The New England Witch
Rev. James Bailey, near his majority, a recent graduate of Harvard, began to preach (not as pastor) there in 1671, and created a division. Rev. George Burroughs succeeded him in 1680, but matters grew worse. In 1683 Rev. Deodat Lawson began and gave no better results.
Mr. Burroughs was a short, stout man, very muscular and of very dark complexion. He was a Harvard graduate of 1670. Most of the witches knew him; and his complexion and extraordinary strength argued his connection with the black art and the muscular devil.
Rev. Deodat Lawson (Deo-dat-um), a “God-given” cataplasm for the tumor of unrest, social discords, and animosities that had their rise in Bailey’s ministry! With Lawson, the suppuration began; for the deviltry had gone from seance to families and the church, where the unwhipped girls cried out from time to time, “enough of that”; “see the yellow bird on the minister’s hat”; “now name your text”; “look how she sits”; to all which Mr. Lawson’s simplicity testifies: these things “did something interrupt me in my first prayer, being so unusual.”
Rev. Samuel Parris, Student
West Indian Trader, First Pastor
The wound was treated and cleansed during the ministry of Rev. Samuel Parris. He was born in London, about 1653, had been a merchant in Boston and the Spanish Main, and had studied at Harvard. He succeeded Mr. Lawson and was ordained and installed their first pastor, Tuesday, Nov. 19, 1689. He left in 1696. The unanimity of the church since he left has been as marked as the schism was before he left.
The Parris Meeting House, 1692
Mr. Parris’s home was at No. 4 on the map. His house probably did not survive the year 1717. His meetinghouse stood a little to the east of the Ingersoll Tavern, probably the flat spot now marked by rose bushes and weeds, and maybe by a large, flat stone in the wall, which stone may have served as a doorstep. A beautiful modern church edifice now graces the corner opposite Ingersoll’s old corner, while the parsonage occupies the Ingersoll site.