When Harvard College graduated its class of 1670 in June, among the new holders of the baccalaureate degree was a young man who had distinguished himself, while at the school, as an athlete and gymnast. George Burroughs was a small man in stature, but solidly built. More than that, he liked to astonish people with his feats of strength, and he had a teasing streak in him as well. When folk marveled at his abilities in anything he was wont to be mysterious about how he did what he did. Yet, all in all, he was an affable young man who was likely to do well as the parson of a village — one of the lesser ones, probably. It came to pass that he chose Casco, Maine, as the place in which he wished to do his religious work. He was held in awe by many of the inhabitants, not only because he was an educated man of God, but because he could do things with his muscle that few ordinary men could do.
Casco was an outpost of New England civilization — a backward, insignificant settlement surrounded on three sides by dense forest filled with hostile Indians, and on the fourth by the chill ocean. In 1676 a band of Indians fell upon the community and destroyed it. Thirty-two people were killed or captured; others managed to escape into the forest. Rev. Mr. Burroughs was able to get to an island in Casco Bay from which he was eventually rescued by a party from the mainland. He was asked to write a report of the raid for the authorities in Boston, which he was glad to do.
By 1680 the church members of Salem Village (known in the 20th century as Danvers, Massachusetts, a suburb of Salem) for a number of years, since it broke away from Salem to form its own parish, had been fighting among themselves over their ministers. The latest, Rev. James Bailey, had left behind a dilapidated parsonage that would need extensive repair before the next minister could move in. That minister, it had been decided, would be the Rev. Mr. George Burroughs of Casco, Maine, whose acquaintance Jonathan Putnam had made on trips to the area. Mr. Burroughs was called to Salem Village in November by the Parish Committee, and when he arrived in town he and his wife moved in with the family of Lt.. John Putnam, Jr., until the parsonage could be repaired.
The new year began auspiciously for Sgt. Thomas Putnam, Jr, and his wife Ann Carr Putnam. Since their marriage in 1678 Ann, like her sister Mary, had experienced a miscarriage or two, but on February 9th, 1681, she was delivered of a healthy son who was christened Thomas Putnam III. The next day the Salem Village Parish voted the Rev. Mr. George Burroughs, their new minister, his salary for the year. All was not harmony in the Village, however, for Mr. Burroughs, though he like Bailey before him was the majority choice, was nevertheless not the unanimous choice. He soon found that he had automatic enemies in Thomas Putnam, Sr., Bailey’s prime backer, and in Ann Carr Putnam, Mary Bailey’s sister. With both his father and his wife opposed to Burroughs, Sgt. Thomas Putnam, Jr., of course was entered in the opposing lists as well.
Furthermore, there was friction developing between Burroughs and Lt. John Putnam, Jr., in whose house Burroughs continued to live while the parish wrangled over the refurbishment of the parsonage. Neither John nor his wife, Rebecca, cared for the way Burroughs treated his wife who was something of a gossip. Burroughs had a strong sense of privacy, and he objected to his spouse’s telling Rebecca all the family grievances. He chastised her for her loose tongue on several occasions — and, naturally, Mrs. Burroughs relayed these lectures to Rebecca who passed them on to John. Their sympathies lay with the oppressed wife, not the secretive minister. In April the Salem Village parsonage was ready for habitation and the Burroughs family moved into it.
In September, however, Mrs. George Burroughs died, perhaps of Satan’s Scourge: smallpox, and the minister was in deep trouble. He was totally broke, for no one had collected the rates he had been voted earlier in the year, and he had not been paid his salary. He and his existed on the charity of Capt. John Putnam, Jr., as best he could; now, he had to bury his helpmeet. He was forced to go further into debt.
It was the end. He foresaw no possibility of his being able to stay on in Salem Village and appease the warring parishioners. When he had come he had been wise enough to realize this might be the case, so he had had an escape clause written into his contract with the Village: “All is to be understood so long as I have Gospel encouragement.” He had had no encouragement whatsoever. As soon as he could get his affairs in order he left Salem Village, without even calling a parish meeting to try to settle the wages owed him, and went back to Maine — but not before he had taken another wife, the sister of Thomas Rucke. Burroughs’ abrupt departure did nothing at all to sweeten the atmosphere of the parish, and the minister left in his wake a number of implacable enemies, including his new brother-in-law.
At Ipswich Session of the Essex County Court in April of 1683 the Salem Villagers petitioned for relief from their lack of ministry and asked the magistrates that “they be pleased to write to Mr. Burroughs, requiring him to attend an orderly hearing and clearing up the case” and to settle accounts with them in respect to his salary and debts. It was to be a balancing of the books prior to the Village’s calling another minister. The Court agreed, and it summoned Mr. Burroughs from Casco; however, the “orderly hearing” was anything but that.
On April 24th Burroughs appeared for the accounting, a letter from the Court was read directing the participants to settle accounts, and Burroughs asked his former parishioners, “Do you take up with the advice of the court, given in the letter, or do you reject it?”
“Yes,” the Villagers answered him, “we take up with it,” and no man demurred. They worked out a proposed settlement, and “the second, third, and fourth days of the following week were agreed upon by Mr. Burroughs and the people to be the days for every man to come in and to reckon with the said Burroughs; and so they adjourned the meeting to the last of the aforesaid three days, in the afternoon, then to make up the whole account in public.”
So May 2nd was the day of reckoning. As the Villagers were gathered to complete the accounting and payments, Henry Skerry, the county marshal, came in the door, walked up to Lt. John Putnam, and whispered something to him. Putnam said aloud, “You know what you have to do! Do your office.”
Reluctantly, the marshal went over to Burroughs and said to him, “Sir, I have a writing to read to you.” It was an attachment of the salary the Village owed Burroughs, sworn out by John Putnam for debts Burroughs purportedly owed him for the time the minister had lived with the Putnam family, and for money that had been borrowed to pay for the funeral of Mr. Burroughs’ first wife.
When Marshal Skerry had read the document, Burroughs turned to Lt. Putnam and asked, “What money is it that you attach me for?”
Putnam replied, “For five pounds and odd money at Shippen’s at Boston, and for thirteen shillings at my father-in-law Gedney’s, and for twenty-four shillings at Mrs. Darby’s.”
Burroughs turned again to the marshal and told him, “I have no goods to show, but I am now reckoning with the inhabitants, for we do not know yet who is in debt,” he paused for a breath and said, “but here is my body.” He spread his arms wide.
Nathaniel Ingersoll stood up and faced John Putnam. “Lieutenant,” he said, “I wonder that you attach Mr. Burroughs for the money at Darby’s and your father Gedney’s, when, to my knowledge, you and Mr. Burroughs have reckoned and balanced accounts two or three times since — as you say — it was due, and you never made any mention of it when you reckoned with Mr. Burroughs.”
It was true. Furthermore, Ingersoll and his wife, Hannah, had been present when Burroughs borrowed the money for Shippen as well. Ingersoll had heard Burroughs ask for a draft to be presented to Mr. Shippen, and Putnam had inquired, “How much will you take up at Shippen’s?”
Burroughs had answered, “It might be five pounds,” but when he had done some more figuring he had said, “It may be it might come to more, therefore I will have to give him a draft to the value of five or six pounds.”
Putnam had replied, “It is all one to me,” and he had written the draft, read it to Burroughs, and said, “This will go for a part of the 33 pounds, 6 shillings, eight-pence the Parish owes you.”
There was nothing John Putnam could reply to Ingersoll — they were both well aware that the parish owed Burroughs much more than Burroughs owed Putnam. The two men stood looking at one another for a moment, and Putnam finally said, “It is true, and I own it.” But John Putnam was not about to let a small matter of equity interfere with what he had made up his mind to do.
The incident had broken up the meeting with nothing settled, and people were getting up to leave, most of them in great embarrassment, when Mr. Burroughs said, “Well, what will you do with me?”
The marshal approached John Putnam uncertainly and asked, “What shall I do?”
Putnam replied, “You know your business.” He tossed his head in the direction of the minister, then went over to his brother Thomas, tugged at his coat, and they went outdoors to confer while the marshal arrested Burroughs. The Putnam brothers came back in a moment later, and John Putnam said, “Marshal, take your prisoner and have him up to the Ordinary” — Ingersoll’s Inn — “and secure him till the morning.”
The marshal took Burroughs out, shouldering through the knots of citizens who stood about and looked angrily or reproachfully upon the proceedings. Some of the Villagers decided to do something about it. They followed Burroughs and Marshal Skerry to Ingersoll’s where they drew up a bond:
“We whose names are underwritten do bind ourselves jointly and severally to Henry Skerry, Marshal of Salem, our heirs, executors, and administrators, in the sum of fourteen pounds money, that George Burroughs shall appear at the next court at Salem, to answer to Lieutenant John Putnam according to the summons of this attachment, and to abide the order of the court therein, and not to depart without license; as witness our hands this 2nd of May, 1683.” The bond was signed by Burroughs, Ingersoll, John Buxton, Thomas Haynes, Samuel and William Sibley, and William Ireland, Jr The Casco minister was set at local liberty for the time being.
It was a measure of John ’s vindictiveness when, in June, in Essex County Court, he brought a suit against George Burroughs for a “debt for two gallons of Canary wine, and cloth, &c., bought of Mr. Gedney on John Putnam’s account, for the funeral of Mrs. Burroughs.”
On February 22nd 1684 the Salem Village parish again voted to raise “fifteen pounds for Mr. Burroughs” so that he could continue to exist while he awaited trial. In the meantime the parish committee had received permission to call another minister to preach in the Village, and it had settled upon Deodat Lawson who was, however, reluctant to respond to the call, for the notoriety of the settlement as a place of pastoral contention was widespread. Lawson was importuned to accept, however, and at last, reluctantly, he did so. At the same meeting that voted Burroughs funds, a committee of parish members was formed to arrange to have Lawson’s worldly goods transported into town from Boston.
In April Mr. Burroughs, who wanted nothing more than to get out of town, proposed a solution to his own particular problem: He authorized Lt. Thomas Putnam to receive from the parish the money due him by “the inhabitants of Salem Farms.” Thus, Thomas could pay his brother John whatever the Court decided Burroughs owed him, if anything, and send the rest up to Casco. Burroughs was not fool enough, however, to think that he would receive much of anything by mail. If by chance he did, fine; if not, at least he would be free of the toils of Salem Village, or so he surmised.
In 1685 Samuel Webber was living in Casco, Maine, where George Burroughs was once again the minister. Webber had heard about the prodigious strength of the man of God, and during a visit Webber finally got to talk about it with him. Burroughs didn’t offer to demonstrate, but he did tell Webber that he had put his fingers into the bung of a barrel of molasses, lifted it up, carried it around, and set it down again. Webber was impressed with the story, and a preacher wouldn’t make up something like that, would he?
The Salem Village parishioners on November 15th, 1688, appointed a committee whose members were Capt. John Putnam, Jr, Joshua Ray, Sr., and Francis Nurse. They were empowered to approach the Rev. Mr. Samuel Parris and ask him to become the fourth minister of Salem Village. Parris was, in the pecking order of the unofficial ecclesiastical hierarchy, the bottom of the barrel, lower even than George Burroughs who had at least graduated from Harvard, though he had afterwards become a backwoods preacher down East.
Parris had attended Harvard, but he had never graduated, and any community of New England — if it could not have an Englishman out of Oxford or Cambridge — at least expected to have a Harvardian. Worse still, Parris had not gone straight into the ministry; rather, he had become a businessman in Barbados. It was through this connection that the Putnams became acquainted with the man, for the late Thomas’ second wife, Mary Veren Putnam, had property and other interests in Barbados. It was not until he had failed in business that Parris had returned to New England and taken up his cross. Four years later, in 1692, it would be in Rev. Parris’ household that the great Salem Witch Hunt would begin.
In 1689, however, The Devil manifested himself to William Barker of Salem Village. He was a Black Man with a cloven foot, and he put this proposition to Barker: He would pay Barker’s debts and see to it that he lived comfortably; for his part, Barker was to cede his soul to the powers of darkness. It was the Devil’s plan to begin his own coup by taking over Salem Village and then spreading out into the countryside. Barker made his pact and was taken to a Sabbat that had been called by Bridget Bishop and the former minister of Salem Village, Rev. George Burroughs. One hundred and five young blades, some of them armed with rapiers, gathered together at the assembly and, at the sound of a trumpet, fell to drinking wine and eating bread at the site of the Sabbat, which was a field nearby the meetinghouse.
Simon Willard, thirty-nine, went to Falmouth, Maine, on Casco Bay, and he stayed in the home of Robert Lawrence. They got to speaking of various things, and Mr. Lawrence introduced the subject of the local parson, Rev. Mr. George Burroughs, who was also visiting and present in the room. He commended Mr. Burroughs’ strength to Willard; he said, “We could none of us do what he could do, for Mr. Burroughs can hold out his gun with one hand.” The company were astonished, but Burroughs affirmed that he could do it. He showed the folk present where he held the gun to perform the feat — behind the flintlock. It was a rifle with a seven-foot barrel. Burroughs, being a modest man, refused to perform, but Willard picked it up, held it where Burroughs had shown him, and couldn’t lift it with both hands. Later Willard, still skeptical, mentioned it to Capt. Wormall, but the Captain assured him that Burroughs could do what he said.
At another gathering Burroughs was present when some members of Capt. Edward Sergeant’s garrison were talking about the minister’s ability to lift a barrel of molasses out of a canoe by himself and carry it to shore. The short, stocky preacher told the men, and Simon Willard who was there as well, that he had carried one barrel that was like to have hurt him, but Willard took this to mean that the ground was rough and he might have strained a leg, not that the effort was too much for him. He shook his head in wonder.
In 1690 another Indian raid got underway, but the people had been told help was in the offing, and no one was inclined, yet, to take to the woods. Lt. Richard Honeywell, Thomas and John Greenslit, and Rev. George Burroughs were at the home of Capt. Joshua Scott of Blackpoint. At the Scott home the people gathered there witnessed at last some of the proverbial strength of the minister. When the demonstration was over Thomas Greenslit told people that he had seen Burroughs insert his forefinger into a rifle with a six-foot barrel and lift it, holding it out at arm’s length; further, he had seen Burroughs lift a barrel with only his two fingers stuck into the bung; he had carried it that way from the stage depot to the door of the stage without setting it down along the way. Those to whom he told the story were amazed beyond measure — or skeptical.
When the Indians had finally finished with Casco it was a ruin, but once again George Burroughs managed to be one of the survivors. This time, though, he took his family and migrated down the coast a way to Wells where he was granted 150 acres of land.
Early in 1692 the Rev. Mr. Samuel Parris was engaged with a lawsuit against the Salem Village Church and with various political intrigues. He was paying little attention to his daughter and the girls who orbited Tituba, a member of the Parris household’s Barbados servant family that included her husband, John Indian, and their young son whom everyone called merely, “Boy.” This group grew and fluctuated. Besides the minister’s daughter Elizabeth Parris, nine, there were her cousin Abigail Williams, eleven; Mary Walcott, sixteen, a near neighbor; Annie Putnam, twelve, Mary’s step-cousin, and Mercy Lewis who often came with Annie Putnam inasmuch as she was a servant of Sgt. Thomas and Ann Carr Putnam. On occasion she also worked for Carolina John Putnam (parenthetically, my several times maternal great grandfather), and when Rev. George Burroughs had been the Salem Village minister, Mercy had lived in his family for a while, having no family of her own. Other neighbors of the Parrises were Susannah Sheldon, eighteen, and Elizabeth Booth, sixteen, both of whom had taken to dropping in and listening to Tituba’s stories of phantasms and witchery. They were joined frequently by Elizabeth Hubbard, seventeen, the niece of Mrs. William Griggs, who lived with Dr. William Griggs’ family as a servant; by another servant, Sarah Churchill, twenty, maid of George Jacobs, and Mary Warren, also twenty, maidservant of John and Elizabeth Proctor.
Tituba’s influence, by January of 1692, had gone beyond mere storytelling. She had introduced the girls to some of the divinatory arts and to sympathetic magic. Tituba was a good teacher, for she gave her girls a thorough education in folklore. This, added to the fire and brimstone theology to which they all had been born, and that Mr. Parris reinforced twice each week from the pulpit, together with all the rumors and news of occult manifestations that were currently taking place in New England — such as those that had been laid out on the printed page by Cotton and Increase Mather of recent years in books that were easily available — wrought heavily on the girls’ minds. When they secretly got together in twos and threes to experiment with scrying and fortunetelling, they had the exquisite knowledge that if their parents and employers knew what they were up to they would be horrified. On the other hand, the young people knew for a fact that there were many witches, both white and black, who had been practicing more or less openly in the community and the area for years, usually without having incurred any real reprobation.
Moreover, the girls knew that nearly everyone from time to time applied some sort of magic to situations where nothing else seemed to be of avail. Even the doctors used remedies that seemed not to be entirely medical when they came to treat a particularly difficult case, and when they were baffled they would as often as not shake their heads and excuse their lack of skill by saying, “There is an evil hand in it,” or something suchlike. There was not one of the girls who had not been indoctrinated at an early age into the mysteries of the birth process, an event ringed around with superstition and presided over by the midwife, who was held in no little awe by the girls and the men of the villages particularly. The midwife was, to all intents and purposes, half priestess when she was practicing her calling, and she herself knew it. There was not one midwife anywhere who was not to some degree an herb-doctor, and an herb-doctor was one remove from the witch, if that much.
But what the girls did not foresee in their experiments was that some of the younger members of the juvenile coven might take things too seriously. These were delicious games they were playing when, though they didn’t know the technical terms, they practiced onychomancy — scrying into their waxed or oiled fingernails; Bibliomancy, as Increase Mather himself, and even some of their parents did when they allowed the Bible to fall open of itself to prophetic passages; chiromancy — palmistry; or cosquinomancy, divining by means of a sieve balanced on a rod or pincers, or oomancy: breaking an egg into a bowl of water and watching to see what shape it assumed. Had they known these names, the sounds would only have added occult glamour to their practices.
The trouble was that Elizabeth Parris particularly was too impressionable, and when she saw the egg in her bowl assume the shape of a coffin, she became uncontrollably hysterical, thus providing a model of behavior for the other girls. She was the minister’s daughter, and she was much more aware than the others that what they were doing was truly sinful. She was filled with feelings of guilt and impending damnation, but she could say nothing to her father, for she would be ostracized by her friends. They would all get into terrible trouble, and Tituba the witch would take revenge upon her. When finally Rev. Parris discovered what was going on he was all too ready to take the pressure that his parishioners were putting upon him off himself and transfer it to the witches that soon were to be found everywhere. And the girls were acting out in ways to keep the onus for what was happening in the Parris and Putnam households, and soon in many households around the Colony, off of themselves.
Abigail Hobbs implicated a number of people in Topsfield, Ipswich, Salem Village, and Salem Town itself; Mercy Lewis cried out upon George Jacobs, and Annie Putnam saw the shape of the Rev. Mr. George Burroughs of Casco. She exclaimed, “Oh! Dreadful! Dreadful! What? Are ministers witches too? What is your name, for I will complain of you, though you be a minister, if you be a wizard.”
Burroughs’ specter tortured her — she was racked and choked. He tempted her to write in his book, but she refused with loud cries: “I will not write in your book though you tear me to pieces! It is a dreadful thing that you who are a minister that should teach children to fear God, should come to persuade poor creatures to give their souls to the Devil. Oh! Dreadful! Tell me your name that I may know who you are!”
Instead of doing so, however, Burroughs tortured her again, once more requested that she put pen to book. When Annie refused, Burroughs’ apparition told her, obligingly, “My name is George Burroughs. I have had three wives. I bewitched the first two of them to death, and I killed Mrs. Lawson” — Rev. Deodat Lawson’s wife — “because I was so unwilling to leave Salem Village, and I killed Mr. Lawson’s child because he went to the Eastward” (meaning Maine) “with Sir Edmund [Andros], and I preached so to the soldiers, and I bewitched a great many soldiers to death at the Eastward when Sir Edmund was there, and I made Abigail Hobbs a witch and several witches more, and above a witch, I am a conjuror as well.”
Thomas Putnam, Annie’s father, wrote a letter to Judges John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin that read in part, hinting darkly, “We thought it our duty to inform your Honors of what we conceive you have not heard, which are high and dreadful — of a wheel within a wheel, at which our ears do tingle.” Thomas hoped God would prepare them that they “may be a terror to evil-doers and a praise to them that do well….”
Warrants were soon issued for the arrest of several people, and Elisha Hutchinson, a magistrate, issued a surreptitious warrant for the arrest of Rev. George Burroughs of Wells, Maine. One evening shortly afterward Rev. Burroughs was sitting in the hall eating his supper when Field Marshal John Partridge rode up, burst into the house, arrested him, and without an explanation bundled the minister off on the familiar road to Salem.
Judge Hathorne in his examination of Deliverance Hobbs toward the end of April 1692 elicited yet another accusation of witchcraft from her against Rev. Burroughs and others. The specter of Rebecca Nurse told Mary Walcott that she had had a hand in the deaths of Benjamin Houlton, John Harrod, Rebecca Shepard and others, and in the evening the Rev. Mr. George Burroughs appeared to Annie Putnam again, asked her to sign his book; when she refused he said, “My two first wives will appear to you presently and tell you a great many lies, but you should not believe them.” Immediately, two phantoms put in an appearance: They were women in winding sheets with kerchiefs about their heads. They turned to Burroughs looking “very red and angry” and said, “You have been a cruel man to us. Our blood does cry for vengeance against you. We shall be clothed with white robes in Heaven when you are cast into Hell.” Apparently Hell was not a place that intimidated Annie Putnam herself.
Burroughs vanished. The women turned to Annie Putnam: Their color had changed — now they “looked as pale as a white wall.” They told the tirl, “We were Mr. Burroughs’ two first wives. He hath murdered us.”
One said, “I was his first wife. He stabbed me under the left arm and put a piece of sealing wax on the wound.” She pulled aside her winding sheet and showed Annie Putnam. The phantom continued, “I was in the house where Mr. Parris now lives when it was done.”
The other moaned, “Mr. Burroughs and his present wife did kill me in the vessel as I was coming to see my friends, for he and that woman” — she meant Burroughs’ third wife — “would have one another.”
Both the ghosts charged Annie Putnam to tell the magistrates these things “before Mr. Burroughs’ face, and if he does not own to them, we do not know but we shall appear there in the court.” It was a hair-raising prospect to the Salem Villagers until they thought about it — and then they realized they would probably be able to see no more of these shades than they had of all the others which, apparently, only the girls could see.
Early in May Warrants were issued in Salem Village against George Jacobs and his granddaughter Margaret Jacobs, and the specter of George Burroughs came a-visiting Annie Putnam again. Burroughs in person appeared in Salem under arrest in custody of Field Marshal John Partridge who turned him over to the local authorities. The minister was not put in prison but given lodging at Thomas Beadle’s Inn.
Thursday, May 5th, Eleazer Keysar, forty, was at Beadle’s in Salem socializing with Capt. Daniel King and others, and the inevitable topic of conversation was the upstairs guest. King said to Keysar, “Will you not go up and see Mr. Burroughs and discourse with him?”
“It does not belong to me,” Keysar replied, “and I am unwilling to make or meddle with it.”
King said, huffily, “Are you not a Christian? If you are a Christian, go and see him, and discourse with him.”
Keysar set his glass on the table and told King measuredly, “I do believe it does not belong to such as I am to discourse with him, he being a learned man.”
King began to grow angry. “I believe he is a child of God,” he said, “a choice child of God, and God will clear his innocency.”
But Keysar’s back was up too. He cleared his throat and looked at the Captain. “My opinion or fear is that he is the chief of all the persons accused for witchcraft, or the ringleader of them all,” Keysar said. “If he is such a one, his Master has told him by now what I have said of him.”
Captain King flew into a rage and began to rail at Keysar. A wary hush settled over the room, and Keysar forebore to speak further until the situation had been glossed over by the others present.
Nevertheless, that afternoon Keysar did in fact have occasion to be in Mr. Burroughs’ chamber, and it seemed to him that Burroughs “did steadfastly fix his eyes” upon him.
After his day at the tavern Keysar went home and, he wrote in a deposition given in later, “The same evening, being in my own house, in a room without any light, I did see very strange things appear in the chimney, I suppose a dozen of them, which seemed to me to be something like jelly that used to be in the water, and quivered with a strange motion, and then quickly disappeared. Soon after which, I did see a light up in the chimney, about the bigness of my hand, something above the bar, which quivered and shaked, and seemed to have a motion upward, upon which I called the maid, and she, looking up the chimney, saw the same; and my wife looking up could not see any thing. So I did and do conclude it was some diabolical operation!”
On Friday, May 6th, Daniel Wilkins — while his father and uncle were still away at Boston — grew ill up on Will’s Hill in Salem Village. In the evening George Burroughs’ specter appeared to Mercy Lewis, tortured her, and tried to get her to sign his book, which she refused to do. Then he brought her “a new-fashion book which he did not use to bring.” He told her, “You might write in this book, for it is a book that was in my study when you lived with my family.”
Mercy replied, “I do not believe you, for I was often in your study, but I never saw that book there.”
Burroughs replied, “I had several books in my study which you never saw, and with them I could raise the Devil. I bewitched Mr. Shepard’s daughter.” Burroughs was referring to Rebecca Shepard, daughter of the late Rebecca Putnam Shepard — Mrs. John Shepard, alias Widow John Fuller.
“How can you go,” Mercy asked, “to bewitch her now you are kept at Salem?”
“The Devil is my servant,” Burroughs informed her. “I sent him in my shape to do it.” He tortured her again, threatened to kill her “For,” he said, “you shall not witness against me.”
Lydia Wilkins, who had been attending her brother Daniel in his illness, came down with the contagion, smallpox,” on May 8th. Her father and uncle yet were away in Boston where Bray Wilkins was still feeling ill himself. And the young Wilkins people were not the only ones who were down with the spread of Satan’s scourge. Cases were being reported all over Salem Village. Carolina John Putnam — now Constable John — was recovered from his own affliction; he and his family had buried Sarah, who had succumbed to the pox, and none of that family doubted that the witches were responsible. The Constable threw himself into his work with a will and a vengeance.
The next day, Monday, William Stoughton and Samuel Sewall came down from Boston to join John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin on the bench, but the first examination of the day was held in private, only the magistrates and ministers present.
Burroughs was asked when he had last partaken of the Lord’s Supper, for he maintained that he was a full communicant of the congregation at Roxbury. “It has been so long since, I cannot tell,” Burroughs told the interrogators.
“Have you not been to church when the Lord’s Supper was served?”
“I was at meeting at Boston part of one day when it was served, and again at Charlestown part of a Sabbath, but I did not partake at either time.”
“Why did you not?”
“I do not recall.”
“Is it not true that your house at Casco is haunted?” Burroughs was a bit confused — he no longer lived at Casco, but at Wells. Nevertheless he answered, “It is not true.”
“Is it not? Doth it not have toads in it?”
“It hath toads, but it is not haunted.” It seemed a fine distinction to the judges.
“We have it by report that you made your wife to swear,” — swear, that is, not to tell his secrets to the Putnams when they lived together. “What do you say to it?”
“I deny it.”
“When she wished to write to her father, did you not forbid it without your consent?” This was all material that had been provided by Mrs. Ann Carr Putnam who had been Mrs. Burroughs’ gossip.
“I deny it.”
“Is it not true that, of your children, none but the eldest is baptized?”
“It is true.”
“How comes this to pass?”
Burroughs did not answer, and the judges decided that it might be better to adjourn to the public gallery. No sooner had they all walked in than the afflicted people went into paroxysms of agony — screams, thrashings-about, wails, ululations: virtual Pandemonium. It lasted a long time, but eventually William Stoughton and the others managed to get things a bit settled and to take testimony from the accusers. Susannah Sheldon said, “This is the man who murdered his two wives. They came to me in their winding sheets and told me so.”
Burroughs was asked to turn about to face Susie — he looked back over his shoulder and almost all the afflicted were knocked down; Susie and Annie Putnam gasped that he brought the Book for them to sign. Finally, the judges asked, “What do you think of these things?”
“It is an amazing and humbling Providence,” Burroughs admitted, “but I understand nothing of it.” He mused for a moment, then said, “Some of you may observe that, when they begin to name my name, they cannot name it.”
Annie Putnam and Susannah testified that he murdered his two wives and two of his children. Some of the bewitched had such terrible fits that they were ordered to be carried out of the courtroom. Sarah Bibber, an adult accuser, managed to rasp out, “This is the man that has hurt me in his shape, but I have not seen him in his presence” — that is, in the flesh — “before this.” Assumedly Burroughs had never seen her either, so why would he have tormented her? However, logic was lacking at that time, and Burroughs was too confused to think of it.
Mary Warren told the court that Burroughs, when he wished to call a Sabbat in Rev. Mr. Parris’ field, blew a trumpet “to summon the witches to their feasts” — it could be heard rolling against the hills of Lynn and Gallows Hill in Salem Town, its spectral notes echoing down the Merrimac to Cape Ann and west to Andover, but its blast was audible only to the members of the coven.
The depositions of Abigail and Deliverance Hobbs and Eleazer Keysar were read; Capt. Simon Willard, John Brown, and John Weldon testified to the reality of the myths regarding his strength: He held up a great gun with one hand, even with but one finger stuck in the barrel; Capt. John Putnam, Jr., affirmed the truth of the stories. Capt. William Wormall testified about the barrel of molasses, but he said that Burroughs held the gun in front of the lock and rested its butt on his chest. John Brown told a story about a barrel of cider, but denied that his family was frightened by a white calf in his house. Capt. Putnam deposed that Burroughs forced his wife to enter into a covenant with him, and Abigail Hobbs submitted evidence from prison that Burroughs made her sign the Devil’s Book.
A body search of the minister for a witch’s mark had revealed nothing. At great length, Burroughs was quizzed and finally sent back to confinement. The evidence was overwhelming — at least to Stoughton and Hathorne, if not to Sewall and Corwin; but Sewall, at least, was enormously impressed.
On the 12th of May Abigail Hobbs was examined in Salem Prison. She was asked, “Did Mr. Burroughs bring you any of the poppits” — that is, witch dolls — “of his wives to stick pins into?”
“I do not remember that he did,” she replied.
“Did he bring any of his children, or of the Eastward soldiers?”
“No.”
“Have you known of any that have been killed by witchcraft?”
“No. Nobody.”
“How came you to speak of Mr. Burroughs’s wives yesterday?”
“I don’t know.” For a confessed witch, Abigail was being singularly uncooperative.
“Is that true about Davis’ son of Casco, and of those of the Village?”
“Yes, it is true.”
“What service did he put you upon? And who are they you afflicted?”
“I cannot tell who, neither do I know whether they died.”
“Were they strangers to you that Burroughs would have you afflict?”
“Yes.”
“And were they afflicted accordingly?”
“Yes.”
“Can’t you name some of them?”
“No. I cannot remember them.”
“Where did they live?”
“At the Eastward.”
“Have any vessels been cast away by you?”
“I do not know.”
“Have you consented to the afflicting of any others besides those at the Village?”
“Yes.”
“Who were they?”
“I cannot tell, but it was of such who lived at the fort side of the river about half a mile from the fort toward Capt. Brackett’s.”
“What was the hurt you gave to them by consent?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was there anything brought to you like them?”
“Yes.”
“What did you stick into them?”
“Thorns.”
“Did some of them die?”
“Yes. One of them was Mary Lawrence that died.”
“Where did you stick the thorns?”
“I do not know.”
“Was it about the middle of her body?”
“Yes, and I stuck it right in.”
“What provoked you? Had she displeased you?”
“Yes, by some words she spoke of me.”
“Who brought the image to you?”
“It was Mr. Burroughs.”
“How did he bring it to you?”
“In his own person, bodily.”
“Where did he bring it to you?”
“Abroad a little way off from our house.”
“And what did he say to you then?”
“He told me he was angry with that family.”
“How many years since was it?”
“Before this Indian war.”
“How did you know Mr. Burroughs was a witch?”
“I don’t know.”
“How long have you been a witch?”
“I made two covenants with the Devil, first for two years, and after that for four years. I have been a witch these six years.”
“Did the maid complain of pain about the place you stuck the thorn in?”
“Yes, but how long she lived, I don’t know.”
“How do you know Burroughs was angry with Lawrence’s family.”
“Because he told me so.”
“Where did any other live that you afflicted?”
“Just by the other toward James Andrews’, and they died also.”
“How many were they — more than one?”
“Yes.”
“And who brought those poppits to you?”
“Mr. Burroughs.”
“What did you stick into them?”
“Pins. And he gave them to me.”
“Did you keep those poppits?”
“No, he carried them away with him.”
“Was he there himself with you in bodily person?”
“Yes, and so he was when he appeared to tempt me to set my hand to the Book. He then appeared in person, and I felt his hand at the same time.”
“Were they men, women, or children you killed?”
They were both boys and girls.”
“Was you angry with them yourself?”
“Yes, though I don’t know why now.”
“Did you know Mr. Burroughs’ wife?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know of any poppits pricked to kill her?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Have you seen several witches at the Eastward?”
“Yes, but I don’t know who they were.”
Toward the middle of the month Ann Foster was questioned several times — she was a goldmine of occult information, but this time she began to repeat herself, though some details were new: She had agreed to serve the Devil two years, “upon which he promised me prosperity but never performed it.” Indeed, it was remarkable how little prosperity there was among most of the accused witches. As she and Martha Carrier were going to the Witches’ Sabbat in Salem Village “the stick broke as we were carried in the air above the tops of the trees, and we fell, but I did hang fast about the neck of Goody Carrier, and we were presently at the Village, but I was then much hurt of my leg.” Though there were only twenty-five present at the meeting she “heard some of the witches say that there was three hundred and five in the whole country, and that they would ruin that place, the Village.”
Besides Burroughs there were at the meeting two men, “and one of them had gray hair.” Ann, contrite, told the judges that she “formerly frequented the public meeting to Worship God, but the Devil had such power over me that I could not profit there, and that was my undoing.” She recalled another act of murder that had been committed: “About three or four years ago Martha Carrier told me she would bewitch James Hobbs’ child to death, and the child died in twenty-four hours.” It was Martha Carrier who had brought the infection of smallpox into Andover, and perhaps into Salem Village as well.
After the judges left, the Rev. John Hale asked Ann further questions. “Did you ride to the witches’ meetings on a stick?”
“Yes.”
“What did you do for victuals?”
“I carried bread and cheese in my pocket. I came before the meeting with the Andover folk to Salem Village, and we sat down together under a tree and eat our food, and I drank water out of a brook to quench my thirst.”
“Where was the meeting?”
“Upon a grassy place by a cart path, and there was sandy ground in the path with the marks of horses’ feet.” She said further, “I am in fear that Mr. Burroughs and Martha Carrier will kill me, for they appeared to me and brought a sharp-pointed iron like a spindle, but four-square, and threatened to stab me to death with it because I had confessed my witchcraft and told of them that they were with me at meeting. It was Martha Carrier that made me a witch.”
The third session of the Special Court of Oyer and Terminer was convened in Salem, the purpose of which was to try John and Elizabeth Proctor, Rev. George Burroughs, John Willard, George Jacobs, Sr., and Martha Carrier. By this time many witches had been hanged on Gallows Hill where there was no true gallows, only a ladder against a tall tree up which the condemned people were led and then “turned off,” that is, twisted off of the rung upon which they stood.
The trial of George Burroughs was held on both August 2nd and 3rd, there were so many witnesses against him. At first the bitch witches had such a great number of fits and were struck so dumb at Burroughs’ entry into the courtroom in Salem that no one could accuse him. But after a great while Justice Gedney asked the minister, “Who do you think hinders these witnesses from giving their testimonies?”
“The Devil, I suppose,” Burroughs answered.
“How comes the Devil so loath to have any testimony borne against you?”
Burroughs didn’t know how to answer. The girls complained, “He bites!” and they showed the tooth marks. The court ordered Burroughs to bite a stick; the judges compared the stick with the bite marks on the children’s arms, and sure enough — !
Mercy Lewis in her fit said, “George Burroughs carried me away to a very high mountain where all the kingdoms of the world lay below and said, ‘I will give all these to you if you will but write in my Book, and if you do not I will throw you down and break your neck,’ but I told him, ‘They are none of yours to give, and I will not write if you throwed me down on a hundred pitchforks.’
True to their word, Burroughs’ two murdered wives appeared to Annie Putnam right there in court. She told the judges, “They cry, ‘Vengeance! Vengeance!’” The other girls were asked if they saw the specters there, and of course they did.
Hathorne asked Burroughs, “Do not you see the apparitions of your dead wives?”
“I know nothing of it,” he replied, baffled.
“You are not a large man,” Hathorne noted, “yet it is said you have performed feats beyond the strength of a giant. What do you say to it?”
“It is not true.”
“Did not you hold out a gun seven foot in the barrel with one hand?”
“An Indian was there, and held it out at the same time.”
Annie Putnam broke in, “It was the Black Man, or the Devil, who looks like an Indian. It was Hobbamock,” she told the Court, “who was with him in the appearance of a man.”
“Did you not carry a barrel full of molasses or cider from a canoe to the shore without help?” a judge queried.
“It is no great thing,” he replied. “It was a cask, not a barrel.”
“Here is testimony that you caught up with your wife and her brother Richard preternaturally quick when you had been left far behind” — the judge waved a deposition at him — “and you chided her for speaking of you and told her you knew their thoughts” (a new charge: Burroughs was a telepath); “that Rucke was startled and said that the Devil himself did not know so far, and that you replied, ‘My God makes known your thought to me.’”
“Rucke and my wife left a man with me when they left me,” Burroughs said, implying that he had a witness. But Thomas Rucke, who was present in Court, stood forth and called, “That is false!”
Gedney asked Burroughs, “What was the man’s name?”
Burroughs did not answer.
“Why do you not reply? Is it because you only stepped aside to put on your invisibility so that you might listen to them in a fascinating mist?” It was a fascinating question.
Rather than answer, Burroughs submitted a paper to the Court that read, in part, “There neither are, nor ever were, witches that, having made a compact with the Devil, can send a Devil to torment other people at a distance.” The magistrates read it; then Gedney asked, “Did you write this?”
“Yes,” Burroughs replied. It was a stupid lie because the one thing no one should have doubted was that this court was widely and deeply read in the literature of witchcraft.
“You are a liar!” he was told. “This paper is transcribed from the book of Thomas Ady.” The eyes of judge and accused locked: They both knew they were talking about the 1655 skeptical treatise titled A Candle in the Dark. Now Burroughs was accused of two new charges — telepathy and plagiarism!
Caught in an untenable position, Burroughs, like his colleagues in Boston, chose to bluster it out. “I took none of it out of any book,” he maintained.
“How does it happen, then, that this sounds so much like the other?”
“A gentleman gave me the discourse in a manuscript,” Burroughs said, “from whence I transcribed it.” It was a mealy-mouthed reply that nevertheless meant he himself had not written the paper. The Court was disgusted, and the parade of witnesses and storm of depositions continued unabated, but they were no longer needed — they were but window dressing to justify the condemnation of an ordained minister.
The affidavit of Samuel Sheldon was read. He said that the day before the trial Burroughs appeared to him and asked if Sheldon “would go to the village tomorrow to witness against him.” When Sheldon answered he would, Burroughs’ specter told him that before that happened he would be killed. That hadn’t happened, obviously.
Later, at Ingersoll’s, the shade reappeared and told Sheldon, in direct contradiction of the details as they had been revealed to Annie Putnam, that he had smothered his first wife and choked the second, together with his two children. He had also killed three other children in Maine.
After his condemnation Burroughs said to the magistrates, “I am innocent, yet I justify you in your verdict, for there are many positive witnesses against me, but I die by false witnesses.” His justification of the Court gave some faint satisfaction to the ministers of Boston.
In addition to George Jacobs, John Proctor and Burroughs, John Willard and Martha Carrier were convicted by Friday, August fifth, 1692.
Friday, August 19th, was a day of execution. As the cart bearing the condemned people — George Jacobs, Sr., John Proctor, John Willard, Martha Carrier, and the Rev. Mr. George Burroughs — proceeded slowly up Gallows Hill, at one point it got stuck. The bitch witches, who walked alongside, informed the crowd, as people put their shoulders to the wheels, “The Devil hinders it.”
At the gallows oak the crowd was ominously quiet; when George Proctor and John Willard died bravely and well, the silence began to grow into an angry murmur. Cotton Mather had come up from Boston to be present at this execution of a colleague; he sat upon a horse while the hangings took place. Samuel Sewall was in the crowd, as were several ministers — Rev. Messrs. Simms, John Hale, Nicholas Noyes, and Samuel Cheever among others.
Martha Carrier, like the others before her, died protesting her innocence. And when George Burroughs mounted the ladder he spoke to the gathering of Puritans, said he was innocent, delivered a short oration, and ended with a flawlessly executed recitation of the Lord’s Prayer.
The display, as it was meant to do, amazed the crowd, for no witch was supposed to be able to manage such a feat, and he was quickly turned off the ladder before the assembly could assimilate his achievement. While the little dark minister was swinging and dying Cotton Mather on his horse shouted, “They all died by righteous sentence! Mr. Burroughs was not an ordained minister.” That was an incomprehensible remark. “That he could recite the Lord’s Prayer is no proof of his innocence, for the Devil often has been transformed into an angel of light” — another remarkable statement.
The corpses were cut down and hastily buried among the rocks in shallow graves. Burroughs was tumbled into a gash in the ground along with John Willard and Martha Carrier. When the soil was shoveled in, the gravediggers were in too great a hurry to get away, for they left the preacher’s hand and chin uncovered, as well as a foot of one of the others. There were many people who left Gallows Hill weeping that day.
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