Essex County has been the theater of several exhibitions of astounding marvels. The performances detailed in this chapter beyond question excited fears and disturbed peace throughout Newbury and its surrounding towns. Also an apparitional boy has recently shown himself to a teacher and her pupils in Newburyport, to the no small disturbance of that place. During the first decade of the present century, famous Moll Pitcher, who, as Upham says, “derived her mysterious gifts by inheritance, her grandfather having practiced them before in Marblehead,” practiced fortune-telling and kindred arts at the base of High Rock, in Lynn, where “she read the future, and traced what to mere mortals were the mysteries of the present or the past....” so successfully, or at least so notoriously, that “her name has everywhere become the generic title of fortune-tellers.” In that county, too, the mysteries and horrors of Salem witchcraft were encountered. But scarcely any other event in that territory seems more highly charged with the elements of incredibility than the Salem historian’s perception that little John Stiles was the bona fide author of the pranks played at William Morse’s house. No cotemporary of the boy, excepting impressible, wayward Powell, seems ever to have suspected the little one as being the giant rogue. How blind, therefore, were the eyes of all others of that generation! For now an historic eye, looking back through the darkening mists of eight score years and twenty miles north, absolutely sees audacity and action, which all living eyes, alert and vigilant on the spot and at the time, were incompetent to detect. The world progresses; new clairvoyance has been developed—clairvoyance which sees what never existed—to wit, little John Stiles as the designing and conscious enactor of superhuman works.
Very many modern scenes rival this ancient one at Newbury in the roughnesses of manifestations and the difficulty of fathoming the purposes and characters of the performers. Perhaps no other one of them is more worthy of attention or more instructive than the prolonged one which occurred at the residence of Rev. Eliakim Phelps, D. D., at Stratford, Conn., 1850. In “Modern Spiritualism, its Facts and Fanaticisms,” by E. W. Capron (Bela Marsh, Boston, 1855), page 132, commences a very lucid and authentic account of this case, covering nearly forty pages. The character and position of Dr. Phelps, who furnished Capron with his facts, and whose permission was obtained for their publication, make the account referred to well worthy of careful perusal. On several different occasions, years ago, it was our privilege to hold familiar conversations with Dr. Phelps upon the subject of Spiritualism, and his details of spirit performances in his presence prepared is to view him as having transmitted to his offspring properties which were very helpful in setting The Gates Ajar.
THE GOODWIN FAMILY.
In the family of John Goodwin, of Boston, in 1688, four children, all young, were simultaneously either sorely afflicted or set themselves to playing pranks and tricks with diabolical furore. Which? An elaborate account of what was either imposed upon them by other beings, or of what themselves devised and enacted, was promptly written out by Cotton Mather, who was an observer of many of the marvels while they were transpiring.
Poole, in “Genealogical and Antiquarian Register,” October, 1870, says those children were “Martha, aged 13; John, 11; Mercy, 7; Benjamin 5.” Drake, in “Annals of Witchcraft,” says they were “Nathaniel, born 1672; Martha, 1674; John, 1677; and Mercy, 1681.” According to him, their ages in 1688 were about 16, 14, 11, and 7, respectively. The two statements agree as to Martha, John, and Mercy; but one makes the fourth, a boy of 5, named Benjamin, while the other’s fourth is a boy of 16, named Nathaniel. We have not sought for data on which to either confirm or correct the statement of either author. To show that they were young, is all that our present purpose requires.
More than seventy years subsequent to the occurrences in the Goodwin family and to the manifestations at Salem, Hutchinson said, “It seems at this day with some people, perhaps but few, to be the question whether the accused or the afflicted were under a preternatural or diabolical possession, rather than whether the afflicted were under bodily distempers, or altogether guilty of fraud and imposture.” Poole, having quoted the above, makes the following sensible query and comment. “Why make an alternative? Both accusers and accused were generally possessors of NOT bodily distemper, but of peculiar susceptibilities growing naturally from their special organisms and temperaments, and were probably as free from and as much addicted to fraud and imposture, as the average of the community in which they lived.”
If we read Hutchinson aright, he stated that a few people, even at his day, were believers that there had formerly been some “preternatural or diabolical” inflictions, but were in doubt whether such inflictions came upon the accusers or upon the accused; while, in his opinion, all ought to drop belief in anything preternatural or diabolical in the case, and seek only to determine whether the strange phenomena resulted partly from bodily distempers, or were exclusively frauds and impostures. We think he made no alternative himself between accusers and accused, but exempted both classes from supermundane influences, and queried only whether witchcraft resulted partly from ill health or wholly from fraud. Be it so or not, Poole’s comment is appropriate, instructive, and valuable. It is in harmony with the view which the present work is specially designed to illustrate. We repeat and adopt his words, and say that “both accusers and accused were generally possessors of not bodily distemper, but of peculiar susceptibilities growing naturally from their organisms and temperaments,” and in general character were on a par with their neighbors.
Hutchinson’s account of the family now under consideration is as follows:—