I Walk in Dread (9780545388047)

by Fraustino, Lisa Rowe

  Mem and Darcy posted their bans on the church door three weeks in a row, and in June they were married with the whole Cooper clan in attendance. The newlyweds and their “dowry,” Liv, stayed with Ben in the farmhouse for the summer until their own house could be built. The farm thrived under Ben’s hard work and Yankee ingenuity, and the two men continued discussing their dreams of a future in Maine.

  Meanwhile, news of the Salem Witch Trials continued to reach Haver’il throughout the summer. The first session of the Court of Oyer and Terminer was held on June 2. Those who confessed were allowed to live, while those who continued to deny the accusations were convicted and sent to the gallows. The first to be tried, pronounced guilty, and hanged for witchcraft was Bridget Bishop. Rebecca Nurse and Sarah Goode were among the next five to be executed. Along with the Reverend Burroughs, John and Elizabeth Proctor were condemned in the next round of six, though Elizabeth’s life was spared because she was pregnant.

  Goodman Giles Corey refused to enter a plea, so the court demanded that he be stoned to make him talk. With hands and feet tied, he was placed on his back in the field near the Meeting House. Heavy stones were placed on his chest, but still he did not enter a plea. After two days of agony, he died on September 19.

  Martha Corey was tried and convicted on September 9. Two days after the death of her husband, she was hanged with seven others on Gallows Hill. Goody Corey maintained her innocence until the last, and expressed her devotion to God in her dying prayer.

  By now, 144 people had been accused in court, and most of them jailed. Three had died waiting for trial, including Sarah Osborn. Many infants died, including the one Liv had noticed Sarah Goode was carrying in the winter. Finally, after twenty executions, Governor Phips decided that spectral evidence should no longer be allowed in the trials. The remaining witchcraft cases were tried in May 1693. There were no more convictions.

  Liv was glad that clear vision had won in the end. Even though Goody Corey lost her life wrongly, she would not be remembered as a witch, but as a good Gospel woman who had dared stand up for reason, even against a crowd.

  After the trials ended, people began to ignore the afflicted witnesses and return their attention to everyday life. Liv enjoyed keeping accounts for the Haver’il barrel shop, and soon she had a niece named Remembrance and a nephew named Darcy to keep her busy.

  Sadly, Mem’s health remained frail. She succumbed to a fever in the winter of 1698. Liv tended the children as her own until two years later. Then, after a proper period of mourning, she became the second wife of Darcy. She had always loved him, but had never told anyone except her secret diary.

  Liv and Darcy moved with Ben and the children to reclaim the Trembley homestead and expand the barrel business. Together Liv and Darcy had seven more children, giving them nine in all. God made them two wheezy ones they loved like Mem. Their children gave them a total of sixty grandchildren, and by the time she passed away at age seventy-eight, Liv had too many great-grandchildren to count!

  Occasionally through the years, Liv’s children and grandchildren would ask her about the Salem witches. The memories were deeply painful to her, and she spoke little of the events. However, when one of Liv’s granddaughters went to the place where she had buried her diary in a cedar box, the box could not be dug up. On the spot stood a shoemaker’s shop.

  Life in America

  in 1691

  Historical Note

  The events surrounding the Salem Witch Trials have fascinated the American imagination since 1692, when the jails of Essex County, in the colony of Massachusetts, overflowed with upwards of 140 men and women suspected of witchcraft. Nineteen people were hanged and one pressed to death under rocks before reason prevailed and the witch hunt ended.

  By 1693, though they still believed in witches, the community realized that they had wrongly relied on invisible “spectral evidence” for convictions. They felt that the devil had deluded them into condemning the innocents. In 1697, Salem ministers sponsored a day of prayer and fasting, and asked forgiveness for the executions. During a service at the Salem Village Meeting House in 1706, Ann Putnam, the most active of the accusers, asked publicly for forgiveness.

  What really happened in Salem Village? Anyone who wants to figure out the answer must think carefully about some difficult questions. What caused the strange behavior of the “afflicted” persons? How could a whole community of reasonable people believe in witches? Why did intelligent judges convict nineteen citizens to hang based on invisible evidence? Countless authors have tried to answer the questions for over 300 years, and one would expect some sure answers by now. Unfortunately, we simply cannot know the truth for sure because we do not have enough proof.

  Much has been written about the trials, of course, but mostly not by the actual people involved. Most of the personal writings and journals that were probably written around that time no longer exist. Even many of the court documents have disappeared. Why? Historians believe that the people caught up by the delusion destroyed the evidence of their involvement out of shame and embarrassment. They did not want to leave a record of it for other people to find.

  We now know one thing for certain, though: The “facts” most authors have traditionally given about the trials are actually based on fictions or myths. The most famous myth is this one: A circle of girls gathered in the kitchen of Reverend Samuel Parris to tell fortunes and hear supernatural stories told by the slave Tituba Indian. These guilt-stricken girls later panicked and became the “afflicted” group of hysterics. In fact, scholars have found absolutely no primary evidence to support the theory of the occult circle. They have found absolutely no evidence linking Tituba to any fortune-telling. So where did this myth come from?

  For decades Charles W. Upham’s 1867 book Salem Witchcraft was considered the best authority on the trials. Upham claimed: “During the winter of 1691 and 1692, a circle of young girls had been formed, who were in the habit of meeting at Mr. Parris’s house for the purpose of practising palmistry, and other arts of fortune-telling.” Scholars who have gone back to study the primary sources of the time have determined that Upham probably drew his interpretation from a 1702 essay by the Reverend John Hale. Hale was a minister who had been involved in the witch hunt. In his writings he mentioned one afflicted person who had years later told him that she once “did try with an egg and a glass to find her future Husbands Calling [sic].” From this passing reference, a myth was born.

  After appearing in Upham’s history, the “circle of girls” story took on an ever larger life, appearing in textbooks as well as in literary accounts of the trials in fiction, poetry, and drama. Many of them are read in schools, including Elizabeth George Speare’s The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Ann Petry’s Tituba of Salem Village, and Patricia Clapp’s Witches’ Children. Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible is believed by many to tell the historical truth, when actually the playwright made up much of the plot out of his imagination.

  People who have read many novels about the Salem witch hunt will notice that Deliverance Trembley’s diary is different from the others. It does not retell the old myths. Instead, it attempts to show the factual details about what happened in Salem Village documented by today’s best historians. However, that still leaves much to the imagination!

  The Trembleys and the Coopers are fictional families who could have lived in Essex County, Massachusetts in 1692. Their life stories are made up, but they interact with real people. Martha and Giles Corey, Susannah Sheldon, the Goodes, the Parrises, the Putnams, the judges, and all of the other people Liv describes in her journal are actual historical figures. Their personalities and actions in this book are based on the information available from court documents and other writings of the time.

  For instance, nobody knows for certain which girl used the venus glass to predict the trade of her future husband, but some recent scholars who have looked at all the evidence believe it was most likely Susannah Sheldon. Hence she appears in Liv’s diary as M
em’s friend. The game in which the girls write their marks in the mud is made up, but the marks themselves are the actual shapes used by Ann Putnam and Elizabeth Hubbard in historical documents.

  Scholars have come to agree that the witch hunts happened for a combination of many reasons. We can begin with the Puritan religion and its belief in the invisible world of wonders. The Puritans believed that God controlled everything, and that every event was the will of God. Thus they viewed hardships, plagues, even their trials in the French and Indian Wars as inflicted by God. Perhaps he was punishing them for their sins, or perhaps he was making life difficult to humble them and teach them to appreciate his providence.

  The Puritans also believed in God’s fallen angel, Satan, who could work evil through stealing the souls of men and women, his warlocks and witches. A sick child, a dead animal, a failed crop: These and many other incidents had to be caused by something. The Puritans believed that every ill event was the work of Satan and his witches. They also believed that God allowed these ills because he wanted them to do something about it: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

  The history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the French and Indian Wars, and the conflicts in Salem Village all played important roles in creating the fearful, paranoid atmosphere that fueled the witch hunt. Residents of Salem Village, along with the rest of the colony, anxiously awaited the appointment of their new Royal Governor and the return of their revoked charter, which granted them the right of self-government. The French and Indian Wars had set all nerves on edge. Combined with the diseases that struck the colonies, the war had left a significant number of widows and orphans. In fact, many of the participants in the witch hunt, both accusers and accused, were refugees from war-decimated Maine, which was then part of Massachusetts.

  Salem Village, also sometimes called Salem Farms, was no stranger to conflict even before the witch hunt. The farming community had to battle to break free from the mother church in the merchant shipping community of Salem Town. Even after they won the right to build their own meeting house and hire their own minister, villagers squabbled among themselves over how things should run. They had trouble keeping a minister because of clashes in values: humble farming versus worldly trade. Many scholars believe that longstanding family feuds and resentments influenced the witch hunts at some level. Ann Putnam, in particular, is thought to have accused people who had been in conflict with her family.

  In Puritan society, women were subordinate to their husbands, fathers, or other male guardians. They might express their opinions in private, at home, but in public matters they had no speaking rights and no vote. Even when they became full members of the church, women spoke in private to the minister who then professed for them in front of the congregation. Men, in contrast, stood up for themselves to testify their faith before the members. Men, not women, were also permitted to make complaints in court. The witch hunt would not have happened if not for the men who brought the accusations into the legal system. Of course, most of the accused — as well as the accusers — were female. Might women like Martha Corey have changed the course of the witch hunt had they been given equal rights and respect? We cannot know.

  Women and girls had to work very hard in colonial New England, spinning, making cloth, sewing, making candles, and cooking over wood fires with food they had to grow or trade. Some historians go so far as to say that the affliction was a deception by bored, overworked girls seeking attention and relief from their duties during the harsh winter. Like women, Puritan children were supposed to be seen and not heard. This put young girls at the most powerless position in the society and may have caused some of the afflicted to act out “for sport,” as one accuser put it. Because the community believed in the invisible world, many of them trusted every one of the girls’ antics, and reacted with caring attention rather than the disciplinary action that normally punished mischief. However, the anguish of the afflicted witnesses at the examinations was very convincing. Perhaps some of the afflicted started acting out “for sport,” but by the time the examinations were taking place, most of them probably believed their hallucinations were real. They had succumbed to the power of suggestion and also probably believed their dreams were true, as Puritans commonly did. Scholars say their behavior was similar to other historical occurrences of mass hysteria.

  No picture of the witch hunts would be complete without mentioning the importance of gossip, which spread rapidly through the small, intimate community and fueled the hysteria. Most likely, gossip gave the accusers incriminating information that they credited to specters. The entire population of Salem Village, approximately 500 residents, were involved.

  Today, Salem Village is known as the city of Danvers, Massachusetts. Little remains of the way it was during the witch hunt, but tourists may visit some of the sites. A cart path leads to the archaeological dig with the original foundation walls of the parsonage where the Parris family lived. The meeting house no longer exists, but across the street from its former location is the Witchcraft Victims’ Memorial erected on the 300th anniversary of the trials in 1992. The Ingersoll House, where some of the examinations took place in 1692, is now a private home that has been modernized. The Sarah Holten House still stands, and the Nurse Homestead operates as a museum. The body of Rebecca Nurse lies nearby in an unmarked grave.

  Today, the descendants of Rebecca Nurse and the others who lost their lives in the Salem witch hunts number in the hundreds of thousands.

  The Puritans believed that everyone should read the Bible, and so teaching young children to read became a religious exercise as well. They used hornbooks, wooden boards with small handles at the bottom, on which paper or parchment printed with text from the Bible was mounted and then covered with a protective layer of transparent animal horn.

  A page from a Puritan primer teaches children the alphabet through rhymes that also preach moral values.

  The witchcraft trials that took place in Salem Village during the 1690s were filled with intense drama and high emotions. Above is a woodcut from 1692 that an artist rendered of the trial of Giles Corey’s wife. The painting below illustrates George Jacobs’s trial.

  Reverend Cotton Mather played an important role during the Salem Witchcraft Trials. He was responsible for persecuting the accused and for encouraging the violent actions taken against those believed to be witches. In this woodcut from the 1690s, an illustrator portrays Cotton Mather attempting to save a woman from witchcraft by praying for her soul.

  A woodcut from the height of the witchcraft hysteria in the 1690s warns innocent people to beware of Tituba Indian. She is portrayed in this illustration with witchlike characteristics, as she threatens a strong-looking man.

  A modern map of the United States shows the approximate location of Salem Village.

  About the Author

  About writing I Walk in Dread, Lisa Rowe Fraustino says, “I have always been fascinated by anything to do with the supernatural world. When I was a child, my grandmother used to have stacks of newspapers with headlines such as ‘Alien Saucer Lands in Kansas Corn Field, Abducts Cow’ and ‘Cincinnati Couple Emerges after Decade Lost in Bermuda Triangle.’ I read them voraciously and thought they were true. Growing up I loved Star Trek — which was made more of magic than science fiction, I think. Beam me up, Scotty! I also loved horror movies about demonic possession like The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby. Many nights after watching them I lay awake worried that a demon could get to me.

  “By the time I got to high school, I had decided to believe that none of the supernatural world was real — and so even if it were real it couldn’t harm me — but it still fascinated me. I did my senior research project on witchcraft and learned, for the first time, the sobering truth about the Inquisition that took place during the Middle Ages. Those accused of witchcraft were tortured into confessions. Thousands burned at the stake.

  “When the opportunity came to write a book about the Salem witch trials for the Dear America series,
I could hardly wait to get started. Besides revisiting my old fascination with the occult, I was eager to find out more about New England’s heritage because I grew up in Maine, which was part of Massachusetts at the time of the witch hunt.

  “Sifting through 300 years of facts and fictions turned out to be a formidable task. It took me three years. The more I read, the more confused I became. So many conflicting stories existed. Clearly, the popular myths didn’t match up with the evidence. Even the dates for the same events didn’t match up in different sources! Why was it that some Puritans wrote in their diaries dates such as January 1, 1691/92? Why did some historians use the date January 11, 1692 for the same event? Eventually I figured out the reason: The Puritans used the Julian calendar, which is different from the Gregorian calendar that we use today.

  “Once I understood what happened in Salem Village, I faced another challenge. How would I select from all of the possible stories, when virtually every one of the 500 residents at the time must have had a gripping tale to tell.

  “Because Martha Corey was known to be an outspoken woman with opinions of her own, I decided to endear her to Liv. Perhaps, though, I have added one myth to the Salem story. In reading through the accounts about the day that the two church deacons visited Martha Corey to inform her that Ann Putnam had accused her, I kept returning to the same question. Why did Martha press the questioners to tell her if Ann said what clothes she wore? Knowing that Martha was very clever, I realized that she must have had a clever reason. Had she purposely dressed in someone else’s clothes in hopes of trapping the girls in their lies? No source indicated that she did, but I believe she may have, and so that’s what she does in I Walk in Dread. Solving puzzles and coming up with plotting details like that is one of the greatest pleasures of writing historical fiction.”