Our historian interview today is with Richard Drask. Since nineteen seventy two, he served as the archivist for the town of Danverse, that's Old Salem Village, overseeing one of the most extensive imprint collections on Salem witchcraft in the country. His expertise in the Salem witchcraft era has allowed him to direct the excavation of the Samuel Paris Parsonage archaeological site.
He's also served as curator of the sixteen seventy eight Rebecca Nurse Homestead and is the author of the book The Devil Hath Been Raised and co editor of the two thousand nine Cambridge University Press volume Records of the Salem witch Hunt. Not only that, but he's a descendant of several witchcraft victims. He has taught American history and architecture, was an eighteenth century re enactor for over two decades,
and has lectured extensively throughout New England. Trasca served as a consultant for CBS News, the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board, and the National Archives. And I had a chance to sit down with Trask this past summer and we had a great chat that I can't wait to share with you. So without further delay, let's get on with the show. This is the Unobscured Interview series for season one. I'm Aaron Mankey. My name is
Richard Trask. I'm a county in the town of Danvers and most people haven't heard of the name Danvers before. But our old name was Salem Village and this is ground zero of the witchcraft of Salem Village in six And as a kid, I used to go to my grandparents very often, and my grandmother would tell me stories about one of our ancestors who was hanged as a witch, Mary Esty. She was a sister of Rebecca Nurris More,
well known of the witchcraft victims. And UH. I used to look at a book in their small library, which was early twentieth century books called Salem Witchcraft by H. Fellow by the name of Nevins, and that just got me very interested in the subject, and I've been with
it since almost an adolescent. Um, well, let's start with a basic question, then, what was a witch in Salem according to the English uh, which was and this was the same with most of Europe at the time, which was a person who had aid a covenant, a pact with the devil, whereby they would gain uh knowledge power uh and be able to do things or change things that were typically unnatural. And for that, the devil gave
them this power and they were going to serve him. Uh. They often were given imps or familiars which were unseeable uh, things that would do evil to people. Uh. And they would have to suckle energy from the witch. And that's why and many of the witchcraft cases, they're always looking for what are called witch marks, a witch tits that the imps would be able to suck energy from the witch itself and which was a diabolical thing according to
the uh people of the time. We're not talking about Wiccan history and the witches who tend to be around this country today. This was a diabolical thing in which they worshiped and tried to do the devil's call and usually took the form of afflicting the the large air quote good Christians of the area. Yes, and in Salem Village in siou when they discovered that which is were about, the whole purpose of it was to bring down the
Puritan Commonwealth of Massachusetts. They looked at themselves as being the elect of God, the the new Israelites of old who were establishing a city upon the hill, and the Devil obviously would want to combat that type of thing, and that's why they believe that the Devil was coming to Salem Village into all of mass Bay to bring God's Kingdom on Earth down. Well, you know you mentioned mass Bay and in this the start of this call it a colony, but it was a lot of shots
fired of groups of people coming over. We talked before we started recording about Ennicott and and Conan's and how they brought people with them and it was more of a business venture. But can you describe the way that the Puritan faith shaped life in the New England colonies. Well, the Puritans were a sect in Old England which believed that the Church of England was still too Catholic, uh, and what they wanted to do was purify, thus the word Puritan uh the religion so that it didn't smack
of papestry or Catholicism. And Uh. They tried to live in England. They were abused, not significantly but somewhat. A number of them eventually decided to go to the New World. Um. They latched onto an economic device of the mass Bay Colony, and once they got here, they for a good generation or two were pretty much independent to do what they wanted, and they looked upon themselves as uh John Winthrop would
later say, establishing a new kingdom upon the Hill. And the first Puritans in Old England and New England were very staunch believers. As they came to the New World and kind of um established themselves, and as they got a little more comfortable, they backslid a bit. But the first uh uh Puritans, John Endicott being one of them, were very staunch in their beliefs and uh did not
countenance um outside agitated is coming in. They persecuted the Quakers for a period of time until the Home government said you can't do that. Uh. They didn't like Catholics, they didn't like really any other people coming in here because they believe that they knew the truth and they didn't want to uh have it uh become watered down by other people. So they weren't true democrats. They were people who believe that they wanted to establish and continue
their believes. Well, it sounds like they they came in early with an amount of power in autonomy, being thousands of miles from England. UM, and held on at that power. What did power look like in colonial New England? Um? And who had access to that power? Well, the popular belief is that, um, the Puritans were controlled by the clergy. But that's really not the case, especially during the witchcraft.
We find that with a few exceptions, and the exceptions of people who ministers within the communities that are being affected by witchcraft, most of the others, including the very fame Miss math or family and other theologians who lived in the Boston area, tried to stem the tide of witchcraft, saying, hold on, we've got to make sure we're not making any mistakes. It was the civil authorities, and Massachusetts was
a civil established government. Uh and uh, generally the government tended to be looking for which is much more so than the clergy. Why do you think that was? Probably because if you look at the original transcripts, and the wonderful thing about Salem witchcraft is that, Um, it's a relatively minor event in world history. UM. And if you go to England or the continent, hundreds, if not thousands of people were affected by it, year in and year out.
And the numbers are so much more dramatic than what happened in Salem Village. But the thing about Salem Village is Puritan's kept good records. And what we can do is we can read what one of the um accused, which is is saying uh during the civil process against them. Uh. You can hear um. One of my favorite favorite, which is is George Jacobs and George Jacobs when confronted at his examination eventually after being badget and Badge had said, well burn me and hang me, but I'll stand in
the truth of Christ. I know nothing of witchcraft. So we can read what these people said, you know, four years ago, and in some cases you can barely read it because it's they didn't know good English, they didn't know how to spell properly. And some of the petitions or depositions done by common Yeoman farmers are very revealing and also revealing and how they actually spoke. So we have something in the way of about nine hundred documents
that survive that include every aspect of the legal procedures. UH. And because of this, it's become very attractive to historians because here you have real good, primary source material that you can use, and you have so many wonderful quotes in there. Uh. And those who recorded were not people who were sympathetic to the accused witches. Reverend Samuel Paris was asked to in court right down some of the testimony.
And although a lot of people say, oh, Paris is so much involved in this, and how could you have someone like him or Thomas Putnam, the father of the chief Witchcraft accused of writing depositions, uh, they indicated often that I'm trying to I'm paraphrasing, I'm trying to record
exactly as what was said, not being prejudicial to any side. Right, So you do get these heroic uh quotes that people back at that time gave, and you can kind of see at least a little reveal of the psyche of some of the people and what was going on and in and in what's not said as well, in places where the records seemed to go silent, there's something being said there as well. Maybe it's become too overwhelming, there's too much commotion in the room, or I don't feel
like writing this sentence down. You know that's a possibility to and we do know that probably hundreds of other documents have disappeared once in a while. UM. We find some of the documents often there uh in we've just not looked hot enough within the traditional sources that they located there. Other times something pops up that became an archival astroy centuries ago and it comes back in. So
UM did pop up locally, sometimes locally. Sometimes they're in collections that people had when the witchcraft was over, many of these documents scot scattered, uh and later historians. There was a governor of Massachusetts during the pre Revolutionary period, Thomas Hutchison, who wrote a history of Massachusetts, and he actually was given a whole bunch of these very important documents.
And Hutchison was a Tory, and during the Stamp Act crisis of seventeen sixty five, when the American Provincials were mad at England, they attacked his house and they scattered all of his papers outside on the ground and so forth. So a lot of these papers went missing because of the riots of seventeen sixty five. Wow, it's a puzzle
still finding pieces. I like that. UM. We talked sometimes about the Salem Trials as an example of women's and girls voices breaking into the historical record, UM, women and girls played big roles in the crisis. As we dip into the whole story, we see that over and over again, both as accusers and as accused. You know, they're on both sides of the arguments or the event. Even so, all of the judges were men, and when the trials are ended, men retake the center stage. Life goes on
and it's men at the center again. Can you maybe describe some of the gender dynamics of this crisis? Sure, Um, In the seventeenth century UM, the world was made up of males who dominated, and then the women folk. It is true, however, that when you can see once in a while, in not only Witchcraft but other documents, that women ruled the household, whether or not they were supposedly in charge or not. And you can see that there
are some remarkable women, especially during the witchcraft. You see some of these women aren't going to take anything from the from the magistrates. UM. But it was a male dominated uh society. And also it was a society in which children were seen and not heard UH. And the witchcraft changed a lot of this. The witchcraft, the dynamics of Salem witchcraft was such that for one of the first times in history you had not just the usual suspects of witchcraft accused. These were usually women of a
lower social status who had some kind of problems with them. Well, we started having accused full fledged church members Rebecca Nurse Uh who belonged to the Salem Church and um Uh Mary um Martha Corey, who belonged to the Sale of Village Church. And in those days, what a covenant member meant was not that you were just a little bit better, but it meant that population of Salem Village was about
five hundred and fifty people. Of that five hundred and fifty, about forty five to fifty of them were full church members in sixte two. They were people who had been given a sign by God which the other church members acknowledged that they were one of the elect, that they were going to make it yes, and they were the only ones who could participate in communion uh. And it
was a high status. So as soon as the first woman who was a full fledged church member was accused, that got everyone very nervous because if you could have this person who's supposed to be one of the elect actually being a witch, that menu whole social order was was disrupted. Also, you were having small children accused. Sarah Good, who would have been one of the usual suspects. Her child, who was we think somewhere between four and five, was
also accused. Then you get as time goes on, not just the usual suspects and other women, but men begin to be accused. And it's not unusual to have a man accused, saying Old England or New England earlier, but in this case you get a whole bunch of them. You get a minister accused. You get probably the second or third most um rich person in all of Massachusetts accused, Philip English. Uh. They usually have something about them that
makes them a little bit different. Because Philip English's actual name was Philippe Anglais and he was a descendant of the Channel Islands, the frenchified Channel Island, so uh he was an outsider. Yeah. Uh, you have uh John Alden, the grandson of John and Priscilla accused. Um. So it became a little more democratic and who could be accused? Uh? And near the end of the witchcraft there was talk never went to anything legal, but there was talk that
the governor's wife might be one. So in one sense, It's kind of interesting in that Salem witchcraft was a little more democratic, Uh, but still Uh, women were the usual suspects, and it was typically a woman who was lower class who maybe had a better uh status early in life and just um had come down from it. Yeah, we talked about examinations and trials and people in power. Um. Obviously what they're looking for is some I guess some justice in all of this, look for a legal and
a spiritual solution to a problem that's threatening them. How how would you describe the Puritan sense of justice and injustice? What would it mean for a New England Puritan to seek justice from the law? Puritans believed very firmly in the establishment of law, and early on they had statutes. Every year the General Court, which was the colonial legislature, would um promulgate all sorts of acts and so forth. The Puritans were also very litigious. Uh, They're always suing
each other for land or something like that. Uh. They were in the best traditions of Old England. And we tend to think now looking at things with the twenty one century outlook, that oh, these were kangaroo courts and you know, they didn't have any justice well, they wanted to have justice, but it was justice the way they thought. In the seventeenth century, lawyers were basically unknown. Um. They
didn't trust lawyers and um. The judges was supposed to be people who would be able to look at both sides and be judicious and uh their uh use of both sides as well. The Salem witchcraft trials went through classic English um jurisprudence. UM. Unfortunately it was stacked a bit and many other factors were involved that made it um uh look very open and shut kind of cases. But if if if I can, let me just go through the procedures. It might be a little long, but
you can cut what you want. Um. Someone has looked upon as being suspicious of practicing witchcraft. Some of the young girls are saying, this person has come to me his uh spirit as aflicting us uh, And an adult will go to a local magistrate and file a complaint, and the magistrates will have a preliminary hearing. Uh. One of the problems with this whole Salem thing is right now in s until May, we didn't have a sitting governor.
The whole colonial system uh of the legislature and so forth was kind of on hold until the new governor could come from England and the charter either correct right that had been revoked and they were working on a new sort of global charter for the larger colony as a whole. Right. Uh. And because these are fact is that um make a community not too sure of what's
going on. So there were a lot of you know, in in plane accidents and so forth, there's always a whole bunch of things that came together in exquisite format that just made something bad happen. And if any of those things were not quite the case, things could have changed. And it was the same in sixte So what they do is there's an accusation of witchcraft. So the local magistrates take a listen, and depositions are made, and they take a look at the accused, which and ask them questions. Uh.
These weren't legal eagles. They were just um uh men who were in business and had some knowledge, maybe read some law books and so forth. Uh. And they had to determine whether or not the person accused had enough going for them so that they should be held. And in almost every case they decide yes they should be held. So they're thrown in jail awaiting for the civil government
to formula. Late by May, the new Governor, William Phipps, comes together with a lot of the learned people in Massachusetts and established she is a court of oyer and terminat to hear and determine these cases, because now the jails are being clogged by a number of people who have been accused and at the preliminary hearing they've just been put in jail. So what they then do is have just the same legal system that's done in Old England,
and that is um. You have a grand jury that listens to the Attorney General of Massachusetts give the case. And you know they always say you can indict a ham sandwich. Well you could back at that time too. Almost everyone always is indicted, and the indictments often from two or three or four different people. Once in a while the indictment doesn't go at least one of the accused,
one of the afflicted children. Um, they don't believe. So there was a little bit of looking at this um UH with with some modicum of legal ease, but generally everyone who's held UH is indicted. Then you have the trial. You have a pool of jurors from among the towns in Massachusetts. Who will be the jury? You have this um eight or nine person um special court Court of Layer and termina. Who will be the judges? And they supposed to have I think at least three or four
of these magistrates there. Uh, and they can ask questions and can kind of mold what they want to have happened. But it's basically the attorney general who gives the information. If you're accused, you have the right of um saying I don't like this juror ah. You also have the
right of bringing in testimony evidence people. But if you're a farmer or if you're a farmer's wife who's never been before a magistrate before, even though you might know what you can and cannot do, they're relying on the judges and they really don't know how to do things quite as well. The same thing happens in Old England as well. Uh. So then you have the trial, and trials are very fast, usually within two days maybe three.
All of the evidences in the jury goes out, makes us determination and in almost every case the people have found guilty. Uh. You have a you have a period between um when they found guilty and when the execution will happen because thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. Witchcraft is a uh hanging offense UH and um. At that time you have some period of being able to contact the governor, trying to do a stay or whatever. Hardly ever happens, and within a certain period of time
the people are hanged. Uh. They weren't burned. Uh. No Englishman was ever burned for the crime of witchcraft, because witchcraft in English law is a UH is a felony, and felons are hanged. On the continent, witchcraft is a heresy against the church, and heretics are burned. So burnings took place on the continent, but not in England or
or America. There's an exception. Matthew Hopkins, the witch finder general during the English Civil War, in his year and a half of activity, tried and executed in those are loose terms, about a hundred and fifty to two hundred, which is one of them was a woman who had been accused of killing her husband in addition to witchcraft. Killing your husband at that time was an act of treason. He was seen as the head of the household, and so she was actually burned, but she was burned for
her treason, not her witchcrist But it is a common misconception. So, um, you can't say that these were kangaroo courts. They happened very quickly, and um, the judges didn't appear. We don't have a lot of information from the trials themselves. Most of what we read about the witchcraft quote trials are actually from the parliamentary hearings in which there is given take the magistrates asked questions and the accused answer them.
The trial material has disappeared, We don't have it. It's not to say that there would be a huge amount of new information because generally with regular trials, what they do is they do a synopsis of what happens, so you don't get um new evidence being introduced. So let's go back to the beginning, before before all of the witch conflict came into the community here in Salem Village.
Why in in sixteen sixty six was Salem Village requesting independence from Salem Town and why was the town refusing that to them? If you look at a map, Salem Town is right on the coast, uh it's a fairly large community. In sixteen ninety two, they have about fifteen hundred residents. Uh. It looks more to the commercial ventures um uh to fishing. Um. The people there tend not to be Yeoman farmers, but people who have occupations um besides farming. Salem Village, the center of Salem Village is
about seven miles from the center of Salem Town. And in the whole history of Salem. Uh, Salem started out as a very large expanse of population of area. And what happened was many communities Beverly broke off in sixteen sixty four, I think it was Uh, many communities broke off. Salem Village was looked at kind of as the bread basket for Salem Town. And UM they liked the rates because rates are what you get for like taxes, to
be able to take care of the community. And there was a reluctance that went for over a hundred years in the part of Salem Town to allow Salem Village to become independent. Uh. That brought up an awful lot of um uh people not liking that from the village. UH. If you had to participate in the militia, he would go away from your own homestead. And there was always the the fear of Indian attack or something like that.
You'd have to go five seven miles to Salem town to be part of the UH God for the evening, and your own homestead, which was completely isolated, was unprotected. Also, there was a religious part of it. It's a long ways to go five to seven miles every week, actually twice a week if you want to go to religious services. So there was a real frustration on the part of the Salem villages. They made several petitions to be broken off, as many other communities were, and Salem was always very
reluctant to do that. Finally, in sixteen seventy two they did acquiesce to have a Salem village have its own meeting house. It wasn't a covenant UH congregation. They still if they wanted to have communion would have to go to Salem, but they could hire lay ministers in Salem Village, build a meetinghouse, which they did, and hear the Word
of God UM locally UH. And this continued until six when finally Salem UH ecclesiastically acquiesced and allowed Salem Village to form their own covenant church and that was the Church of Christ at Salem Village and they introduced the new minister. They had been several ministers previous, but this minister was able to do the sacraments. And his name was the Reverend Mr. Samuel Parris. He had not been
an ordained minister. H he had I guess the term today would be had taken courses, but you know it wasn't. And um, he was a man who had changed his occupation. He was a merchant. Didn't do that while there had a belief in uh wanting to do good in and so uh took the call in Salem Village and the village took him on as the minister. Uh uh and uh he was ordained in a sixteen eighty nine. But you find that in his coming to Salem Village, you had some problems. And the problems were you always had
within your community. The Covenant members usually like ten percent of the population, and then the others, the outsiders who had to contribute to the meeting house for the church. Um, but didn't really have too much of a say that way. Uh. They believed the outsiders believed that the Covenant members had given Paris too good a deal, especially since he hadn't been minister any place else. He was kind of a nubie.
And the deal was they gave him the personage, which had been built in sixteen eighty one, as a place that he could live in, and also they gave him the deed to it. And most of the people in the village say, what are you doing that for? You know, this is stuff that we throw taxes put together. He doesn't deserve a pass and she deserves, you know, pay. Uh. So that brought the two tow somewhat loggerheads and Paris, I guess, by his nature awfully hard to know what
people were like from the prospect of four hundred years later. Uh. And you know, you really can't psychoanalyze anybody. But Paris apparently did believe that now that he was a minister, he deserved what ministers typically got, which was a different differential respect within the community. And a lot of the village is just never wanted to give him that. Uh.
He started having problems with this congregation. They were supposed to bring to him the cord would and you needed about fifteen cord of would a year to be able to survive in a homestead, and they weren't doing it. And um, he had one of his requests was before he would agree to be minister, they should bring it to him, and many of them thought, we'll have it, but he's got to get it. Ministers often were also
yeoman farmers themselves, UM, and it just went badly. Uh. Paris did not get and he actually preached UM, always talking about this confrontation, trying to show that there shouldn't be any uh. And by the time of the witchcraft, UM, he wasn't being paid his salary. UH, he hardly had any would and there was although the Covenant members still supported him very vigorously, and several of the afflicted children came from the Paris house itself and from the house
of other Covenant members who lived close by. So there are a lot of factors that made this kind of a red flag kind of thing. Not to say that there wasn't consternation in other UH settlements, because ministers, although today we would think, oh they puritans, they had to
love their minister and they had to get together. It was always a contention within many communities about the pay of the salary of of the ministers, and there was controversy very often that would last for several years or whatever. I love that firewood becomes the centerpiece of this conversation a lot. I mean, it was part of his contract
negotiations that that he had firewood delivered to him. And it sounds petty, and I think in some ways it represents the pettiness of how they were treating their minister, not paying him and things like that. So one of the early conflicts, again going back to pre Witchcraft trials, is this Putnam versus Porter rivalry that seems to be
taking place, and there are religious issues within it. I think, you know, the fact that you've got that halfway evidence that's I guess a little more of a leaning, a liberal leaning Puritan faith um. And the Porters are on that side of the fence. And then you have the Putnam's in Salem Village. Who are they were part of those covenant members of the church if I'm correct, um, and they seem to be fighting a lot about that. They are also two of the wealthiest families in the area.
But but the part that baffles me when I read about it is how when Thomas Putnam Senior passed away and his will was executed, you know, and the wealth is distributed, it wasn't it wasn't a Putnam or even in an independent party who executes that will? But it's Israel porter Um. What can you tell us about that that situation. First of all, you should understand that the Putnam's controlled approximately I'm going to remember I did a
study in this and graduate school. They there were about twelve to of the population and of Salem Village were Putnam's, and their associative community of others who married into the Putnam family made it so that they were a the largest minority within Salem Village. They tended to be a bit conservative. They were almost all Yeoman farmers believed in uh wealth being land, so they were not rich in
the fact of money, but in land. And they tended to live in the western part of the village, the western part of the village being farther away from Salem Town than other parts of Salem Village, like as far away as you could get, essentially right, and the port is looked more towards the east, towards the coast, towards Salem. You might say they were perhaps a little more sophisticated, or at least they ran around with a population that was more looking to the outward rather than to the
in wood and Uh. Thomas Putnam when he died, Um, he had married a second time, and the offspring from that was Joseph Putnam. And Joseph Putnam he was named Joseph because of the biblical Joseph, who was the youngest and uh and I would dare say probably the other Putnams who were a bit jealous of Joseph because he and his mother inherited the bulk of the property that Thomas had. In those days with primer gent sure it was supposed to be the oldest member of the family
got most everything and the others would get basically scraps. Uh. So there was some resentment there. Um. I'm not sure if you can actually say that the Putnams and the Poeties were against each other. They did come up in ecclesiastical um uh affairs as well as um political affairs. Um.
They were often on different sides. Uh. And the whole idea about people trying to gain land, which was a very popular theory in the nineteenth century that much of the witchcraft stem from land grabs, that's really not probably the case. They were always contentious about land and if you own something and if your tree that was supposed to be the northeast bound of it went down. Uh, there would be real consternation about where the where the
location of the of the boundary was. Um. But land was just something that every community had problems with and it wasn't a matter of trying to get land from other people. And also one of the popular myths in Salem witchcraft is that, uh, if you were hanged as a witch, uh, your land would be confiscated. And that is absolutely not the case. In some cases, the government could take you a movable estate, which meant the ring on your finger, the furniture in your house, uh cow
that you might have. But the land went with blood. The land went with uh probate And you can see that by John Proctor accused, which ready to be executed in jail, actually gives by legal need his property to his sons. And that was proved in probate court and went on. So that's one of the myths in the history of witchcraft. Well, we had talked about this a little bit before we started recording, and I want to
get back to it because it's it's so fascinating. One of the reasons why um we're here with you in the archives of the p BDSX library here and Andvers is because you have a notebook that people think of it as Samuel Paris's notebook, but you were explained to me that it's actually a it's a bigger document than Samuel Paris. Tell me a little bit about this notebook.
And we were established back in n seventy two as the Danvers Archival Center, and what we wanted to do is bring together all of the printed and written history of the town of Danvers. We got the public records, we got the books of the Pivody Institute Library, we
moved to the library and new UH quarters. We also wanted to get records of other organizations and Danvers, and the principal one we wanted to get was the records of the First Church Congregational that was the original First Church of Christ at Salem Village, the oldest, actually the oldest organization in Danvers date sixteen seventy two, and they had several record books and one of them was the Minister's record book kept by each minister from sixteen eighty
nine when they became a covenant church to the present. And this is very historic material, UH and it's really some of the lost material that was still in not public hands, not in the library or something. It's a matter of fact. Back in the UH late nineteen sixties, UH Boyer and Nissenbaum, two professes from U Mass in
their book Salem Possessed. I got them into the church to see these records, and they thought they were absolutely fantastic because the records include the witchcraft era, in which Paris Um talks about the excommunication of one of the witches,
Mautha Corey. UH talks about the beginning of the witchcraft when one of his congregants made a witch cake unbeknownst to him and which he believes brought the devil into Salem village, has a confession of forgiveness by the chief which accuser who later on wanted to become a covenant member UH, and all sorts of controversy Paris when the witchcraft was over, he had the people who had been hanged.
Their families were not really happy with Samuel Paris. They were trying to force him out and they made life miserable for him. And it was brought to synids to uh UH organizations to try to rectify what was going on, and there would be petitions and counter petitions signed by the various farmers, and he records every single one of them.
And if you believe in graphology, which is the study of handwriting analysis, Paris has a very readable hand You can read it in the twenty one century UM, whereas most seventeenth century script is pretty bad. UH. As he gets more pressured within Salem Village sixteen ninety four ninety six, his handwriting gets smaller and smaller and more compact, and you can almost feel him being squeezed. So this is really good historic stuff. We were thinking, well, the first church,
they've been here since the sixteen seventies. There were very conservative church in New England. We had in the early eighteen hundreds the um Unitarian Revolution, in which most first churches in Massachusetts and New England became Unitarian, a much more liberal church. UH, and very few remained congregational. The one in Salem Village remained congregational. Most of the people living in Salem Village in what then was Danvers Plains.
Excuse me, let me do that over again. UM. In the nineteen fifties and sixties, most of the people who were the congregation and of the First Church, uh were people who had lived there for generation upon generations, so they could trace their lineage back to the Witchcraft times. They were so somewhat conservative and very neighborly in that they had a speech pattern that was only known to around Center Street in Danvers, and that was called the
Center Street twang. It's almost gone now because Invelope is like me, moved into the neighborhood over the years. But you know, we figured this is going to be very hard to get them. New England has tend to be very possessive of their stuff, even if they can't take care of them, and we thought the First Church was going to be that way as well. UH. For a number of months uh and years we tried to help
them with their collections and so forth. And once the establishment of the Archival Center came in nineteen seventy too, they agreed and we're willing to take all of their records and put them on permanent deposit with us. It was a real coup, and I have to give it to them. They they they were very good about it. We've done well with the materials. We've actually uh spent a lot of money conserving the books and papers, and
when that happened, it was like the floodgates open. Other churches said, well, that's the first church is wanting to give it. I guess it's okay. So we now have, with the exception of the Catholic Church, which has its own UMM archives, we have every Protestant church that either was and became defunct or still functions. Uh. And the first Church collection is is very good and very important.
It's amazing, and that to be able to read Samuel Parris is I guess professional complaints and documentation of what he's going through where church is going through in his own handwriting. Um. And you're right. I'm glad it's legible, because a lot of that is very illegible. Yes, and that's because one of the reasons why Paris was asked by the magistrates to write down testimony during the witchcraft And you would think he is a minister, his family
is afflicted by witchcraft. Uh, he's trying to root out the witches and they're asking him to to do the documentation. But I think he tried to do a good job, and at least two of the examinations he at the end rights um. Much was going on it was very hard to uh hear everything, but I tried to put things down as correct as possible so that I wouldn't be uh guilty of prejudicing either side. That's paraphrasing it, but that's what he said. Yeah, a mission could be
an accusation. You know, he's editing the history of the event. Yeah. One of the important families in this the whole situation, would be the Hawthorne family. And you know, we talked about the removal of the charter from Massachusetts in the the sixteen eighties, early sixteen eighties, and and and how John Hawthorne, the magistrate, his father William, was actually one of the key people in establishing some of the laws that were on the books and the colonies and helping
to run and govern. But he's also known for persecuting Quakers. I think we mentioned that a little a bit ago, that there was this animosity towards the Quakers and early on the Puritans didn't treat them so well. Do we know how the family legacy of the Hawthorne's influenced, um John the magistrates legal stature in the eyes of the Puritans. I mean, you have the charter removed there's no governor. It almost seems that we're in a little bit of
a legal chaos for for a small amount of time. Um. But at the center of the the examinations and the witch trials, we have a Hawthorne. We have we have William's son John who comes in. Is this this affect the way he's perceived by the community around and do they feel some trust in him? That, thank goodness, at least John's in charge of this. Uh. Two of the most important magistrates in Salem with John hath On uh and Jonathan Corwin. They were both merchants, UM, learned people, uh.
Not lawyers, not professional legal people, but they had a lot of sense. They always were for years under whatever the government was, magistrates who would hear cases, and they were asked to take a look at what was happening in Salem village. So they were the initial magistrates who came over to little Old Salem Village March first, six two.
They went to the meeting house because um, they had to have enough space, because everybody had heard about three people being accused of witchcraft and it became a real public thing. We're told that the meetinghouse was absolutely filled to the gills and people were outside looking in trying to find out what was happened. It was cold, they had they'd had a snowstorm just a day or two before. Well it was actually Salem village was a relatively mild
year for snow, but it was still a cold winter. Uh. And yeah, it's it's mud season. And uh it would have been quite a spectacle. You have probably more than the population of Salem villages there watching what is you know, the first real witchcraft examination that they've had in years and here it is in little Sale village. Uh. Hath On was um very specific in that he asked many questions. Um. Uh. Jonathan Corwin uh generally took down the evidence that was
hearing and didn't ask a lot of questions. But Hathon did. And you can see he asks leading questions, how long have you been a witch? You know, it's the kind of thing like when did you stop beating your wife? Kind of thing. Um. They believed, especially after Tituba, who is Reverend Paris's slave, probably a Caribe Indian who had come with Paris when he became minister. Um, she's confessed.
She was the first of fifty people who confessed and in those days, you know, we still have a hard time all that we know about psychology today when someone confesses and later retracts it and uh, we go, well, you know, why would you confess if you're not if you're if you're not guilty, why would you confess? Well, people do confess, especially under certain real strains. Uh. And Tituba gave a real confession. There's some possible evidence that she might have been beaten by Paris to quote tell
the truth. Uh. And she came up with something that instead of calming the witchcraft thing. And in most witchcraft cases, both in England and New England, what you do is you get one, maybe two people accused. Um, they would either be found not guilty or quickly be found guilty and hanged, and that would be the end of it. He have three people accused in Salem village. One is Paris's slave. And imagine how Paris must have thought that the witchcraft begins in his household. Here he's a minister
of God. How excruciatingly embarrassing it had to be to him. And I think that's one of the reasons you have to understand that Paris was going to root out this evil because it was happening within his family. Um and Tichama said, well, a dark man came and told me to afflict the children, which I did, and she kind of accused the other two who said they weren't guilty, but they weren't sure about each other, you know. Uh, and Titterba indicates that not only the three of them involved,
but there's several others. So instead of tapping it down, it expands it. And when just a few weeks later, actually a few days later, a Covenant church member is accused, and then a three year old girl is accused, and then another Covenant member is accused, and then a man is accused, you suddenly get this explosion of witchcraft accusations.
And when people stopped confessing, why would you confess? And Reverend um Hail John Hale minister in Beverley, right next to danvers h He wrote a book later on about the witchcraft called a Modest in Korean too, the Nature of Witchcraft. And anytime you see a book from the seventeenth century that says a modest inquiry, what he's gonna do is bulk the system. He's not going to be one who uh becomes um copasetic with the with the company thoughts, uh, he's going to break out a little bit.
And he asked that it not be published until after he died. And you might think, boy, this is going to be controversial. Was actually not very controversial, except that he said two things brought the witchcraft forward. One was the believability of the afflicted children. They were doing things that normally wouldn't see being done. They were profoundly tortured. Pure tans weren't stupid. They knew what um epilepsy was,
they knew what Saint almost Fire is. They knew that kids could be manipulative at times, but this was different. This was something that they had never experienced before. And this brought a profound belief, so that sometimes even families of accused witches would say to their accused uh family, well you must be guilty, because maybe you don't know it, but you have to be guilty because the children say
you are. And the other thing um uh Hale said was that by having that many people confessing, why would you belie yourself. Today we don't think of lies as much of anything. Back in the seventeenth century, a lie was a smack at God's face. And uh, if you lined for something that had to do with life and death, um, this would not bolde well as to where you were going. Uh. And Paris said, by these two means, we walked in
the clouds and could not find our way. So um in the beginning, before the hysteria, I'm not supposed to use that word so much anymore. But before this irrational nous happened, Um, other factors were being combined to allow a normal settlement to go into historyonics and of course the we have the examinations, these informal magistrates and the accused, and as you said, a meeting house pactful of people outside as well appearing in the windows. Um. But eventually
the governor of the new governor Phipps gets involved. And you mentioned a term earlier, the oyer and terminter um. How we are juries selected? And this is the part that I mean. You think about a jury being an impartial group that needs to hear on both sides and make decisions. But this has been running a muck for weeks before Phips gets involved and becomes an oyer and terminal trial. So how how do they select the juries
for oyer and terminer? In general? And and in Salem in particular, and and what was the process like for handling this crisis in a new type of court and more higher court in the seventeenth century. UM, Jury selection is much like it's still practiced today. UM. When you have a court that's going to do a number of cases, what you do is you contact the various communities that the court serves, and you ask the board of selectmen to choose jurors so they'll have a pool of jurors.
You always ask for more jurors than you need because this will will be brought in UH to the UH, to the courts UH and they select them. And the one difference, however, is the selection did not include women, did not include slaves obviously, but also had to include those people who are full fledged church members and who owned property. So you're talking about basically the more conservative within a community. But that's the way it was done throughout.
There's a Salem witchcraft is not the exception, it's it's the rule. And he would have the pettit jury UH and the grand jury, and very often, once the trials took place, trials winning clusters UH, the Attorney General of the province would decide looking at who was accused, what the best case as well, you go for the ones that you think you're gonna slam dunk real fast. Uh. And the jurors would be taken from a pool, so it could be a juror from Beverly, from Topsfield, from
Boxford or whatever. And they're often used throughout the process. And although there wasn't that doesn't seem to have been manipulation of jurors. We do know at least one case in which, um, the trial of Rebecca Nurus, which was one of the more interesting trials, took place. And at trials, what happens is depositions that were filed at the time of the preliminary hearings given and read as testimony sworn two before court. Uh. These depositions were added to, however,
during the legal process. UH. And it's interesting to see because witchcraft is what's known as an exceptionable excuse me an exceptional crime, and it meant that you had to have at least two people witness witchcraft in order to convict because we're talking about a capital case. And how do you do that, Well, you do that by using
the preliminary hearing as evidence. In which you have more than two people, two of the afflicted girls giving testimony that the specter invisible to everyone else, of Rebecca Nurris, is torturing them and they're being choked, or they have marks on their hand, which they'll show the people there, and that is used as evidence, and it's added to on the depositions. So depositions are filed. In many cases, people who were friends or relatives of accused also filed depositions,
but they could not swear to it. Uh. The big difference was because they didn't want them to be belying themselves, so you couldn't swear to it, which means that their evidence a juror would see was not quite as good as a sworn deposition against someone. And you also had very often people who had been confessing witches who was set aside. We'll take care of them later, but they're important because they can be brought before the trial and by voice they can give testimony that so and so
is one of us. I saw her at a which is Sabbath few and that's used as as prime evidence as well. So in almost every case, if you brought up for trial, you found guilty. Rebecca Nurse was the exception. Uh. At first, the jurors came back with a not guilty, and it was pandemonium in the courthouse. The afflicted children who were there and also some older afflicted ones started going into profound fits and so forth pandemonium. One of the magistrates us and I think it was WILLIAMS. Stolton,
he was the chief justice of the of the panel. Uh. He said, um, have you considered some testimony um of someone who said this or that? And the jurors asked Rebecca Nurse a question. Uh, I accused which I confessed, which had given testimony that she was one of us? And they said to Rebecca, I'm sorry. Rebecca said why she is one of us? And she was asked what did that mean? And she didn't say anything, and the jurors took that as being a form of guilt. And
because she couldn't hear, she was almost deaf. Uh, And so they came back a little bit later with with a guilty. Rebecca is interesting too. She had an uncommon situation where community around her attempted to intervene in the legal proceedings. Um. Friends and neighbors stepping forward. Was that a common thing, or was that uncommon? It was about
in the middle. About of the documents that survive, we have maybe about twenty of them in which either one person, a couple, or a bunch of people would send in a deposition or a petition saying that we've known her all of our life and she never looked like she was a witch or never deported her any any more than a good Christian. Forty people signed the one to Rebecca Nurse, including a couple of putnams Auh, and that
did give some weight. As a matter of fact, the Nurse family that tended to be a little more forthcoming, rather than just allowing the court to do what they wanted because they didn't know any better. They went to the governor and he stayed execution for a few days. UM so that her case is a bit more unusual than the others, and she was the only one who
was found not guilty at first UM. Some of those accused the minister, Reverend George Burrows, who had served Salem Village prior to it becoming a full covenant church back in the sixteen eighties. It was he who um took best advantage of the new possonage he moved into what was the new possonage as an incentive to get him to come to the village. Uh. He was accused, and they really went after him because, Uh he was a minister who wasn't the typical minister, hadn't baptized some of
his children. He was the frontier. He seemed more like a Baptist than a than a real Puritan. Uh and um he Uh he challenged at least one of the people serving on his jury and tried to introduce evidence as well. But um, he didn't do it well and he was found guilty. And uh a Cotton math Or particularly disliked him because he thought that was such a stain of a minister being in league with the devil.
You mentioned earlier how one of the reasons Governor Fifth stepped in was because the jails were packed, right, and multiple jails were filling up with people who were either being like you said, held for later, we'll we'll we'll talk to you again later, or being held for execution
or trial. And one of the things that I found interested in reading about this is some of these jails were not very well constructed, They were very secure, and people were escaping and there were number people who actually escaped and went off to build new lives for themselves. Um. When some of the prisoners escaped, it seems to me that they would leave to a paper trail of escaping or was there a paper trail of that? How do
we know about the escapes? Uh? In some cases um, because warrants was sworn out for them after they had escaped. Not an awful lot of escapes. Very often when they heard they were about to be arrested, they would skin attle a few of them. If you were rich, you were treated differently and you could take care of yourself much better in jail because in jail you had to pay for your own fees. If you wanted to eat, uh, there might have been a common pot in which you
could partake. But if you wanted to eat, often your family brought to the food. They'd bring you fresh straw so that you would have a mattress that would have fresh are in it. Uh. You wanted a stool so you didn't go on the cold ground all the time that could be brought in. Uh. People like Philip English, one of the most richest people in the province, and his wife were in jail in Boston, and they were given UH freedom during the daytime so they could go
out and do what they wanted. UH. As we're a couple others. He went to a Sunday service in which UM Reverend Willard gave a sermon, and his sermon basically said, if you are persecuted, you should flee, and it was a unadulterated UH message, and both of them left. They went to New York until the witchcraft crazies was over, and then came back. A few others escaped. The majority
of them, howevious, were required to stay in jail. And after a period of time when it looked like the apparitions this specters of the witches, even in jail were hurting people. For some reason, they thought if they were put in shackles and chains, this would prevent the specter from getting away, so many of them then were were put in chains for the duration. H. So you've mentioned
the Mather family a couple of times. Ministers around Massachusetts or the Colony of Massachusetts read Mother's book from the pulpit as as if it was doctrine um and and Brattle circulates a critical letter. How common was it for the Massachusetts ministers to coordinate this kind of deeply political messaging. Very often the civil magistrates would ask the opinion of the learned ministers on something that had to do with
spiritualism or good contact of that sort of thing. And after the execution of Bridget Bishop, who was the first accused convicted which to hang, and that was I think June tenth, there was a lot of um uh, people not happy about what what what had happened and if they had done everything properly. So they asked the ministers if they would comment about it, and one of the comments that came from that was that, um, better ten guilty go free than one innocent be executed. They were
basically saying, take it easy. You've got to use restraint on what you're doing because this is a capital case. Um. The magistrates, the ones who were there every day and saw all these things, really wanted to proceed, and the Chief Magistrate, William Stoughton, was absolutely sure that witchcraft was a brew and wanted to root it out as quickly as possible, even after most of the others had kind of thought, at least all we've made some mistakes. If not,
we've made terrible mistakes. Uh. Stoughton was still pretty sure that he had got a bunch of the witches and wanted to get more. But it did turn over a period of time. It took it was about eight months from the first examination to the last execution, and in that time a lot of UH minds had been changed. Thomas Brattle, who really tells us the workings of the court from some of his um writings, UH, if not changes. He he did see the light on the other side.
In smath Or, who was the father of Cotton, probably the most learned of the residents of New England at the time. UH. He had written a book Remarkable Remarkable Providences, in which he had told back in the sixteen eighties of all the witchcraft cases that had happened, and people used his book as good evidence and a way of
proceeding on the cases. As he continued to see what was happening, he eventually wrote a book called It was a pamphlet called Cases of Conscience, and that was circulated UH in manuscript two Ministers, two Magistrates, and was the thing that really kind of moved things to being extremely cautious. And it's usually looked upon as being one of the things that uh kind of stopped the witchcraft. H he
had a problem with the idea of spectral evidence. How can the person accusing someone else be the only person who sees the evidence that would help haying that person. It just doesn't make a lot of sense, right, Um, So things changed slowly, but those always in the thick of things, UM didn't have that distance to be able to see things a little more clearly. Right. You talk about the sentiment changing over those eight months and the
minds being changed little by little and eventually increase. Publishing this pamphlet that really helps people see more. I feel like it's a little bit more logically that they're seeing things. Um. But what it's all said and done, Governor Phipps bans the publication of writing and publishing about these trials. How common was this sort of attempt at I don't know, lencing current events, was it common at all? Or was
this very unique in you know, I'm not positive. My inclination is that it happened on occasion when something was very controversial and was was having a life of its own. I think he did it because contrary publications were coming out and it wasn't adding light to the events. It was just helping to muddy everything. And um, so that was kind of put as a caution although things still happen.
Many of the printers pretended they were printers in Philadelphia or whatever and still published their stuff, but with a Philadelphia rather than a Boston imprint. And in Old England a number of things were being published. Cotton Matha wrote, um, Wonders of the Invisible World. Uh, he's looked upon today as being the bad guy in all of this, and I think he's just had a real bad press since the eventeenth century. He was more of a cautionary person,
but was sure that there were witches. And the governor asked if he would write a narrative of what had happened, and sure, he wanted to show that the government had done the right thing. They always believe that the people uh in power were not doing things capricously, that they were trying to do the right thing. It's just that the information they had was incorrect. Um. So what math did was he took the best cases, the ones that he thought, gotcha, you're a witch, and and recorded those
and didn't record the other ones. And then a guy in Boston whose name he was a merchant. His name was Robert caliph Uh. He wrote a book UM actually at the end of the witchcraft controversy, and one of the things that made uh phips say that's it for publications more wonders of the Invisible World. And he tried to show that the math Is were manipulating things. He gave some evidence that we would not have known about UM that was kind of contrary to what supposedly was happening,
and was much more sympathetic to the witchcraft victims. Uh hail uh six comes out with this manuscript UM. It's published. The chapter specifically on witchcraft trials is published in Cotton math Is Magnelli Christie Americana, but the full book isn't published until UM the late seventeenth century, and that now is the rarest of the witchcraft volumes. And it's one in which he's trying to say that we, you know, we made mistakes, and primarily the mistakes where we used
English precedents rather than the Bible to discover witches. Mhm. It's an interesting take on it. And and he was the one who started from sevent hundred to the present, every generation comes up with their new books of theories and why it happened, and and it always has you know, it has, it has what historians drew over one. It has great primary sources that you can use a number of different ways to it's ay, uh, you know, kind of intriguing aspect of history in which you've got the
devil and all that kind of thing. Uh. And it's still a who done it right? And who done it's in history? Always bring the books for it. Um. Sometimes it gets a little boring and nobody talks about it. But we're in a period that's lasted now for thirty years and which a major book comes out every year.
You mentioned Stacy Schiff, who did what I think is one of the best books on Salem witchcraft because she takes not just the usual victims that everybody writes about, but she tries to incorporate the entire history of the witchcraft, what happened in and over which was a major aspect of the witchcraft delusion. And um. Other books from about the nineteen seventies on come out, and they're always trying
to give the definitive theory. And if you look at the books and if you take a look at historiography, of the witchcraft books often to reflect as much of the culture in which they are written as they do about the historic facts. You come up with theories that are now pregnant within our own society, and I have an explanation for it based on what we see and and as observable in uh in eighteen nine century America,
being in the area. I live in the Danverus Salem area, so this is all sort of my backyard like it is for you. Um, there's a place in Salem today called Gallows Hill. It's a big, open grassy hill with a park and there's a playground and things like that. But that's not Gallows Hill, is it? Or is this a controversy. Um, it's not so much a controversy. When I was growing up from the from the nineteenth century on,
Gallows Hill is a drumlin. It's one of the New England Drumlinds that were created when the ice flows went back. And Uh. You go to the top of Gallows Hill, which I did as a kid. Uh, there's a little um playground there. And when I was very young, they used to show a stump that had been burned and that was supposedly the tree that they used to hang the victims on and that was the popular tradition that they went in a cot with the people can demmed and when all the way up to the top, uh,
and then hang them on a tree. Well, that doesn't make a lot of sense. Why would you go that far up? It would be very hard to get to
and so forth. Um. Although a lot of primary source materials come down to us, things that have to do with the executions, the gory pot of it generally don't tend to We do have the record that UM Robert Califf did talking about the executions, and he mentioned that after they were executed, a number of the bodies were taken to crevices near the place of execution, thrown in there and very frivolously uh uh covered over, although you could see a hand sticking up of that type of thing.
And in the seventeen nineties there's a record of UM finding some bodies up there, but they were in shrouds. And it's always been kind of a nebulous thing of what was going on. A very good researcher back in the late nineteenth century uh and then UH did a couple of articles in the early twentieth century. His name
was Sydney Pearly, and he was a great historian. UH. And he came up with the belief that the execution place was actually at the bottom of the hill uh near Proctor Street in Salem, right on the Salem Peabody border today. UH. And he took pictures of the crevices that he thought they would have been thrown into and came up with a very good, uh believable story. UH used one piece of evidence that showed UH someone was in a house at the time of execution and from
their house they could see the gallows of bodies hanging. UM. Then a few years ago, UM, there was some interest in seeing if they could find where this was located. And a group UH including a cinematographer, UM, professor from Salem State and a few others UM got together and came up with an area that was still public land. UM behind I think it's a CVS Walgreens. Okay, And they pretty much confirmed. And a woman by the name
of Maryland Roach and nice researcher does exquisite work. She found another couple of little pieces of evidence that seemed to relate to their They did um UM underground scanning and some other stuff didn't really come up with any evidence there, but they basically confer uh, using modern day mapping and so forth, that this was the area that Pearley had talked about, and to them it was probably the most logical place. UM. Like some things that happened
in life. UM, it just exploded. Uh and everybody around the world UMU who was interested saw this story about discovering where the victims were executed. And then the city of Salem decided to put a little memorial there. It's a very tasteful one. UM. I'm out of the memorial business. Now. I think we have memorialized the Salem, which is more than ever in. We made a major memorial in Danvers, right across the street from where the original meeting house
was located. UM. Salem did a wonderful memorial uh next to the Chatti Street burial ground. UH. Middleton tops Field, UM. Rowley also did memorials uh, and now we have a second one in Salem. So I've said, you know, that's enough memorials uh, But they did it, and UM last summer, I think it was I went to the to the dedication there and I believe that's probably a logical place for it to be. I still have a problem with
some of the researches in the mode of execution. UH. This is kind of a real minor thing, but what historians always like to talk about. Um uh. For years, I've been involved in witchcraft studies and I UH was historical consultant to a PBS American Playhouse movie back in the nineteen eighties called Three Sovereignts for Sarah. It's stodd Vanessa Redgrave, and it had to do with my ancestors sister, Sarah Klois who survived, and Mary Esty and Rebecca Durasaw,
three of them being sisters. And UM, I really loved the program. I had a lot to do with how it looks. They gave me that UM. It wasn't a commercial thing, so we used public money, so the historian Steve nisson Baum and I with a consultants. UM. The one thing I think I did a major mistake was having it as the hanging tree. We found a tree. We had to look all over Essex County to find one, and we finally found one fairly big in um in uh Hamilton's UH, and we did the thing there and
I was saying, this is very awkward to do. And then I did research on the method of hanging in the seventeenth century England and New England. All of the prince to come out show a gallows and it's very simple gallows. I believe that the one used in Salem was two up posts and a horizontal beam uh nicely Chamford, so that it was smooth. It didn't look natural. Puritans
didn't Puritans always had to manipulate nature. They didn't believe that that humans should use natural things in their own state, because what good to humans if they can't manipulate nature? Um, And what you do is you put a ladder against the tree. And you know you've seen the old West uh hanging nooses, the thirteen coils and the drop front which is supposed to break your neck. That's not how they died, unfortunately. In sixte two, the executioner and the
executed one went up the ladder. Ah she was or he was bound, and the four the term is they were turned off, which meant the executioner would take their legs and turn them off the ladder and then they would swing and after a period of time they would strangle to death. And the next one they would just move the ladder and do it much more efficient, uh, much more in keeping with the historic record. UM. They refer to the gallows on a few different uh um documents. UH.
And I think that's how it was done. That's the way Puritans, I believe, would have done it. Clearly, there are a lot of hobbyist historians who they find a historical moment in time that they are passionate about, and a lot of people it's salem for them. But you you've shown that this is this is your career. You know, you talk about memories of childhood being in your grandmother's library reading old books, but then grad school and here you are today. You know, this has been your life.
And so at the end of the day, if there's if there's one thing you hope people can take away from the moment in time, what is it? Uh? To me? The witchcraft really boils down to UM two lessons. And back in we had the three anniversary and for over a year, all of the communities around us, UH, we're doing major programs and projects and so forth. And UM, I thought that this should be a real commemoration and weird word a celebration. Um. To me, there are two
major things that came out of the witchcraft. One is the thing we have here at Bantaid every day now. The President of the United States is always talking about being involved in a witch hunt. That term has been used for a hundred more years about when uh, you take a little scanned evidence and a whole bunch of people who are frightened by some things and create a
witch hunt. Um. And it stems back to six six two was a witch hunt And what it was was a period in which normal, sensible, reasonable people, because of certain fears, frustrations, and a culture that was undergoing certain crises, start acting irrationally. And I thought that the Salem witchcraft is a good example of being picked up and used. And we we did this without a memorial. We actually
uh say it on a couple of signages there. Um. You have to confront your own period of witch hunts with clear vision and bravery, because this is not something that happened back in sixto. It's almost always with us, from the interment of the h Japanese American h in concentration camps UH to the Army McCarthy hearings, the Red scare to time and time again. These kinds of things
happen even in our own times. Most of us experienced back in the nineteen eighties the horrendous UH legal prostigures against um uh nursery school teachers who were accused of doing sexually deviant things, including killing children and killing animals uh in nursery UH schools um, which turned out really not to be the case, and there are still people in this country who are in prison because of it.
And the evidence that has come out afterwards shows that it was a period in which people were because of fears and so forth, they were seeing boogeyman and they were seeing things that not a shred of real evidence existed. Uh. And by our mistake, things that we should understand go bad. And if you bring it back to the period itself six Uh. In Danvers, we used to not like to talk about witchcraft. It was a scourge on our town and was something that if people want to go and
see the witchcraft, send them to Salem. Uh. You know, let him, let them see the tourism in Salem, but we don't want to talk about it. When I was growing up, that was the case. You didn't talk about witchcraft in polite society. As a matter of fact, when I started doing the excavation of the Paris House site seventy, I can remember early on we would try to bring school groups up and give them a little talk about
the excavation we were doing and stuff. And there was a two sisters across, straight elderly women who I can remember on one occasion when I was bringing a group up, they came out in the which and they actually shook their fist at me and said, why are you bringing this up? This is not something we should be talking about. UM. It changed a bit after we did the excavation and so forth, and my take on it is that, yeah, it was a terrible time. The civil authorities failed, the population,
the religious uh people failed the situation. UM families even urged people in their own family to confess because they
must be witches. Every institution failed. But what you do have is really a shining example of average people, some of them really kind of bastards, and some of them nice religious people who, when confronted with the worst crisis in their life, uh, you know that you're a witch, that you're gonna go to hell, that uh you're you're trying to destroy us instead of confessed sing like fifty
people did to at least stay execution. And luckily for them, things worked out because the witchcraft was over and people started realizing their mistakes, so that none of those confesses ever were executed. But the nineteen who were executed by hanging UH don't share much in common except that they believed in truth being much more important than life itself.
They would not belie themselves UH for survival. And I think that's remarkable, especially with you know, fairly uneducated, hard working people who always tried to do what they were supposed to do, and then when told by authority you must confess, said no. Uh. As as I mentioned before, George Jacobs, when confronted with us, said, um, uh, I'll stand in the true of Christ. I know nothing of witchcraft. And you do get these heroic words from these average people,
And to me, that's so important. We in history talk about the famous and the infamous, and the battles and whatever, But here the personal crisis occurred and these people would not bend to anything and UH. Because of it, we probably know more about the pilgrims who went on the Mayflower. Average people and the witches in Swo than anybody else who was just a common person who lived four years ago.
And the monument we have in danvers Um tries to kind of show that in that uh, we have the shackles of the past, the chains that once we're around their feet and arms being broken by the book of life history, which eventually will tell the truth of what happens. And here people who are universally condemned in now become more heroic than they actually were, but still people whose um beliefs really should be emulated. Richard, thank you so
much for talking with me. You greatly appreciate it. My pleasure. This episode of Unobscured was executive produced by Me, Matt Frederick, and Alex Williams, with music by Chad Lawson and audio engineering by Alex Williams. The Unobscured website has everything you need to get the most out of the podcast. There's a resource library of maps, charts, and links to Salem document archives online, as well as a suggested reading list and a page with all of our historian biographies. And
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