"A few words should be said regarding the author's mention of the subject of witchcraft in Connecticut.... It is, I believe, strictly true, as he says 'that no indictment of any person for that crime nor any process relative to that affair can be found.'
"It must be confessed, however, that a careful study of the official colonial records of Connecticut and New Haven leaves no doubt that Goodwife Bassett was convicted and hung at Stratford for witchcraft in 1651, and Goodwife Knapp at Fairfield in 1653. It is also recorded in Winthrop's Journal that 'One ---- of Windsor was arraigned and executed at Hartford for a witch' in March, 1646-47, which if it actually occurred, forms the first instance of an execution for witchcraft in New England. The quotation here given is the only known authority for the statement, and opens the question whether something probably recorded as hearsay in a journal, may be taken as authoritative evidence of an occurrence.... The fact however remains, that the official records are as our author says, silent regarding the actual proceedings, and it is only by inference that it may be found from these records that the executions took place." (Introduction to Reprint of Trumbull's History of Connecticut, 1898, JONATHAN TRUMBULL.)
The searcher for inerrant information about witchcraft in Connecticut may easily be led into a maze of contradictions, and the statement last above quoted is an apt illustration, with record evidence to the contrary on every hand. Tradition, hearsay, rumor, misstatements, errors, all colored by ignorance or half knowledge, or a local jealousy or pride, have been woven into a woof of precedent and acceptance, and called history.
As has been already stated, the general writers from Trumbull to Johnston have nothing of value to say on the subject; the open official records and the latest history—Connecticut as a Colony and a State—cover only certain cases, and nowhere from the beginning to this day has the story of witchcraft been fully told.
Connecticut can lose nothing in name or fame or honor, if, more than two centuries after the last witch was executed within her borders, the facts as to her share in the strange superstition be certified from the current records of the events.
How may this story best be told? Clearly, so far as may be, in the very words of the actors in those tragic scenes, in the words of the minister and magistrate, the justice and the juryman, the accuser and the accused, and the searcher. Into this court of inquiry come all these personalities to witness the sorrowful march of the victims to the scaffold or to exile, or to acquittal and deliverance with the after life of suspicion and social ostracism.
The spectres of terror did not sit alone at the firesides of the poor and lowly: they stalked in high places, and were known of men and women of the first rank in education and the social virtues, and of greatest influence in church and state.
Of this fact there is complete demonstration in a glance at the dignitaries who presided at one of the earliest witchcraft trials—men of notable ancestry, of learning, of achievements, leaders in colonial affairs, whose memories are honored to this day.
These were the magistrates at a session entitled "A particular courte in Hartford upon the tryall of John Carrington and his wife 20th Feb., 1662" (See Rec. P.C., 2: 17): Edw. Hopkins Esqr., Gournor John Haynes Esqr. Deputy, Mr. Wells, Mr. Woolcott, Mr. Webster, Mr. Cullick, Mr. Clarke.
This court had jurisdiction over misdemeanors, and was "aided by a jury," as a close student of colonial history, the late Sherman W. Adams, quaintly says in one of his historical papers. These were the jurymen: