Maybe her fortunes, mysterious as they might be, will change at last.
____________________
Mary Warren’s family is one of the less well documented, and her origin is still uncertain, for more than one family named Warren settled in seventeenth-century New England—in Plymouth, in Watertown, and elsewhere. The sketchy-yet-tantalizing details of the girl’s life before 1692 exist only in the witch trial testimony, and her life afterward is presently unknown. But during the trials Mary played a reoccurring part in the documents, with her voice recorded in the surviving texts, where the words and actions of individuals more prominent in their own and later times do not survive, and her significant presence in those documents became an embarrassing reminder of the panic.
She was not the daughter of Abraham and Isabella Warren, who may have had ties with Ipswich and who lived in the Rial Side section of Salem near the Beverly border. (Abraham did have a daughter Mary, but in 1692 she was Widow Green.) Sarah Osborn, one of the first to be accused in 1692, may have been a Warren before she married Robert Prince and then Alexander Osborn. Again, the kinship, if any, is presently unknown.
Mary was “about twenty” in 1692, meaning that she was born around 1672, the year Rebecca Nurse joined the Salem Church, shortly before the outbreak of King Philip’s War of 1675–1676. Just when the heart of Mary’s own family disintegrated is not clear, however. Perhaps it was during one of the epidemics of smallpox, a disease deadly in its democracy, not long before the witch scare.
It began—as far as Mary was concerned—when Goodwife Alice Parker asked Mary’s father to mow her grass. This meant to harvest the grass in a meadow, an important crop that would feed a family cow through the winter. Her husband, a fisherman, was likely absent at sea that haying season. Warren said he would if he had the time, but he did not make time to mow, so Goody Parker came to his house in a temper. On the one hand, Warren had his own work to do, and perhaps the illness was already in the household. On the other hand, if grass were not cut, dried, and properly stored in time, it would spoil and be useless, leaving the cow unfed and the owner facing the expense of buying hay. Mary was probably present when they exchanged heated words, thus witnessing the woman’s tongue-lashing, an affront to her father. “He had better he had done it” was the phrase that stuck in Mary’s mind, a threat for sure.
Shortly after this encounter her sister Elizabeth fell ill and, following quickly, their mother as well. Evidently, Mary escaped catching the disease—perhaps she was already employed elsewhere at that time—but Mother became weaker and weaker until she died. Elizabeth survived, but she lost her hearing. Engulfed in a terrible silence and overwhelmed by that silence, she ceased to speak.
Yes, Mary certainly remembered Goody Parker’s words.
Alice Parker was married to fisherman John Parker. They lived just south of Salem Neck, not far from the Blue Anchor Tavern, and they rented their home from Mary English. Alice may have been a friend of Bridget Bishop, for their two spirits would be frequently reported committing mischief together. Goody Parker was also subject to fits of catalepsy, in which she suddenly fell unconscious, only to be discovered stiff and seemingly dead. Some of her neighbors were accustomed to this sight—it was a known malady, after all—but it unnerved others. Witches, according to folklore, were said to be able to leave their bodies behind and go about in spirit only to work their evil.
Where the Warrens lived and where the meadow was located remain unknown. The Parkers and the Warrens were likely neighbors, and the grass was perhaps in a rented meadow further out of town. What the shattered family did after their mother’s death is also a mystery—where their father and Elizabeth went, whether they stayed in Salem (for they are alluded to only in trial documents), or what happened to the sister later. In the seventeenth century some individuals who lost hearing from childhood illness developed a system of personal signing that their families at least could use with them, but many others did not.
Mary was definitely working for John and Elizabeth Procter by 1692 and living with them inland just south of the Salem Village boundary. John Procter, about sixty years old at the time, was originally from Ipswich, where he still owned land and his brothers lived. He had been married twice before, first to a woman named Martha (possibly White), then to Elizabeth Thorndike. One son, Benjamin, the only one of the first wife’s four children to survive, was now thirty-three and worked for his father. The second wife had born seven children, with at least two of them since dead and the eldest daughter now married and away. In 1674 John married Elizabeth Bassett of Lynn, whose grandmother Ann Burt had doctored her neighbors, and some had suspected her of being a witch. Healing skills were proper woman’s work, but “cunning folk” claimed to heal as well. Although some of those suspicions went to court, Goody Burt was not found guilty of any of it. By 1692 Elizabeth was in her forties and had given birth to six children, only one of whom had died.
Procter rented a three hundred–acre farm named “Groton” from Emanuel Downing (whose London landholdings included the area where Downing Street was later built). The road from Salem ran uphill, dividing the farm as it ran before the house, while North Brook ran south of the road, heading for the North River and Salem Harbor. The bounds, marked by stumps and trees of black oak and white oak, encompassed plow land and a bit of swamp.
Procter obtained a license in 1666 to sell beer, cider, and liquors to passersby only (the neighborhood warned not to tarry there), as so many travelers stopped, hoping for refreshment. This meant that the women of the family served them while Procter and his sons and hired men worked the fields. There were problems in 1678, however, when John Procter was fined for selling “cider and strong water to Indians,” but several neighbors testified in court that the Procters kept an orderly house. As for the charge, according to Zerubabel Endicott, “I fear it’s out of ill will more than matter.” But Giles Corey (whom Procter had mistakenly suspected of setting fire to his house some time earlier) and others described how they found an Indian lying drunk on the floor with a pot of cider. Corey’s wife recalled that Goody Procter had commented that “she might as well let them have drink as other folk.” Unfortunately, that particular customer could not hold his liquor. Others said she had accepted items in pawn for a gill of liquor, a custom that could only encourage debt. Not only Procter but also Corey’s son-in-law John Parker (a farmer, not the Salem mariner) were fined for selling to the Indians this time. Despite this and a few other fines for letting other people’s servants get drunk, the courts renewed Procter’s liquor license periodically.
Mary was the hired girl, earning an agreed-upon wage for a year at a time, plus room and board and whatever tips visitors might bestow. Any servant’s situation depended on the mood of the employer. Some were treated as part of the family, and a few received bequests years later from grateful masters and mistresses. Others were mistreated, with the females sometimes at risk from predatory masters or other males in the family, or they dallied, unwisely assuming they could marry into the family only to be disabused of that notion once they had conceived. “Correcting” a servant included striking or even beating and was within a master’s right if it were not overdone. For instance, Giles Corey went too far when, exasperated by the neighbor’s slow-witted brother he had hired, he beat the man repeatedly with a stout stick. Even with a physician’s attentions, the young man soon died. Corey was tried for murder, but because other people also frequently hit the deceased, he escaped the potentially capital charge and ended up only paying a stiff fine.
However, resentful servants could make employers’ lives miserable, such as by pilfering their pantries, terrorizing their children in the parents’ absence (as Reverend John Hale’s family endured for a time), and even threatening to kill them. Kitchen help had the opportunity to slip poisons into the food, after all.
The Procters attended religious meeting in Salem rather than the Village, so Mary would have listened to sermons there from old Mr. Higginso
n or his assistant Nicholas Noyes when she was not left at home tending the youngest children.
She would have sat in the galleries with the other servants, for the seating was assigned by earthly rank and separated by sex, with women on one side of the center aisle and men on the other (rather than in family pews, as was the later custom). From up there Mary and the other hired girls could look down on the more favored seats below where the Procters and Nurses sat, and, unless they let their minds wander, listen to the ministers’ long sermons and prayers.
The younger minister Nicholas Noyes frequently referred to the Book of Revelation with its strange imagery. The elderly John Higginson emphasized the uses of life’s trials, for the troubles and sorrows we suffer may at least teach us something, may strengthen us spiritually. Mary’s life had had trials enough for her to brood on—her mother’s death, her own uncertain future—but what would she learn from them?
Between morning and afternoon services—or in whispered conversations when they should be paying attention—the girls and young women exchanged news and gossip. Mary would have heard the other hired girls’ stories of growing up Eastward in Maine or New Hampshire until driven south to Massachusetts, fleeing the attacks of French and Indian forces that came out of nowhere with fire and sword; she would have heard of parents, siblings, and neighbors shot or axed or kidnapped. These raiding parties burned the remote towns, slaughtered the cattle, killed many of the townsfolk, and took survivors hostage. They moved some captives to their own native villages and marched others all the way to Canada, with many dying on the trail. Some captives were eventually ransomed, but others never returned home—melting into a Catholic life, forgetting their own faith, even, especially among the youngest children, their own language. The girls now in Salem had escaped, though many had lost close kin. One girl had slipped away with her family and Reverend George Burroughs to a little island off Falmouth and hid there until Massachusetts sent help.
Memories like that never faded for those who had endured them. For others, just hearing about those horrors increased the dread of what might yet happen.
Homelife with the Procters may have been tense. The older children seemed to have resented Elizabeth. Even in 1678, during the early years of her marriage, when the court questioned their liquor license, John’s then sixteen-year-old daughter Elizabeth (by his second wife) was the one who kept the keys to the cellar and was responsible for serving the drinks. Goodwife Procter may have appreciated the help, though ordinarily the mistress of the house controlled the keys to all supplies. By 1692 stepdaughter Elizabeth was married to Thomas Very (whose sister Elizabeth married Francis and Rebecca Nurse’s son John), but stepson Benjamin was part of the household still, more like an uncle in age to his youngest half-siblings. Years later, after the witch trials, he would state, “I was the eldest son of my father, and worked for my father ‘til I was about thirty years of age, and helped bring up all my father’s children by all his wives, one after another.”
Perhaps a disagreement arose in the winter of 1688–1689, for on January 10, shortly before the birth of Elizabeth’s fifth child, John submitted two deeds to probate judge Bartholomew Gedney. At least one had been written some years earlier, as it referred to his “purpose, if the Lord pleaseth, to make Elizabeth Bassett, of Lynn . . . my wife I having her parents consent thereunto.” In the second she is Elizabeth Procter. The first stipulated that any children he and Elizabeth might have would inherit equally with his older children, and for this he put up, as bond, his land in the Chebaco section of Ipswich. The second states his intent “to make over and give unto my beloved wife Elizabeth Proctor and all my children . . . for their supply and maintenance” his Salem property, “house and land . . . cattle, swine, moveables and utensils.” (The land here was a parcel adjacent to his rented farm.)
Judging from Mary’s later testimony, John and Elizabeth quarreled as well, as she claimed that her master was nearly driven to make away with himself just to be rid of his wife’s squabbles. Evidently Elizabeth knew her own mind and expressed it. She owned several books as well, even carrying one with her when she visited her sister in the nearby town of Reading. Just what that book was about Mary did not know. Elizabeth also seems to have doctored her neighbors (or offered to) as her grandmother had done.
Mary must have been anxious about her own future.
Besides domestic work, women earned money by doing laundry, baking, brewing, or running small shops or taverns—but all these services required equipment and, in some cases, a license. Married women or widows ran these enterprises, not young servant girls who possessed the desire but not the means. Women were sometimes paid to spin thread (helping a housewife deal with the flax she had grown or the fleece from her sheep), sew, or help with harvest, though the latter was seasonal or at least occasional work. By herself, she might earn enough with only those tasks and still have a place to live—but not easily. A few women who could afford it rented space in the corner of a room in someone else’s house. Unless a woman had money or a strong extended family willing to have her be part of it, or if she worked as a domestic (as Mary did), she would need a husband to survive.
Mary was about twenty in 1692, the average age to marry.
But what prospects did she have?
She could be working in another woman’s kitchen forever, unless the enemy captured her, dragging her off into darkness and wilderness, or if, like her dead mother and stricken sister, she were the victim of vengeful magic—another fearful possibility.
PART TWO
( 1 )
January 1692
From the meeting house gallery Tituba looks down on Mr. Parris as he speaks in the pulpit and down to on the heads of the congregation below—men on one side of the center aisle, women on the other, adults apart from the children. Up here above are the servants—free and slave—also sitting apart, the doctor’s hired girl with the Putnam’s maid. Tituba sees the heads of two young girls bend close, the children whispering when they ought to be listening: Mr. Parris’s niece Abigail and the Putnam girl. Tituba hugs her cloak closer against the cold of the unheated building. Now what were they up to? At home Abigail—and Betty too—had been acting strange lately, though Tituba could not say exactly how. They seemed more nervous, moping or starting. She was almost certain that some eggs were missing from the larder. Had the girls taken them—though not to eat but rather to waste on fortune-telling? Girls that age might do that—and a little scrying was surely harmless if done right, thinks Tituba, though she knows full well that Reverend Parris would not agree, and there would be an almighty trouble if he finds out, if that was what was happening. If they are sickening for something, she would have to deal with that as well, but for now, with hands idle in her lap, she might as well enjoy not working. Even so, she needs to listen, to some extent, to what her master says to the people, for he will question her on it later. Tituba sighs. He expects her to understand what his sermons mean. If she can just catch the gist of his words, she can then let her mind wander to other subjects, have her thoughts to herself.
“Man, yea all mankind,” Reverend Parris is saying, “the whole race of apostate Adam . . . even the very elect, are by nature dead in sins and trespasses . . .”
All mankind? Tituba muses to herself. Even the masters and mistresses who want to own you?
“Consider the great sacrifices Christ has made for us,” Parris continues, “and think how much that indicates that ‘the worth of souls, is above all the world . . .’”
Even the soul of a slave? she wonders. Perhaps Christ thinks so, for slaves who felt they were saved, and thus among the spiritual elect, had joined churches in Boston. But they still remained slaves despite the passage in the Lord’s Prayer her master had taught her: “May thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.” God’s will—not earthly property laws. These people were very definite about what they expected, yet there were so many contradictions.
Down in the better seats among the matr
ons, Ann Putnam looks up from where she sits at Mr. Parris, at his head and shoulders that are visible above the edge of the pulpit’s desk, with the cushion on the desk and the open Bible on the cushion. His breath makes little clouds just visible against the dark wood of the sounding board above the pulpit. She would take communion later with the other full members of the church, but even so . . . she does still wonder if she is really worthy enough to do so.
Christ, by “various troubles, afflictions, and persecutions in this world,” tests and teaches his people, says Reverend Parris, as parents chasten children to get the point of obedience across. “Our lord Jesus seeing us often overbold and venturesome upon sin, suffers us almost to fall even as it were over head and ears, and for a time seems to desert us, and all is out of love to prevent a total fall . . .”
The little nagging dread stirs in the back of her mind that she might not be saved after all, that by presuming to take part in communion she is only thrusting in where she does not belong, snatching rudely and insultingly at the Lord’s supper like a self-centered toddler grabbing at supper dishes that were none of its business. But no—she pushes that thought away. She has already done years of soul searching; she had not rushed into this grave matter of assuming herself to be saved. (Although one never knew, could never be sure in this mortal life but only try to live as if one were.) Her name was written among the elect—or at least written in the church record book’s list of fully communing members.
“Afflictions are compared to a hedge of thorns,” Reverend Parris continues, made to keep unruly livestock from bolting into dangerous territory. Because the elect are, in a way, separate from the world, others will oppose them, for “great hatred ariseth even from nearest relations,” and “it is the main drift of the Devil to pull it all down,” aided by “wicked and reprobate men (the assistants of Satan to afflict the Church).” Even the elect are endangered inwardly by their own soul lusts, outwardly by persecutions and by “the power of Death.”
Six Women of Salem Page 10