the possibility that my family could have been connected to the witch trials has fascinated me and got me into looking into that whole sordid tale.
it turns out that it was more than just nineteen unlucky people who got hung or killed for various aspersions made by people pretending to be in a trance or claiming that they were possessed by the devil. in fact it seemed kind of like it was turning into a mass movement, with more than 150 accused and likely to die if the whole thing weren't suddenly cut off by the governor, who suspected that half of the accusations were being made up.
among those 150, the ones who were pardoned, there are some interesting people. massive research has been done on the 19, in hopes that clues could be dug up about the times, and the motives, particularly the motives of the girls whose spells caused so many deaths. but now research is being done on the 150 aa well. who were they? how did they live? what was at the bottom of these accusations?
we had a relative who disappeared up in that area at about that time. she would have been about eighteen at the time of the witch trials and she very well could have had a child with her. she seems to appear in salem sixteen years later marrying a guy, and then dying in wenham a few years after that. it's the baby, if there is one, who is most interesting, as he seems to marry a mary whittridge in 1710. there's a mary witherage among the 150, convicted, imprisoned, then released. she would not be the same mary; she remarried a proctor.
nonetheless even the hint of a connection got me pretty excited. it wasn't all that huge an area, not so many people altogether. an incredible number of them just seem to have disappeared, including our relatives.
The Mary Whittridge of 1710 named her first daughter Phebee, and I thought that was a clue, given the fact that there aren't so many Phebees around. Unfortunately, Phebee is like Whittridge - there are several spellings - so it makes it hard to google birth records. A dead end so far. Where could she have gotten that name? there was a phoebe, caught up in the witch trials, one of the 150, maybe that's who the daughter was named after. who knows? it seems like a foggy world up there, with accusations flying around like hail in a sea squall.
all just a diversion, and i'll have to move on.
it turns out that it was more than just nineteen unlucky people who got hung or killed for various aspersions made by people pretending to be in a trance or claiming that they were possessed by the devil. in fact it seemed kind of like it was turning into a mass movement, with more than 150 accused and likely to die if the whole thing weren't suddenly cut off by the governor, who suspected that half of the accusations were being made up.
among those 150, the ones who were pardoned, there are some interesting people. massive research has been done on the 19, in hopes that clues could be dug up about the times, and the motives, particularly the motives of the girls whose spells caused so many deaths. but now research is being done on the 150 aa well. who were they? how did they live? what was at the bottom of these accusations?
we had a relative who disappeared up in that area at about that time. she would have been about eighteen at the time of the witch trials and she very well could have had a child with her. she seems to appear in salem sixteen years later marrying a guy, and then dying in wenham a few years after that. it's the baby, if there is one, who is most interesting, as he seems to marry a mary whittridge in 1710. there's a mary witherage among the 150, convicted, imprisoned, then released. she would not be the same mary; she remarried a proctor.
nonetheless even the hint of a connection got me pretty excited. it wasn't all that huge an area, not so many people altogether. an incredible number of them just seem to have disappeared, including our relatives.
The Mary Whittridge of 1710 named her first daughter Phebee, and I thought that was a clue, given the fact that there aren't so many Phebees around. Unfortunately, Phebee is like Whittridge - there are several spellings - so it makes it hard to google birth records. A dead end so far. Where could she have gotten that name? there was a phoebe, caught up in the witch trials, one of the 150, maybe that's who the daughter was named after. who knows? it seems like a foggy world up there, with accusations flying around like hail in a sea squall.
all just a diversion, and i'll have to move on.
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