the implications of their questions, and digesting their insights has been an indispensable part of the process through which the story of what happened that year took form in my mind’s eye.

Now I have an opportunity to tell that story, thanks to Oxford University Press. Peter Coveney has my sincere thanks for shepherding this project so deftly over the past two years; working with Peter, his editorial assistant June Kim, production editor Celeste Alexander, and copy-editor Terri O’Prey has been a genuine pleasure.

I am also grateful to the John Hay Library at Brown University, the Connecticut State Library, and the Stamford Historical Society for preserving documents from the 1692 Connecticut trials and for giving me access to them. Local historians Ronald Marcus and Barbara Kaye have shared their deep knowledge of Stamford’s past—I greatly appreciate their help and that of Irene Hahn, a volunteer archivist at the Stamford Historical Society. Many years ago John Demos kindly lent me his own painstaking transcript of the depositions from these trials; that transcription and David Hall’s recently published edition of the trial documents, produced with the assistance of Emma Anderson and Anne Brown, have provided an invaluable basis for comparison as I developed my own version.

Writing has once again proven to be as much a collective as an individual endeavor that depends on the support and advice of friends and colleagues. Michael Bellesiles, Wendy Lucas Castro, Madeline Duntley, Mary Francis, Denise Garrison, Piotr Gorecki, and Elizabeth Reis offered insightful and encouraging comments on the manuscript at various stages of its development. Christine Heyrman, my professional fairy godmother who still casts her magical dust over all that I write, has been characteristically savvy and forthright in her exhortations. But my principal debt this time around is to Jim Davidson, who has guided this project from its first conception through to the final revisions of the manuscript. I have had more than my fair share of good fortune in teachers, especially in the craft of writing. Jim is my latest mentor. People who are almost always right can prove rather trying, but Jim somehow manages to be completely right and yet completely likeable—this is quite a coup. It has been a privilege and a pleasure to learn from so benign a master of the craft.

It was early one evening in June 1692 and dusk was falling over Stamford, Connecticut, a compact little town of some five hundred souls perched on the northern shore of the Long Island Sound. A young man named Ebenezer Bishop was strolling homeward through the town, hungry for his supper after helping one of his neighbors mend a broken fence. Mary Newman, a woman in her early thirties whom Ebenezer had known since childhood, was heading in the opposite direction. They greeted each other cordially as their paths crossed and Ebenezer continued on his way. But a few seconds later he came to an abrupt halt in front of Mister Wescot’s house as a young woman’s scream erupted from inside—a piercing, blood-chilling scream followed by a prolonged wail of pain and fright.

Ebenezer shuddered. He looked back over his shoulder, exchanged a meaningful glance with Mary, and then quickened his pace to put some distance between him and Mister Wescot’s house. The scream came as no surprise to him or Mary. Both had witnessed the horrors that tormented the Wescot household. Like many of their neighbors in the close-knit town, they had visited Daniel and Abigail Wescot to lend support as the couple kept watch over the afflicted young woman in their charge. What they saw there had convinced Ebenezer and Mary that Katherine Branch, a seventeen-year-old maidservant in the Wescot home, was bewitched.

Kate, as she was known, had been in that tormented state since the end of April. Without warning and for no apparent reason she would suddenly collapse into agonized convulsions, crying out that she was pinched and pricked by invisible creatures, weeping and moaning in helpless terror. At other times she would sink into a paralyzed trance, stiff as a board and completely senseless. She told her master and mistress that during these fits she saw cats that sometimes transformed into women before her eyes and then changed back into animal form. It was these creatures that attacked her, she said.

Stamford, the site of these ghastly afflictions, was a remote southwestern outpost of Puritan New England. Although much closer to New York than to Boston, its character and layout were typical of a New England town. First settled in 1641, Stamford had grown largely through natural increase. The town was remarkably uniform in its ethnic and spiritual makeup: residents were mostly of English descent and identified with the Puritan faith. Most of the houses were clustered together within easy reach of the meetinghouse, which enabled the faithful to keep close watch over each other, protecting their neighbors and themselves from sin. With few exceptions, the families who lived there supported themselves by farming on strips of land that surrounded the town. The townsfolk aspired to a life of peaceful order and purposeful spirituality. Yet Stamford was at the present time anything but peaceful or orderly. Indeed, it was under supernatural attack.