Colonial dames and good wives

by Alice Morse Earle

It is curious to see how long and how constantly, in spite of their severe and manifold laws, the pious settlers could suffer through certain ill company which they had been unlucky enough to bring over, provided the said offenders did not violate the religious rules of the community. We might note as ignoble instances, Will Fancie and his wife, of New Haven, and John Dandy and his wife, of Maryland. Their names constantly appear for years in the court records, as offenders and as the cause of offences. John Dandy at one time swore in court that all his “controversies from the beginning of the World to this day” had ceased; but it would have been more to the purpose had he also added till the end of the world, for his violence soon brought him to the gallows. Will Fancie’s wife seemed capable of any and every offence, from “stealing pinnes” to stealing the affections of nearly every man with whom she chanced to be thrown; and the magistrates of New Haven were evidently sorely puzzled how to deal with her.

I have noted in the court or church records of all witch-ridden communities, save in the records of poor crazed and bewildered Salem, where the flame was blown into a roaring blaze by “the foolish breath of Cotton Mather,” that there always appear on the pages some plain hints, and usually some definite statements, which account for the accusation of witchcraft against individuals. And these hints indicate a hated personality of the witch. To illustrate my meaning, let me take the case of Goody Garlick, of Easthampton, Long Island. In reading the early court records of that town, I was impressed with the constant meddlesome interference of this woman in all social and town matters. Every page reeked of Garlick. She was an ever-ready witness in trespass, boundary, and slander suits, for she was apparently on hand everywhere. She was present when a young man made ugly faces at the wife of Lion Gardiner, because she scolded him for eating up her “pomkin porage;” and she was listening when Mistress Edwards was called a base liar, because she asserted she had in her chest a new petticoat that she had brought from England some years before, and had never worn (and of course no woman could believe that). In short, Goody Garlick was a constant tale-bearer and barrator. Hence it was not surprising to me to find, when Mistress Arthur Howell, Lion Gardiner’s daughter, fell suddenly and strangely ill, and cried out that “a double-tongued naughty woman was tormenting her, a woman who had a black cat,” that the wise neighbors at once remembered that Goody Garlick was double-tongued and naughty, and had a black cat. She was speedily indicted for witchcraft, and the gravamen appeared to be her constant tale-bearing.

In 1706 a Virginian goody with a prettier name, Grace Sherwood, was tried as a witch; and with all the superstition of the day, and the added superstition of the surrounding and rapidly increasing negro population, there were but three Virginian witch-trials. Grace Sherwood’s name was also of constant recurrence in court annals, from the year 1690, on the court records of Princess Anne County, especially in slander cases. She was examined, after her indictment, for “witches marks” by a jury of twelve matrons, each of whom testified that Grace was “not like yur.” The magistrates seem to have been somewhat disconcerted at the convicting testimony of this jury, and at a loss how to proceed, but the witch asserted her willingness to endure trial by water. A day was set for the ducking, but it rained, and the tenderly considerate court thought the weather unfavorable for the trial on account of the danger to Grace’s health, and postponed the ducking. At last, on a sunny July day, when she could not take cold, the witch was securely pinioned and thrown into Lyn Haven Bay, with directions from the magistrates to “but her into the debth.” Into the “debth” of the water she should have contentedly and innocently sunk, but “contrary to the Judgments of all the spectators” she persisted in swimming, and at last was fished out and again examined to see whether the “witches marks” were washed off. One of the examiners was certainly far from being prepossessed in Grace’s favor. She was a dame who eight years before had testified that “Grace came to her one night, and rid her, and went out of the key hole or crack in the door like a black cat.” Grace Sherwood was not executed, and she did not die of the ducking, but it cooled her quarrelsome temper. She lived till 1740. The point where she was butted into the depth is to this day called Witches Duck.

Grace Sherwood was not the only poor soul that passed through the “water-test” or “the fleeting on the water” for witchcraft. In September, 1692, in Fairfield, Conn., the accused witches “Mercy Disburrow and Elizabeth Clauson were bound hand and foot and put into the water, and they swam like cork, and one labored to press them into the water, and they buoyed up like cork.” Many cruel scenes were enacted in Connecticut, none more so than the persistent inquisition of Goodwife Knapp after she was condemned to death for witchcraft. She was constantly tormented by her old friends and neighbors to confess and to accuse one Goody Staples as an accomplice; but the poor woman repeated that she must not wrong any one nor say anything untrue. She added:—

The truth is you would have me say that goodwife Staples is a witch but I have sins enough to answer for already, I know nothing against goodwife Staples and I hope she is an honest woman. You know not what I know. I have been fished withall in private more than you are aware of. I apprehend that goodwife Staples hath done me wrong in her testimony but I must not return evil for evil.

Being still urged and threatened with eternal damnation, she finally burst into bitter tears, and begged her persecutors to cease, saying in words that must have lingered long in their memory, and that still make the heart ache, “Never, never was poor creature tempted as I am tempted! oh pray! pray for me!”

The last scene in this New England tragedy was when her poor dead body was cut down from the gallows, and laid upon the green turf beside her grave; and her old neighbors, excited with superstition, and blinded to all sense of shame or unwomanliness, crowded about examining eagerly for “witch signs;” while in the foreground Goodwife Staples, whose lying words had hanged her friend, kneeled by the poor insulted corpse, weeping and wringing her hands, calling upon God, and asserting the innocence of the murdered woman.

It is a curious fact that, in an era which did not much encourage the public speech or public appearance of women, they should have served on juries; yet they occasionally did, not only in witchcraft cases such as Grace Sherwood’s and Alice Cartwright’s,—another Virginia witch,—but in murder cases, as in Kent County, Maryland; these juries were not usually to render the final decision, but to decide upon certain points, generally purely personal, by which their wise husbands could afterwards be guided. I don’t know that these female juries shine as exemplars of wisdom and judgment. In 1693 a jury of twelve women in Newbury, Mass., rendered this decision, which certainly must have been final:—

Wee judge according to our best lights and contients that the Death of said Elizabeth was not by any violens or wrong done to her by any parson or thing but by some soden stoping of hir Breath.

In Revolutionary days a jury of “twelve discreet matrons” of Worcester, Mass., gave a decision in the case of Bathsheba Spooner, which was found after her execution to be a wrong judgment. She was the last woman hanged by law in Massachusetts, and her cruel fate may have proved a vicarious suffering and means of exemption for other women criminals.