Back then Abigail and her brother Nathaniel were reprimanded, but John was arrested twice and even whipped. Abigail now worked for Samuel and Provided Gaskill (or Gaskin), a Quaker couple in Salem. Why Mary accused Abigail is not clear. The road from the Procter’s farm to Salem Harbor did run past the Gaskill’s door, but probably, as with the other defendants, gossip had whispered about Abigail for years, the suspicions common knowledge. Perhaps Mary saw herself in Abigail’s situation—alone, unwell, working as hired help in another woman’s home, and with precious little to show for it—a fearsome future.
Soames, said Mary, had caused the death of one Southwick, a local man recently dead, as other afflicted girls had likewise reported his ghost. When Abigail heard this accusation she looked directly at Mary, who fell again, racked by convulsions, apparently bitten by an unseen entity. Her reactions were so severe “that the Like was never seen on any of the afflicted,” the scribe observed. Soames did it, said Mary when she could speak. And the Soames specter had told her that very day that “she would be the death of her,” then stuck two pins into Mary’s side for good measure, drawing blood.
The magistrates asked Goodwife Gaskill if Soames really had been bedridden as Mary had claimed. Goody Gaskill admitted that, yes, Abigail “had kept her Bed for most parts these thirteen months.”
And she went out only at night, Mary continued.
Yes, said Goodwife Gaskill, “that was the Usual time off her goeing abroad.”
For three nights, Mary continued, Soames had tormented her, trying to bargain, promising to stop hurting Mary if the girl would in turn promise not to tell anyone how sickly she was—for who would hire a maid too weak to work?—haggling for Mary’s silence and for a promise to join her among the witches.
But, Mary told the court, she had replied that “she would not keep the Devils Councel.”
To that Soames’s specter said, “she was not a Devil but she was her God.” And the specter appeared three more times with the same claim or to say that “she was as good as a God.”
The magistrates were shocked by such a blasphemous notion. “Mary Warren is this true?”
“It is nothing but the truth.”
They then asked the defendant who was hurting Mary in her fits if not her.
“[I]t was the Enemy hurt her,” said Abigail—the Devil hurt her. She tried to explain what she believed was happening, for she herself had once seen apparitions. “I have been . . . myself distracted many a time, and my senses have gone from mee, and I thought I have seen many a Body hurt mee, and might have accused many as wel as she doth. I Really thought I had seen many persons att my Mothers house at Glocester, and they greatly afflicted mee as I thought.”
When Abigail had not attended the approved public worship back in 1681, the court record noted, “She hath been in a distracted condition about this two months, and her brother Nathaniel hath been forced to make it his whole employment to look after her.”
And now it was Mary who was distracted and now fell in another “dreadful ffit.” The magistrates ordered the touch test, in which the defendant must touch her supposed victim to break the spell causing the convulsions. The theory behind the test was that the “the venemous and malignant particles, that were ejected from the eye” of the witch into the victim would flow back into the witch through the touch.
However, the afflicted, at the beginning of the troubles, had been able to interrupt and thereby stop each other’s convulsions by a touch. “They did in the Assembly mutually Cure each other, even with a Touch of their Hand,” Deodat Lawson had noted. But the magistrates appeared to have forgotten this.
Mary Warren “immediately recovered,” say the notes. “[T]his Experiment was tryed three times over and the Issue the same.” After one of those recoveries the court told Mary to touch Soames. Mary tried “several times” and “with great Earnesteness,” but she could not get near, falling instead into another “dreadful ffit.” The magistrates ordered Soames to take Mary’s hand, and as they expected, Mary, “her Eyes then being fast shut,” immediately recovered. She had “felt some thing soft in her hand . . . which revived her very heart.”
When asked why she could not step close enough to Soames, Mary said that she saw Soames’s specter step from the woman’s body, “meet her, and thrust her with Violence back again, not suffring her to Come near her.”
During Mary’s explanation Abigail said more than once that “it was distraction in talking.” She even laughed at Mary’s stories, but this reaction only caused Mary to fall in another fit.
Was this the result of witchcraft? the magistrates asked Soames. Did she think “there were any Witches in the world?”
But Abigail knew nothing about this. “[I]tt was the Enemy,” she said, the Devil, “or some Other wicked person or the Enemy himself that forces persons to afflict her att this tim”—but not herself.
Now Mary passed into a trance, during which, as she related once she regained consciousness, Soames promised “that she would thrust an Awl into her very heart and would kil her this night.” Every time the defendant looked at Mary the girl appeared to be hit, “struck so dreadfully on her breast, that she cryed out she was almost killed” and burst into an “abundance of tears.”
When the magistrates took her to task for this, Soames, “instead of bewailing itt, Broke forth into Laughter.” This only caused Mary to be “afflicted by the wringing of her mouth after a strange, and prodigious manner.”
Ordered to look at the struggling Mary, Abigail flatly refused. Ordered to face her victim, Abigail turned toward her—or was made to turn—but “shut her Eyes Close, and would not look on her.” Ordered to touch Mary, she did so “and immediately Warren Recovered.” At that, Abigail opened her eyes, and Mary, seeing her gaze, fell “into another most dreadful and terrible fit.”
“[I]n this manner,” the magistrates concluded, “she practised her Witchcrafts severall times before the Court.” By now Mary responded to Abigail’s every motion. During the questioning Abigail had “put her own foot behind her Other leg,” at which Mary’s legs clamped together so rigidly “that it was impossible ffor the strongest man there to Untwist them, without Breaking her Leggs, as was seen by many present.”
Abigail Soames was held for trial, but Mary’s suffering was not over. She said she saw the specters of Rebecca Nurse and one of the Procters (probably Elizabeth) standing before her with Burroughs, who bit her savagely. People could not see the specters, but they could see the tooth marks.
Margaret Jacobs, who had apparently kept to the background during the hearing, began to cry. She too had seen Burroughs’s specter just now, she said, and it predicted that her grandfather Jacobs (whom she too had accused) would be hanged.
Abigail Soames and the confessor witnesses were returned to Salem jail, with Mary exhausted and bloodied by her ordeal and Margaret stricken by the Burroughs specter’s prophesy, which put into words what she feared in her heart was a logical outcome of her own folly. But she did not yet dare to change her story.
Mary and Margaret seem to be the only afflicted witnesses brought against Abigail Soames. Annie Putnam was home at her father’s house on May 13 when Goodwife Elizabeth Hart arrived, having come from Lynn to confront the girl. Although Annie would later say that she had seen but not recognized that woman’s specter among the witches, word that she was suspected had obviously reached Goody Hart. Once again Ann and Thomas witnessed their daughter face a supposed witch in person.
Goody Hart identified herself to Annie and asked outright if the girl thought she had ever hurt her. Annie admitted she had not, meaning her specter had not. But Goody Hart was no more successful in her attempt to set the matter right than was Martha Corey or John Willard. Shortly after this encounter the Hart specter began to hurt Annie “most greviously severall times” and hound her to sign the book she brought.
The more that people like the Putnams fought against the enemy, the more supposed witches there seemed to be. Ann
ie was now tormented not only by Elizabeth Hart but also by Thomas Farrar Sr. (old Pharaoh) of Lynn, Elizabeth Coleson of Reading, and Bethia Carter of Woburn as well as several Salem Village folk: George Jacobs Jr., his wife, Rebecca, and her brother Daniel Andrews, old Sarah Buckley, and her widowed daughter Mary Whittredge. These specters had seemingly attacked not only Annie but also Mercy Lewis, Mary Walcott, and Abigail Williams as well as unspecified “others of Salem Village.”
Thomas Putnam and Nathaniel Ingersoll entered a complaint against the new witches on Saturday, May 14. Marshall Herrick arrested Elizabeth Hart and old Farrar the following day, a Sabbath. Reading’s Constable John Parker, however, made “Diligent Search” for Elizabeth Coleson, but the woman, a granddaughter of the already arrested Lydia Dustin, had heard of her impending arrest in time to flee. “[B]y the best Information,” Parker reported on Monday, “shee is att Boston in order to bee shipt ofe and by way of Escape to bee transported to some other Countery.”
Likewise Constable Jonathan Putnam, although he had confined Goodwives Buckley and Whittredge at Ingersoll’s as ordered, was unable to find either Daniel Andrews or George Jacobs Jr. He made “delegant sarch” of each of their houses, but to no avail. He did arrest Rebecca Jacobs, for her husband had left her behind with the children, who, now with both parents gone, were on their own.
By now, if not earlier, Mercy Lewis was staying with the family of John and Hannah Putnam, the couple whose infant had died so suddenly in April. Although Annie was still afflicted, the maid’s absence would spare Ann Putnam considerable turmoil. Nevertheless, she still worried about the four escaped witches, especially Willard, all of whom were responsible, she believed, for the death of her infant Sarah. The devilish threats continued to increase, so much so that neighbors consulted Annie and Mercy and some of the other afflicted girls as to which specters were causing local ailments.
For one thing, Bray Wilkins, patriarch over at Will’s Hill, had suffered a painful blockage of urine ever since his trip to Boston for the election festivities, then his grandson Daniel fell ill. On May 12, the day of Parker and Pudeator’s examinations and two days after Willard’s flight, Mercy Lewis saw various specters hurting the old man—including a specter of Bray’s grandson-in-law John Willard. Every gossip knew Bray and Daniel had been at odds with Willard. By May 14, with the real Willard’s whereabouts still unknown, young Daniel became mute and refused to eat, spitting whatever anyone tried to spoon-feed him back in their face. After that, Mercy Lewis and Mary Walcott reported Willard’s specter, aided by Goodwife Sarah Buckley’s specter, attacking Bray and Daniel and even vowing to kill Daniel within two days. The following day, the Sabbath when Goody Hart was arrested, Bray’s son Benjamin and neighbor Thomas Fuller Jr. persuaded the Salem magistrates to issue a second arrest warrant for Willard, and that evening Annie reported seeing Willard’s specter torturing Daniel’s sister Rebecca as well. Annie relayed the specter’s threat to kill Daniel with the help of the more powerful Burroughs—a threat the boy doubtless heard, a threat he had already taken to heart.
On May 16 the Wilkins “sent to the french Doctor,” as Benjamin Wilkins would state, “but hee sent word againe [that] it was not A naturall Cause but absolutly wichcraft to his Judgment.” Then, at some point that day the afflicted girls cried out that Willard was taken, and, as they later learned, that was the hour that Constable John Putnam arrested Willard himself miles away in Lancaster—or at least that was how they remembered it later.
That evening Mercy Lewis and Mary Walcott arrived at Will’s Hill, reported the spectral Willard and Buckley torturing Daniel, and predicted that the spirits would soon kill the lad. Annie apparently arrived later and saw the same as she waited among the watchers while Daniel Wilkins died, gasping for breath that would not come, choked, all were sure, by his uncle Willard.
Mrs. Ann Putnam was not the only party concerned about the number of fugitives. Someone sent word to Boston, where John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin were with the rest of the legislature to welcome the new royal governor. Sir William Phips, a Maine-born, Boston-based shipbuilder and entrepreneur, had made his fortune and received his title by recovering sunken treasure in the Caribbean. As he had brought the newly granted charter, negotiated by Reverend Increase Mather, Massachusetts was once again a legal political entity—or would be once the government was reconfigured to meet English requirements. As one of the earliest actions under the new charter, Hathorne and Corwin, “By order of the Governor and Council,” wrote a second arrest warrant for the three suspects still at large, while the Suffolk County Sheriff began a search for Elizabeth Coleson in Boston.
But by May 17 most of the recent suspects were in custody at the Village, packed into the watch-house, including Willard, who had been brought all the way from Lancaster, where he had been found in plain sight, hoeing corn. The afflicted, Annie Putnam presumably among then, fell into such a terrible state at the sight of him that Marshall George Herrick “was forced to pinion” the man to prevent the specter from tormenting them further. Between this commotion and collecting a coroner’s jury to examine young Daniel’s body, the authorities had to postpone the scheduled hearings by a day.
Thomas Putnam had petitioned with other neighbors for a coroner’s jury but did not sign the return as a member; rather, he wrote the account of what the other men discovered:
[W]e find severall bruised places upon the back of the said corps and the skin broken and many places of the gratest part of his back seemed to be prickt with an instriment about the bigness of a small awll and own [i.e. one] side of his neck and ear seemed to be much bruised to his throat and turning the corps the blood Run out of his nose or mouth or both and his body nott sweld neither did he purge elce whare and to the best of our judgments we cannot but thinke but that he dyed an unnaturall death by sume cruell hands of wicthcraft or diabolicall art as is evident to us both by what we have seen and hard consarning his death.
(Reverend Parris was absent from the Village but would note, “Dan: Wilkins Bewitched to death,” in his record of Village deaths.)
In Boston John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin took their oaths of office as Governor’s Councilors (the new name for Assistants) on Monday, the day Daniel Wilkins died. They were in Salem Village Wednesday, May 18, when they presided over the next hearings in the Village meeting house. Their entourage this day included Mary Warren, brought from Salem jail to serve as a witness, along with Annie Putnam, the Sheldon, Lewis, Williams, and Hubbard girls, plus John Indian. Sarah Churchill and Margaret Jacobs were most probably present as well. And although she is not named in the transcripts of the examinations, Mrs. Ann Putnam’s name is among the afflicted witnesses in the surviving indictments. Whether she stood among the others or had a bad turn in the audience is not clear. Most of the notes for the day have been lost, but Samuel Parris’s summary of Sarah Buckley’s questioning and two versions of John Willard’s remain, written out from the shorthand he scribbled on the spot.
The afflicted faced the latest defendants with the usual reactions. Sarah Buckley, an elderly Salem Village woman with “scragged teeth,” was made to touch the writhing girls to bring them out of their fits. Mary Warren said that when she saw Goody Buckley among a great company of witches the woman tried to make her join them at the Devil’s sacrament up in Reverend Parris’s pasture. Goody Buckley protested her innocence, but Annie, who had had to be carried in a fit over to the suspect to be healed by a touch on the arm, stated, “I beleve in my heart that Sarah Buckly is a wicth,” so that view prevailed.
Goody Buckley’s widowed daughter Mary Whittredge was also questioned, as was Elizabeth Hart and the disreputable seventy-five-year-old Thomas Farrar Sr. of Lynn, a man too fond of drink and violence. He had once accused Elizabeth Procter’s grandmother of bewitching two of his own children.
At first the afflicted did not recognize the next suspect until one of them, probably Elizabeth Hubbard, exclaimed, “[D]on’t you know Jacobs the old Witch?” Rebecc
a Jacobs, unstable to begin with, broke down and confessed not only to witchcraft but also to killing her own child (Mary, who had drowned in a well accidentally seven years past). Her husband, George Jacobs Jr., and her brother Daniel Andrews had fled before they too could be arrested, thus leaving Rebecca to be taken. Daughter Margaret was already in jail, and the other Jacobs children had to fend for themselves until neighbors—most likely Sarah Cloyce’s family—took them in.
The afflicted must have reported the specter of folk healer and sometimes witch finder Roger Toothaker, for the magistrates issued a warrant for his arrest as well and likely questioned him along with the others this same day.
Six Women of Salem Page 23